Tuesday 26^th January

On your Bike!

We hired some mopeds today and went on a circumnavigation of the Island. We headed to the southern part of the island first which is dominated by salt flats, wetlands and mangroves. Much of the land area is used for solar evaporation of water to get salt (this is where our expensive sea salt comes from!!!!!). The huge mounds of salt and salt pens are striking. The salt pens are laid out in giant squares in pastel shades from pale green to pink, depending on the drying stage. A little further down the road we came across some old slave quarters. The huts were constructed in 1850 and were used as sleeping quarters for the slaves working in the salt ponds. Most of the slaves lived in Rincon, the north of the island and would walk to the southern end of the island to work at the salt works on Monday morning and return home at the end of the week.

Along the 24 miles of the west coast are over 60 dive sites, most accessible by beach, you can just stop, walk over a small beach and right onto a dive site just meters away from the shore. It's a divers paradise Our next stop was Lac Bay on the windward side of the island. Lac bay is open to strong winds but protected from the sea by a low lying reef and was full of wind surfers and kite surfers. We had a lunch stop at the 'beach hut' which was a great place to people watch. Then it was back on the scooters where we headed for the north of the island. The northern half of Bonaire is like a wild west dessert, with cactus lining the road. We passed the nature area of Gotomeer, a feeding area for flamingos, unfortunately we only spotted about a dozen flamingos. We then headed back to Kralendijk where we had to check out with customs and immigration as we leave tomorrow for Panama - a 725 mile sail! When we dropped the scooters back at the rental office there wasn't anyone to give us a lift back to the marina so a passing pickup truck was flagged down and we all piled into the open back truck where they dropped us back at the marina.

We have enjoyed our time in Bonaire, the people are so warm and friendly and go out of their way to help you, it's somewhere we would like to return to.