Commodore
April 24, 2022

Exploring by land

Sunday 24 April

Kylie had told us about this fantastic car hire scheme with one of the yachties. Basically you go to their boat and drop off $25, then you can go online and book the vehicle for a day, no form filling, no insurance. You just have to leave a full tank and leave the key with the people hiring the next day. A very organised and entrepreneurial system. The keys were dropped on PolePole last night while we were out.

We got going promptly as we wanted to visit the Slagbaai National park which covers the whole north of the island. It cost $40 per person to enter which felt steep but was well worth it. The whole park is a one way system as the roads are narrow, you can opt to do the long or short circuit, we opted for the long route which the very chatty park attendant told us would take 2.5 hours without stopping. We did lots of stops along the way, which the photos will do more justice to. Amazing volcanic and fossilised coral landscapes. We stopped off to snorkel along the way, it was great to cool off but the coral was not as good as all our other spots, but it was a beautiful beach in a dramatic setting. The landscape is dominated by the tall cactus, it seems pretty impenetrable terrain, just the few obligatory goats. We did a little walk to the only fresh water spring, which turned out to be a green puddle, a couple of iguanas posturing made it well worth the hot walk. There is a brackish lake where we saw more flamingoes and some old buildings from a plantation with the usual ghastly slave history.

Map of Bonaire, note all the dive and snorkelling sites along the leeward coast. Slagbaai and Lac Bay highlighted in red on opposite sides of the island.

The narrow one way roads

Typical vegetation

One of the snorkel sites

Dramatic threatening dark clouds

The centre of the island, where the original inhabitants of the island used to hangout to avoid the marauding colonialists

Beautiful lizards everywhere

Our trusty hire vehicle, the bush felt so African with the so many acacia trees

Slagbaai, so many Dutch words which makes us think of Afrikaans

Windward side with windmills in the distance

Eroding coastline

Rowan, Stella and Matt

Fossilised coral

A deep blow hole

Amazing landscapes created from Tsunamis and Teutonic plate movement

The local handsome Crested Caracara

Fossilised brain coral

Crested Caracara

More dramatic beaches!

The fossilised coral coastline

Walking to the fresh water hole ……. could have been on safari in Africa!

Our destination, this little green puddle

Iguana guardians of the fresh water

Ruined lighthouse

Our snorkel spot

The caves are the only shade on the beach, which is pink from the coral

Pink beach sand

The old buildings from the Plantation era

We left the park around 3ish and feeling rather peckish we stopped at a local restaurant, called the Cactus Fence, some locals left as we arrived and we landed up having the place to ourselves. It was very smartly set up and definitely authentic, Rowan was very sad the goat curry was finished but couldn’t quite bring himself to have the goat head stew! We had a reconstituted salt fish dish which was tasty but too salty for me. It was all accompanied by a local dish called tufu (definitely not tofu!) which was a grey cassava and bean dish cut into thick slices, not the most appealing looking and surprisingly sweet. It was a fun experience with very friendly staff.

We then headed to the south east end of the island which meant going past Kralendijk again, it is not a big island. Definitely poorer inhabitants the further you get away from town. Our destination was Lac Bay, we were gobsmacked at the amount of vehicles when we arrived. There is a long white beach protected by a reef quite far out, it is clearly a hot spot for all kite and windsurfers, plus the place to go for a beach picnic if you’re local, one lot had enormous speakers set up on the car roof, almost bigger than the car itself. It was all a bit too busy for us after the peace and quiet of the National park, so we headed home via the very good supermarket Van den Tweel to stock up, Stella with some local rum to take home tomorrow and us for our passage to Colombia on Tuesday.

Got back to PolePole, refreshed ourselves, and opened a bottle of bubbly to celebrate the end of a very good holiday with the Kirby’s. We headed off to join Kylie and her friend at Capriccio the Italian restaurant they had raved about. We had a very jolly evening with lots of good wine and loads of good stories, we were the last to leave but we had only managed to get a table after 8:30pm.