Hidden beaches, rocky roads, phalluses at Washington Slagbaai National Park

Today we took a nice drive up the west coast of Bonaire, following the coast with lovely views of the ocean, heading towards Washington Slagbaii National Park, which takes up the entire north quarter of the island. On the way we passed many of the more famous dive sites, like 1,000 Steps (which is actually only 67 steps, but feels like 1,000 when you are carrying all your heavy SCUBA gear). We didn't stop at any of these since we decided diving is WAY too expensive here. After following this road all the way up to the north side of the island, we discovered that the entrance to the national park is on the EAST side of the island... Luckily this part of the island is only a mile or so wide. :) To get across, we were going to drive through Rincon, Bonaire's only other town. A little before Rincon, we stopped off at a lookout point on the top of a large hill, so we could see over the tiny town with its brightly colored houses. At the lookout point were some ruins, but we weren't sure what they were, and Lonely Planet didn't enlighten us. It was still a nice view.

Me in front of a huge "candlestick cactus."

The ruins at the Rincon viewpoint.

Rincon viewed from above. :)

On the way, we kept trying to get pictures of local "wildlife," without much success. Little wild goats are running all over the place, but they get away from the road pretty quickly if a car slows down to take a picture. The only success we had were some bored donkeys. There are a lot of wild donkeys on Bonaire that are descendants of the donkeys used during the slave-era salt production industry. There are so many left that there is a sanctuary for them south of Kralendijk, but there are still several (according to Lonely Planet - 400 wilds ones!) hanging out munching weeds on the road sides. We also noticed a lot of locals use cactuses as fences for their property - the "candlestick cactus" grows tall and thin like a candlestick, and they are leaned against each other from opposite directions.

A candlestick cactus fence behind a lizard marker that showed the way to Washington Slagbaai National Park.

When these wild donkeys are in the middle of the road, I yell at them jokingly, "Move 'yer ass!" Get it? :)

Finally we arrived at Washington Slagbaai National Park. Both of us needed to use the restroom, so we headed behind the little museum to use the restroom. The restrooms had handy little signs to designate men and women. See below:

Do you think this was the mens' room or the ladies' room? :)

Even more amusing, RIGHT OUTSIDE the mens' restroom we discovered the following fine cactus specimen:

Even better... I dub thee "Cocktus." :)

 

The ranger stationed at the entrance gate to the park told us we could take a long or short route, and he told us the best places to snorkel and what times we had to be at certain points to reach the end before the park closed. We chose to drive the 2.5 hour route (that is, 2.5 hours if you just drive without stopping at any of the points of interest). I wondered how it could take 2.5 hours to drive ANYWHERE on the island since it is such a small island, but we soon discovered the awful dirt/gravel roads inside the park make it impossible to go faster than 20km/h. As the undercarriage of our poor little Yaris dragged and scraped on large rocks in the center of the roads, Gavin mentioned that he signed a line on our car rental agreement that we would not bring the car into this park... Oops. :)

Just inside the park entrance. The road doesn't look so bad, but they get WAY worse...

We stopped at several of the points of interest, some of which were interesting, others not so much. See below:

Gavin at Playa Chikitu - huge waves and too dangerous to swim, unfortnately.

The rocky landscape of the east coastline.

Seru Grandi point of interest. The top terrace is 1 million years old, and the bottom terrace is 210,000 years old.

Me at the Supladó point of interest. Supposedly it is a blow hole and is supposed to have huge splashes, but I stayed dry... I felt a little touch of mist once, though.

Boka Kokolishi - those rock formations form a natural protection of the beach from strong waves.

The lovely little beach at Boka Kokolishi. We finally got to get our legs wet on this hot day!

Gavin was excited to find some bits of a dead crab. "The claw still moves!!" he said after dropping this piece of a giant bug in my hand. Joy. :)

A little lizard friend. Tourists must feed them, because all I had to do was stand still beside the car and about 5 of them came right up to my feet!

An iguana hiding in the bushes.

Malmok point of interest is the northernmost part of Bonaire. These are ruins of a lighthouse and research center.

Playa Bengé, described on the map as a "white sandy beach." We didn't see a grain of sand in sight, so we took the picture and moved on. This is another beach where EVERY rock is dead coral!

Small beaches, unimpressive ruins, etc. Then, we finally got to the snorkeling area. We chose Wayaká 2, as this was what the ranger recommended as the best snorkeling in the park. We walked down a few steps from the road and came across this absolutely lovely gem of a hidden beach.

Wayaká 2 - gorgeous!!!

And the snorkeling was awesome!! The coral reefs came all the way up to shore, but there are a space to swim between them and out into the reef, which was only about 6-10 feet deep with tons of lovely fish to see. My favorite was the Peacock Flounder, which swims along the bottom and when it lies still, you can't see it at all! I only saw it because I saw it move. It has two eyes on its left side because it always lies on its side on the bottom of the reef. When it does move, there are little blue iridescent patches that shimmer in the light from the surface.

Grabbed this pic online - invisible when lying still...

 

Iridescent when moving! Also not my picture. We tried taking pics with an iPhone in a waterproof case, but all our pics came out like the one below...

 

This is one of the better ones - at least it is in focus! Almost all the others are blurry. And we got lucky catching a fish in this one. :)

When we had had enough snorkeling, we went back up to the car to get changed and drive out of the park. When we arrived at our car, two rangers were just about to walk down to retrieve us - we were leaving this site after the scheduled departure the ranger had told us previously - I guess they drive around more than an hour before closing and make sure everyone is on their way out! Then they just sat in their truck staring at us. I had wanted to change, but I was not about to do it with them watching. Gavin was not so shy - he gave them full frontal nudity as he changed out of his swim shorts. (He said, "They were leering at you and expecting you to strip in front of them, so it serves them right they just had to see me instead! :) )

We drove down to the last point of interest, Boka Slagbaai, but didn't have time to eat at the restaurant there as we had planned. We got out of the car to take pictures of the flamingos hanging out in the lake Saliña Slagbaai, but as soon as we stepped out those two rangers told us we can't stop and have to keep driving out. I told them we are just going to take a picture. This was an HOUR before the park closed that they were harassing us! We took a couple crappy, far away pictures of the flamingos (a sign stopped us from getting closer), and then continued our drive out of the park.

 

If you look closely, you can see little pink dots on the shoreline. Those are the flamingos.

On our way out, we saw why they rangers had been harassing us. It took us a good 40 minutes to get back to the entrance of the park on the awful roads. We made it back only ten minutes before the park closed. :)

We drove back to our apartment, and decided we were tired of spending so much money on dinners on the island - we just can't seem to find ANY cheaper restaurants! Gavin had been craving nachos, so we went to the grocery store and picked up the ingredients we needed to make our own nachos. We melted the cheese in the microwave, then took the nachos outside and read books on the terrace while we ate. (the salsa and guacamole we bought were TERRIBLE! The guac tasted like mustard, and the salsa tasted like tomato paste with a little oregano, but Gavin's craving was still satisfied...)

After "dinner," we headed into downtown for drinks and dessert. We ended up going to At Sea, a lovely candlelit open air restaurant close to the waterfront, and I had a decent mojito, while Gavin had some of the BEST rum punch we have ever tasted! We ordered dessert, and Gavin had apple pie and I had a little chocolate sampler. I guess the Bonaire version of apple pie is significantly different than the American version... Poor Gavin's pie was four slices of apple on a plate with some ice cream, little circles of custard and wafers of sugar cone. My chocolates were unimpressive except the mini lava cake. :) Next, I tried out a drink called By the Sea, which had blue curaco in it, making it look like the inside of a chemical toilet, but it tasted good! :) After that we made our woozy way (well, me woozy, but not Gavin since he was driving. :) ) back to the apartment to dream sweet, Caribbean dreams.

 

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