A bit about Bonaire
From Rocky hills to Mangrove
The island is extremely different from north to south. In the north you’ll find an almost impassable landscape consisting mostly of rocks and tall cacti and the famous Divi divi-tree. This is the Washington-Slagbaai National Park.
In the south there’s a bit more growth like mangrove in an otherwise completely flat landscape. Here you’ll see large salt pans interspersed with heaps of salt waiting to be shipped out. At a distance the salt heaps looked almost like icebergs.
Donkey Sanctuary
The locals are not exactly cheerful about these free ranging four legged creatures but in a way it’s understandable. They roam around and dig into trashcans, and since they don’t switch on the lights when it gets dark they get run over.
There is a donkey sanctuary on Bonaire, of course, but it’s not big enough for all of them, so we did have a visit or two on the terrace almost every evening.
One
Way Town
The main city of Kralendijk is not big and rather weird what infra-structure
is concerned.
Practically all roads are one way so whenever we took a wrong
turn we had to go all the way around town to come back again.
Bonaire National Marine Park
Already in 1979 the waters around Bonaire down to a depth of 60 metres was
declared a national marine park – much to the credit of Captain Don Stewart.
If you visit Bonaire, you'll come across this name more than once.
The concept of the marine park was so groundbreaking in its day that it has
since been use to model many other parks, e.g. the Manado-Bunaken Marine Park in
North Sulawesi, Indonesia.