Ahhh Bonaire…. Cruisers and Divers Paradise..

 

Dear Friends,

We arrived in Bonaire early afternoon, and what a nice voyage it was… Once having rounded the southern tip of the Island, in warp speed we arrived at the anchorage…. oops.. no… you cant anchor, you just find yourself a great, clean set of of moorings… and your ok.

Ofcourse, still optimistic that we would catch some more fish…an eager Kite surfer blew that hope literaly out of the water.. as he passed too close to our stern, and wham…. Kite surfer crashed (sorry Dude…), our line snapped, lure gone… luckily Kite Surfer was not injured.

The great thing is that allthough you are on the lee side of the island, winds continue rather good, and no waves or swell…. so we stormed our way into Kralendijk….

There are aprox 50 moorings, all well kept and maintained. Of course this doesnt come for free, and a snappy Us$ 10/day is charged (payable at Harbour Village Marina). But, it is worth it…. the cleanest water ever, and one can scuba dive right of your boat, as all the moorings are placed just on the edge of the coral reef…

If you want to stay out of the music vibes, dont pick up the mooring nearby Karels Cafe…(as we did the first night..)… at three o clock in the morning, their  resident DJs where still pounding away…

After almost 14 days of nice little, seemingly untouched islands, it was nice to walk around in such a nice town of Kralendijk. Well kept, clean in a Dutch kind of way…. They even have a mega sized AH supermarket.

So, our days became filled with, riding our bikes, scuba diving, shopping, riding our bikes some more, and scuba diving some more. We checked out various diving sites (just so you understand, we took the Onda Boa to a specific diving site, well charted and soon you spot the yellow buoy with even the name of the diving site…. then it is just a matter of tying up to the buoy, get your diving gear ready and of into the deep blue…

Just awesome. We found Karpata and Hilma Hooker the two most spectacular sites (the later being a wreck check for the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EOL9AVbkxg). We did not go to check out the East coast of Bonaire (mainly because of the $$$$$), but surely that will remain our list.

We did want to check out the thousands and thousands of Flamengos in the National Park, but that turned out to be a bit of a disapointment….

 

When we told that to the park ranger, he didnt fail to explain to us that those pink feathered friends are able to fly and so he couldnt tell if, when and where those birds would show up. Honestly, we didnt like the park… Unless you like cactus, iguanas, goats and a handful of flamengos… But on the up side, some very interesting diving sites (beach entry)

 

The last day on Bonaire we visited the other side of the island.. Salt production ponds, run by Cargill (how clever is that… just let the water evaporate, bulldoze the salt into piles, put it on conveyer belts, and load vessels). I assume and hope they pay Bonaire a nice little sum of money for this.

Anyway, time for us to go (Bonaire is nice, but also rather expensive) and so of we went to Curacao (nice little day trip away).

And, I amost forgot…. We had the honour and privilige to have anchored close to M.Y Tatoosh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatoosh_(yacht) We thought we had seen already sufficient super yachts, but this one…. It not only had a helicopter on board, but also a 40ft sailboat (monohull) and 2 speed boats, it also has a cinema theatre and a crew of 34.

One can only wander…

* White slave referes to a dive site, and a monument for the slaves that worked in the saltmines

All the best,

Pieter