17th January 2008 - Kralendijke, Bonaire
After a day at sea Bonaire was welcome, but we had no particular high expectations of an island we were told was just salt pans and flamingos. In the event, it was to prove one of the better stops, at least in relation to expectation. The pseudo Dutch architecture in Kralendijk was not quite as phoney as it had been in Aruba and we had all the morning and much of the afternoon to explore. This time, we were able to rent a car - $US60 - for an off road jeep style car which was a good deal between four of us. The tourist office manager tried to talk us out of doing the national park as he said it would take too long. He was right, and we didn't see the salt pans in the south, but figured it was worth it.
We motored up the coast towards the north of the island and licked off with a sea water lagoon which was riddled with flamingos. We stopped off at a designated area and saw lots more birds and trillions of lizards amongst the cacti and scrub. It was not dissimilar to the Nevada desert and obviously very dry. We continued on to a small town, Rincon, and then drove about 5 miles to the Washington Slaagbi national park which cost us $US10 apiece to go into the park. We were given tags with emergency phone numbers and times when we had to be away from specific destinations if were not to be caught overnight in the park - no chance. We elected to do the short circuit, about 25kms, on the very rough dirt roads, said to take an hour and a half if we didn't stop. Whilst, for the most part these tracks were ok, in parts, they were so rutted we had to be careful to avoid taking the sump out, even with a high clearance vehicle. The drive was fine, starting off inland in dry hilly terrain. Again, trillions of lizards and lots of interesting birds.
After about 45 minutes, we arrived at the coast.
After a day at sea Bonaire was welcome, but we had no particular high expectations of an island we were told was just salt pans and flamingos. In the event, it was to prove one of the better stops, at least in relation to expectation. The pseudo Dutch architecture in Kralendijk was not quite as phoney as it had been in Aruba and we had all the morning and much of the afternoon to explore. This time, we were able to rent a car - $US60 - for an off road jeep style car which was a good deal between four of us. The tourist office manager tried to talk us out of doing the national park as he said it would take too long. He was right, and we didn't see the salt pans in the south, but figured it was worth it.
We motored up the coast towards the north of the island and licked off with a sea water lagoon which was riddled with flamingos. We stopped off at a designated area and saw lots more birds and trillions of lizards amongst the cacti and scrub. It was not dissimilar to the Nevada desert and obviously very dry. We continued on to a small town, Rincon, and then drove about 5 miles to the Washington Slaagbi national park which cost us $US10 apiece to go into the park. We were given tags with emergency phone numbers and times when we had to be away from specific destinations if were not to be caught overnight in the park - no chance. We elected to do the short circuit, about 25kms, on the very rough dirt roads, said to take an hour and a half if we didn't stop. Whilst, for the most part these tracks were ok, in parts, they were so rutted we had to be careful to avoid taking the sump out, even with a high clearance vehicle. The drive was fine, starting off inland in dry hilly terrain. Again, trillions of lizards and lots of interesting birds.
After about 45 minutes, we arrived at the coast.
