{"id":2220,"date":"2019-01-05T12:19:59","date_gmt":"2019-01-05T12:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/?p=2220"},"modified":"2019-01-05T17:00:58","modified_gmt":"2019-01-05T17:00:58","slug":"bonaire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/2019\/01\/bonaire\/","title":{"rendered":"Bonaire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bonaire is the least developed and most laid back of the ABC islands: 19,000 inhabitants, zero traffic lights. It is one of the island we’ll be most interested in visiting again, because of its incredibly pristine waters. In Bonaire turtles have been protected since 1961, spear fishing was banned in 1971, and the entire shore of the island was declared a national park in 1979. To protect the coral, anchoring is strictly prohibited, so if you arrive by boat you have to either dock at one of the two marinas, or tie to a municipal mooring buoy. We did the latter, and ended up with a beautiful and lively underwater garden of coral and fish as our backyard.<\/p>\n

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Our backyard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Antler coral, we think<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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In the spirit of the laid-back atmosphere, we had a proper, deeply and almost religiously laid-back time. Snorkeling became a daily activity, followed by a visit to Gio’s to get a scoop of extra-dark chocolate ice cream—which is a lot to say from someone who doesn’t really like ice cream (and, no, I didn’t even try the other flavors). The only exceptions were laundry day, and when we rented a car for three days and brought ourselves to exhaustion because we crammed too many things in those three days to make good use of the car.<\/p>\n

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Contrary to what we had become accustomed to, the weather is quite dry and the landscape arid, dominated by the cadushy cactus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Bonaire means good air in Portuguese, but the name is likely a deformation of Bonay, which means “low country”—a very apt name for the island—in Caquetio. The Caquetios, related to the Arawaks, were natives of northwestern Venezuela who came by canoe and inhabited the ABC islands when the Spaniards arrived in 1499.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The island has capacity to receive two cruise ships at a time. When that happens, the island population can grow by 50%.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The temporary population growth is well absorbed and things remain reasonably civilized<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Massive floating hotel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The island boasts 86 named dive sites<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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We ignored the dozens of scuba diving shops and went instead to the only freediving shop. This is Carlos, the store owner, the first person to go deeper than 100 meters in each of two freediving disciplines, and our freediving instructor for one day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The whole family got reunited in Bonaire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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And we celebrated Paula’s birthday in style: a private tour around the coral reef in a semi-submarine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Klein Bonaire is a small, uninhabited island one mile off Bonaire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another view of Klein Bonaire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Pekelmeer Flamingo Sanctuary is one of few places where American Flamingos breed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another famous inhabitant of Bonaire<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Rental car day<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Windward side<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Slave huts. The Spaniards saw no value on Bonaire’s land. They forced the native population of Bonaire into slavery and shipped them to work on plantations elsewhere. When the Dutch colonized the island they brought slaves from Africa. These are the African slaves’ tiny dwellings.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Salt production is second to tourism in Bonaire’s economy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Salt conveyor system<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Steady wind year round, and warm, shallow, flat and protected waters make Lac Bay a forgiving place to learn and improve your windsurfing skills. Bonairean professional windsurfers regularly place among the top. In 2014’s world championship 5 Bonaire natives finished in the top 10. Note to self: watch the Children of the Wind<\/a><\/i> movie.<\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A local improving his Vulcan. It would be cool, but I doubt that’s his scooter, though.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Washington Slagbaai National Park<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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High-clearance car required to do the loop<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Thorny path<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The sight of a Dutch warship likely had to do with Russian nuclear bombers landing in nearby Venezuela for joint military exercises between those two nations<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bonaire is the least developed and most laid back of the ABC islands: 19,000 inhabitants, zero traffic lights. It is one of the island we’ll be most interested in visiting again, because of its incredibly pristine waters. In Bonaire turtles have been protected since 1961, spear fishing was banned in 1971, and the entire shore … Continue reading “Bonaire”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nandu.world\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/ICIC8_09582.jpg?fit=1600%2C1067&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s7GCAo-bonaire","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2220"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2262,"href":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions\/2262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nandu.world\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}