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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SCUBA diving the "Pillars of Salt"

This morning we headed over to Div'Ocean (pronounced "devotion") to have a couple guided SCUBA dives on the Bonaire reef. Our guides Joob (probably spelling it wrong, but pronounced Yoob) and Natalie (both Dutch expats, as seem to make up at least half of the permanent resident population here) drove us down to the south of the island to take a couple of his favorite dives. The first was The Rock, an unofficial dive site, named for a huge rock at the bottom of the ocean, but we didn't go see that. The goal was to SCUBA at 40-60 feet along the side of the coral reef. Unfortunately, my ears but the kibosh on that; on my first dive of the year I can't get one ear to equalize for a long time. For about half the dive I was only able to get down to about 10 feet and still feeling pain in the one ear. Gavin and Joob hung out on the bottom of the shallows, only about 30 feet, and not over the edge of the reef as planned. About halfway through the dive as we were turning around to go back, I felt a POW in the "bum" ear and it FINALLY figured out how to equalize, so I was able to go to the bottom for the rest of the dive, but by that time it was too late to go over the shelf and go deeper. Poo on my ear - it made me miss the Blue Hole last year in Belize, too! But I still got to see a BIG barracuda, a sea turtle and an eel. :)

On this sunnier day, the condenser lakes are even more pink than when we last saw them! We SCUBA dived across from them.

Ready to dive!

Sea turtle in the shallow part of the reef.

Barracuda - the pic doesn't do justice to its size.

Nobody looks attractive in SCUBA gear. :)

A pretty, iridescent fish.

Our second dive was Salt Pier, so named because it is the pier from which the salt collected in the salt condenser lakes is exported off the island. I had no trouble equalizing my ears, so I was able to go to depth right away with everyone else. We swam through and between the pillars holding up the pier, and these pillars were covered in coral, sponges and more. They were also a home to a LOT of fish - I was able to swim through a HUGE school of beautiful yellow and silver fish - probably at least a thousand fish in it! Definitely the highlight of my day in the water!

This is the salt pier. We SCUBA dived underneath it.

Me swimming in seriously a THOUSAND fish!

Sea life on and around the pillars of Salt Pier.

After our dive guides drove us back to the apartment (their dive shop is in Caribbean Court, where we are staying), we took our own car and drove back down past the salt lakes to Pink Beach. According to Lonely Planet "Pink Beach" was so named because the broken coral and shells that make its sand add a pinkish hue to the sand. We arrived at Pink Beach and were surprised at the LACK of sand. Most of the beach was made up of broken up and worn down pieces of coral! This is the only beach I have ever seen that is made entirely of coral bits - not a "real" rock in site! We had intended to hang out and read on the beach, but there as no shade available on this beach in late afternoon, so we headed right back into town. :)

Pink Beach. As you can see, not really pink at all. :)

Coral bits that make up Pink Beach.

After our brief viewing of Pink Beach, we headed back into town and had some ice cream at Lilly's and read our books in their comfortable booths for a while. Then we wandered toward a Peruvian restaurant called Plazita Limena that had caught my eye with their sign advertising ceviche. On the way I stopped and bought a hat - my head is sore from being sunburned where my hair parts. :)

We ate our dinner pretty early, so we we pretty much alone in the Plazita Limena for the first hour we were there. We ordered ceviche as an appetizer (Gavin is a good sport - he HATES ceviche but will still eat it with me because I love it! :) ) and it was pretty good, almost as good as we got in Peru. I had the "Land and Sea," for a main course, which was a steak and some garlic shrimp. Pretty good, but a kind of tough steak. We had a "choco volcano" for dessert, which was a YUMMY chocolate lava cake - my favorite part of the whole meal! We also tried a pitcher of their sangria... not so great. Honestly, probably the worst sangria I have ever tasted - so watered down with sparkling water and some kind of fruity liquor that we could barely taste the red wine! Both of us had to force it down and wished we had ordered it by the glass instead. :) After dinner we headed back to relax in the apartment for a while, making it an early night.

 

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Windsurfing battle wounds

Today we headed back over to Lac Bay to take our first windsurfing lesson. Neither Gavin nor I have ever done it before, and Lac Bay is supposed to be one of the best places in the world to do it. This is due to shallow, hip deep, warm water for at least a half mile from shore, constant strong winds that blow TOWARDS shore instead of out to sea, and the calm waters of the protected bay.

Windsurfing board and Jibe City's bar.

A windsurfer is ready to go!

Gavin learns the basics on the beach.

Hanna, our very blonde Dutch instructor, showed us how to get on the board and raise the sail all while standing comfortably on the beach. Didn't seem too hard. Then we walked out into the water and Hanna demonstrated all the moves in the water, then asked us to try. Gavin said before he even got on the board, "It looks pretty intuitive." Then he stepped crawled on the board and immediately fell into the water. I laughed at him and called out, "Intuitive, huh?" but I didn't fare any better. In fact, this handy animation shows about how my first hour of windsurfing went:


create an animated gif

Yes, both Gavin and I at first spent more time in the water than out of it. We got very little feedback, as the lesson was pretty much over the minute we got into the water. We then had an extra hour to mess around ourselves, and both of us managed to actually stay up on the board for longer times, but we realized quickly that Hanna had neglected to tell us how to STEER... If anyone came near me with their board I had no choice but to yell out "I'm sorry, I don't know how to turn!" I actually had a minor collision with an older guy and got so close to another guy that I made him fall off his board... Oops. I was one of those jerks... :D Also, the current and wind kept pushing us toward the "forbidden zone" next to shore with a lot of seaweed and, Hanna informed us, stinging sea creatures. So we had no choice but to jump off our boards and drag them back out to sea since we couldn't steer away from it. We were just seeming to partially get the hang of it, when Hanna came wading out and told us our time is up. So we dragged our boards back to shore and wandered over to The Beach Hut for lunch. At shore they encouraged us to sign up for the next level lesson, which would teach us how to steer. I guess they plan these things... :)

We had decided to definitely NOT go to Jibe City again for lunch since it was so expensive last time, so we walked a little farther down the beach to The Beach Hut. Sounds like a nice, cheap place, right? WRONG. I guess all the places on Lac Bay know they are the only game around for food and can charge pretty high prices... Gavin had a decent plate of ribs, and I "spicy" chicken salad. (so called "spicy.")

After lunch we were both in the mood to keep playing around with our boards, so we rented boards and slightly bigger sails after lunch to see if that would be easier to get moving. We had a bit more success, but still couldn't figure out how to get the board going what direction we wanted and still spent a lot of time dragging our boards away from the "danger zone." Toward the end of our hour, poor Gavin fell off his board and landed his foot on something sharp, and got a nasty, deep cut on the bottom of his pinkie toe. My own "battle scars" weren't so bad - just a number of bruises from falling on the board and the mast, and once I landed not on soft sand but a bed of shallow rocks...

Smooth sailing, at least for now... :)

Our first order of business after we drove back to Kralendijk was to buy some bandaids at a grocery store, but unfortunately they didn't have antibiotic ointment. We went back to our apartment so Gavin could clean his cut, then we went into downtown and found what is probably the ONLY pharmacy in town and got antibiotic ointment. Gavin was worried about infection after being in the sea water.

After that, we wandered around and did a little shopping downtown - it seemed to be mostly basic catering-to-cruise-ship fare - lots of jewelry and those "islandy" dresses that are floral, brightly colored and completely shapeless, the kind people look at while they are ON an island and say "Wow, this is so colorful and awesome, I have to buy this" and then they get back to the US or wherever they live and see how stupid it looks anywhere else BUT on an island in the Caribbean... :) (note, I have NEVER bought one of these "island" outfits! They look horrible on me, and in my opinion everyone else who wears them. :) ) All we bought was a woven hanging fruit basket that was probably made in India, but will still look great in our kitchen, if we can get it back to the states in one piece...

We had an early dinner at the Lonely Planet recommended restaurant Mona Lisa - a Dutch restaurant for steak and seafood. I was in the mood for something light, so I ordered a "traditional Bonaire fish soup" and a smoked salmon salad. Gavin ordered the "catch of the day," which was tuna. The fish soup had nice pieces of fresh fish in it, but was pretty bland, and the broth tasted exactly like the Lipton Cup-a-Soup I used to make when I was younger. (the single-serving bag of dried soup that you mix with a cup of water) They also, strangely, served our glasses of malbec CHILLED. Luckily it was warm enough outside that by the time our meal arrived it was warm enough to drink. :) Overall, this place I think was overrated and overpriced. That seems to be the trend here for eating out - bland food and high prices.

After dinner we headed over to the only food we have been delighted with so far in Bonaire - Gio's gelato shop. Tonight I tried their coconut gelato - YUMMY! Gavin stuck to his pistachio and hazelnut. It was still early, but we went back to the apartment to relax in the fresh Bonaire breezes to end our night.

 

 

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Bonaire

We arrived in Bonaire late last night, and got to wake up with the Caribbean sun shining in our window. I got up before Gavin, and sat reading and enjoying the breeze in a hammock on our terrace... That is, until the sun came up far enough to touch my skin, then I had to move to the terrace on the other side of our apartment - my pasty white self forgot my sunscreen... Marji, the owner of our apartment, knocked on our door to say hi, since we didn't meet her last night, and she gave us directions to walk back to the airport so we could pick up our rental car; Budget had closed before we arrived to pick up the car last night. Marji's directions included "now you're going to have to jump a couple fences..." :) But by jumping the fences, we saved ourselves a good 20 minutes of walking in the hot Bonaire sun.

A hammock and fresh, Caribbean breezes on our terrace.

The view of Kralendijk from our terrace.

We picked up a little bright blue Yaris that only had 30,000 miles on it, but definitely has been put through its paces and is a bit beat up. :) We then headed down to Lac Bay for lunch.

Bonaire is really small, only about 250 square miles. We are staying in the main town, Kralendijk, So Lac Bay, though on the opposite side of the island, was only about a 15 minute drive. Lac Bay is a protected bay with perfect white sand and perfect Caribbean-blue water, and is only a few feet deep probably about 1/2 mile out to sea. It is supposed to be some of the best windsurfing in the world. Gavin and I had lunch a Jibe City, a beach bar that Marji had recommended. We had salads, sandwiches, fresh banana/kiwi juice and enjoyed the fresh breezes of the outdoor bar. The wind was pretty slow today, so there were not many windsurfers to watch. We booked a private lesson to try it out tomorrow!

Gavin enjoys fresh banana kiwi juice at Jibe City.

VERY rocky beaches in the south. No pristine white sand here. :)

The barren, arid landscape of south Bonaire.

 

We then took "the long way" back to Kralendijk, going around the southern tip of the island and the salt flats. The landscape in the south is pretty barren - very rocky and arid in the center, and on the coast lots of sea flotsam and plastic crap has washed ashore. People have taken to making sculptures out of the driftwood and pieces of plastic that are on the coastline - not skillful sculptures, mind you, more like what a two year old would do if they had the height or the strength to pile things 5-6 feet high. :) There was one of these at least once every quarter mile. Also, we noticed a lot of yellow painted rocks on the side of the road, with names on them like "Alice in Wonderland," "Red Slave," "Vista Blue" and more. We figured out these are marking the myriad of shore diving sites on the coast - shore diving being that you walk into the water a few fe3et and suddenly there are lovely things to see. (rather than having to take a boat out to dive sites, Bonaire is almost all shore diving!)

Just south of Kralendijk is the salt factory, and the salt lakes where the salt is collected have a bright pink hue due to microorganisms in the water. The collected salt is in huge, bright white conical piles waiting to be collected and shipped away.

The salt factory of Bonaire with huge piles of salt!

Gavin in front of the salt factory.

The pink salt lakes.

When we got back to Kralendijk we had to go to the grocery store to stock up the apartment. We got a second rude awakening about how much things cost here when we spent about $80 on simple things like eggs, tea and milk... (the first rude awakening was $42 for lunch of a sandwich and two salads... We thought this was just because it was a touristy place, but I guess even basic groceries cost a lot here!)

Then we went back to the apartment and took a "siesta" - still tired from our 3am wake up and full day of traveling yesterday. We got up and Gavin tried his hand at making a fruity island blended drink - basically a piña colada with some mango juice added, but very tasty! :) We sat on the terrace and read for a while while finishing off his blender full of fruity goodness, and then we drove into downtown to have dinner.

I enjoy Gavin's fruity cocktail in the hammock.

We happened to arrive right as a parade was starting! I am guessing it must be for Carnival, since everyone was dressed up and dancing down the street behind trucks with huge speakers. The music was so loud it made me feel like my whole body was vibrating to the core. Different groups of people dancing had matching costumes - and the groups were all ages, from adults, to teens to little kids, all sparkly and colorful and painted with makeup, even the boys! The parade was pretty short and only lasted about 10 minutes, so we continued on Kaya Grande toward our restaurant of choice.

Carnival revelers "wineing!" :)

More "wineing." :)

Bobbejan's Take-Away was a bit north of the main downtown, but it was recommended as a good BBQ place in our trusty Lonely Planet. Gavin had a huge plate of BBQ, including really tasty ribs, and I had an Indonesian style chicken satay with peanut sauce. Indonesian food is common here; it was brought over by the colonial Dutch. Though the restaurant name includes "Take Away" and there were piles of people waiting in the front for their take out orders, there was also a seating area in back, where Gavin and I sat under a canopy since it had been raining off and since we left the apartment.

After dinner, we headed back to downtown Kralendijk to have a drink. We stopped at Little Havana and I had a mojito. There was a rock band playing when we first arrived, and they were actually really good, but I think they were just doing a sound check since they only played about a minute each of a few songs, then stopped playing and didn't come back the rest of the time we were there.

Seems like the night life is a little slow here - not a lot of people around, maybe just because it is Sunday night. Most of the few bars were pretty empty, so we headed back to our lovely apartment to go to bed early. Tomorrow we will get up a bit early to go learn to windsurf! :)

 

 

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