Klein Bonaire Snorkeling

This is the last video I took back on Bonaire. It's taken a while to get good enough Internet to upload it.

We have tried to snorkel here in Grenada, but Bonaire spoiled us. We think the water is too murky here, but I'm sure we will eventually find a nice spot.

Bonaire Hedgerow

I have always admired English hedgerows which are basically a living fence of closely planted trees and shrubs. If well maintained they are strong enough to contain cattle. They also provide cover for a large community of birds, animals, and insects and give the English countryside its distinctive soft green look.

Here in Bonaire they have a similar concept, but in this arid climate different plants must be used. The candle cactus (Pilosocereus lanuginosus) is used and woven between wire, instantly providing an animal proof fence.

Bonaire Island Tour

Yesterday we took a little drive around the island. Heading South from Kralendijk we arrived at the massive salt pans and the huge piles of salt waiting to be loaded onto ships.

 

 

 

 

Along this part of the coast are several obelisks. They are all painted different colors and many years ago served as markers for the various anchoring spots for the salt ships.

 

 

 

Bonaire is famous for its flamingos and we were lucky enough to see several. These mature ones were in a lake called Gotomeer on the North end of the island.

 

 

This immature flamingo has yet to attain his distinctive coloring. The coloring comes from their diet of brine shrimp.

 

 

These slave huts were provided for the salt pan workers. They are so tiny even I had to duck to get in the door.

 

But they had beautiful views towards the sea.

 

 

Another obelisk with a cruise ship in the background.

 

  

 

Being a Dutch island, windmills are used to transfer water around the salt pans.

  

 

 And this is the lighthouse at the South end of the island.

A Trip To Van den Tweel's

We stopped by Van den Tweel's supermarket this afternoon and I took a few photos to show you our shopping dilemma. The pictures on the boxes help a lot, but some things are just mysterious!

 

Above you see what could be cookies, but look carefully. See the picture of cheese? These are "Assorted Puff Pastry Cheese Biscuits".

Above is "Sliced Smooth Gingerbread Whole Wheat". Gingerbread toast?

 

This ones easy; it's pancakes. You add 800 ml milk and 2 eggs.

 

This is a "Potato-Leek Soup Meal" but you have to add a "small leek, a medium sized potato, and 50g of ham pieces".

 

Another easy one; "Wild Pink Salmon".

 

And another easy one; "Green Tea - A Conscious Choice".

 

We picked up this sauce packet because there is a lot of cauliflower here and it looked good. When I got back to the boat I Googled it and it's a "Curry Cream Sauce". The label says it's "Yummy on Cauliflower" so I'm sure we will like it, but I had to translate the instructions which were thankfully simple: "Whisk the contents of this packet with 250ml of cold milk in a pan. Bring to a boil. Simmer for a few minutes. Serve".

 

And wouldn't you know it; they had no Rundervinken today. The meat counter lady said maybe tomorrow, so we will be going back because we are stocking up the boat again for our passage to Grenada. There is a sweet weather window starting Wednesday and lasting until Sunday. Perfect.

Snorkeling Along The Waterfront

 

Although this is not a marked dive site here in Bonaire, we frequently swim over from our boat to say hello to the friendly fish. And we are starting to profit from it; Malcolm found a dollar yesterday. If this keeps up, in nine more days we will be able to buy a Bloody Mary at Karel's.

Monarch Butterflies & Caribbean Milkweed

I had always heard that Monarch butterflies laid their eggs on milkweed, but I never knew exactly what milkweed looked like. There are several different varieties, but here in the Caribbean they have one called Sodom Apple or Calotropis procera. It has large pale grey-green leaves, pretty purple flowers, and strange puffy fruits. There are many of these plants growing all over Bonaire. We recognized them from our visit to the butterfly farm back on Aruba and easily found Monarch butterflies and caterpillars on them.

 

Above you see one of the fruits covered with aphids. The fruits are soft and empty except for the brown seeds which are dispersed by the wind via their attached white tufts of hair.

 

 

It's easy to find the caterpillars on the leaves; just look for the leaves with holes in them.

 

The toxins in the milkweed plant make the caterpillars, and the mature butterflies too, taste bad to birds and provide a natural defense mechanism for the Monarch.

 

 

Bonaire Architecture

 

There seems to be either a glut of ochre paint here on Bonaire or some official mandate for public building colors, because this gold color is EVERYWHERE.

 



When we were looking for the Customs building the first day we arrived, someone said, "It's the gold building with the red roof". Hmmm, they're ALL gold with red roofs!

 

 

 

 

After wandering around the island we realized that there are some buildings painted different colors, like blue, green, pink, and orange.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In fact we saw this little "Fixer Upper" and thought we could buy it and live here. You can bet we won't paint it gold; maybe Tiffany Blue or Aqua?  

Rundervinken

One of our favorite things about traveling is trying new foods and experimenting with new ingredients. We have tried many new foods in our year of cruising and enjoyed most of them. (Except pupusas; I'm sure we could go the rest of our lives and never miss pupusas.)

 

 

We are at a distinct disadvantage here in Bonaire because we understand absolutely no Dutch and the labels at the markets are in Dutch, but yesterday at Van den Tweel Supermarket we picked up some rundervinken. We didn't know exactly what it was, but it looked good and we figured we could Google it to see how to prepare it.

 

 

I discovered that rundervinken is sausage wrapped in beef and that a traditional presentation would be with an onion/pepper/tomato puree/sour cream sauce. Sounded easy enough, so here's my mise en place.

 

 

 

After a 15 minute saute, the meat sits and waits while the sauce comes together.

Here's the finished dish and if our speed inhaling it was any indication, it was delicious! 

 

Our Neighbors

Because Bonaire is a marine park there is no anchoring anywhere. Anchors damage coral and the healthy condition of the coral is one of the big tourist draws here.

 

The island has mooring buoys for visiting yachts on a first come basis. When we arrived we picked up a buoy close to the marina in the north part of the mooring field. Later, when a spot opened up down by Karel's (and free WiFi) we moved to the absolute southernmost spot.

 

We are the blue dot. I have drawn in the ship and its dock lines

 

Our new mooring is about 500 feet behind the cruise ship dock so we get a good look at every ship as it docks. Since we have been here at least five ships have visited. The Monarch, 880 feet long, 105 feet wide, and carrying up to 2700 passengers, just arrived this morning. (Town will be crowded today.)

This morning's view from our cockpit

 

The Monarch

This interesting sailing cruise ship was in port Saturday.

Club Med 2

This shot shows how close the ships are to Karel's patio.

Norwegian Dawn

Not all our neighbors are big. Several of these little fishing boats go by every day too.

  

French Angelfish

FRENCH ANGELFISH

French Angelfish Video

SCRAWLED FILEFISH

We went snorkeling again today and saw all kinds of interesting fish; French angelfish, scrawled filefish, barracuda, grunts, angelfish, parrotfish, trigger fish, a lion fish, and even some disco fish which are juvenile yellow damselfish. I have learned that the best way to take good video of these fish is to pick a spot, try to hold still (which is hard because of the surge), and get really close to the fish. Some of the fish are so unafraid of humans that they approach us, which makes the videos even easier.

Finally! Snorkeling Videos

One Fish

Two Fish

Red Fish

Blue Fish

Here are four little videos I took whilst snorkeling yesterday just off the bow of our boat within feet of the busy malecon with its pedestrians and cars. The fish like to hide beneath the coral shelf there and it's so easy to swim there from the boat. My videos aren't very good, so if you want to see more and better videos of the sealife here in Bonaire, just go to YouTube and search for "snorkeling Bonaire". Like I said, it's like swimming in an aquarium!

First Snorkel at Bonaire

After getting our park permits at the dive center Thursday, we went snorkeling for the first time yesterday. I tried to take some GoPro videos and photos and I can't tell you how DIFFICULT it was. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, because everything looks bright and crisp and beautiful with my eyes, but when I get back to the boat and download the photos, they look all washed out and blah. The photo above was one of the best and I had to make some adjustments to the color and exposure just to make it look halfway accurate. I will have to experiment with the camera settings some more to get this figured out, because I really want to share the beauty below the sea here in Bonaire; it's like swimming in an aquarium.

Location Map November 2nd to 12th, 2015, Kralendijk Bonaire

 Bashing, bashing, bashing to windward. 

Bonaire

After another upwind passage (but only 30 hours instead of 90 hours), we arrived in Bonaire. It is another small Dutch island with tourism as its major industry. The whole sea around it and out to the 200 foot depth contour is a protected marine park, with no anchoring anywhere, but plenty of mooring buoys for long term visits and special dive site buoys for up to 4 hours. To even snorkel here you need to purchase a $10.00 park pass and affix it to your mask so the rangers can tell if you've paid.

The island is home to a large colony of breeding Caribbean flamingos and also sea turtles. Numerous beautiful fish swim in the shallow water near shore and under our boat. Also under our boat are scuba divers day and night. It's kind of creepy to hear their bubbles on the hull when we are sitting below.