Beautiful Bonaire

Current Location – 16°57S 144°34W – Tahanea, French Polynesia

There are two types of sailors, those that have run aground, and those that lie about it. –Author Unknown

Getting There

Getting to Bonaire from the Eastern Caribbean presents a challenge, not because it is long or the weather, but because you have to go pretty close to Venezuela. Venezuela has pirates. Not the Jack Sparrow type of pirates, but the kind that will steal your vessel and toss you in the ocean. There are many stories of sailors getting boarded by Venezuelan pirates, and some of them pretty recent. You can take your chances, but we decided that wasn’t really a good strategy. Our strategy was to stay about 150 miles north of Venezuela. Now you add a lot of mileage to going that far north, but we decided it was worth it to avoid any unwanted visitors.

The passage from Grenada started off easy enough with light winds, and mild following seas. A couple days in we started seeing US Navy destroyers, a couple of them. Then on the third day we sailed right through the middle of a US Navy carrier group. To say we felt safe was an understatement. It’s probably the only time I’ve felt my tax dollars were truly at work. Go Navy.

It was only a couple days later that Maduro was taken from Venezuela. Pretty sure the folks we sailed past are the ones that got him.

Diving

Bonaire is first and foremost a Scuba diving destination. I didn’t actually count them, but I’m pretty sure there are more than 30 dive shops on this tiny island, maybe more. The water is crystal clear and the dive sites are mere feet from the shore. Bonaire is the shore diving capital of the world. There are roughly 90 dive sites and most of them you can drive to. The amount of reef fish there is incredible. Because the shore is so close to the dropoff you can see bait balls, tuna and dolphins directly from the dive sites, or even while snorkeling.

The entire island is a national park from the shore to 300 feet deep. You’re not allowed to anchor anywhere nor are you allowed to spearfish.

If you want a really chill place to vacation and do some diving, Bonaire is excellent. Oh, and the fishing is supposed to be world class, but we never caught anything.

Ostracods

I’m not really sure how to describe the Ostracod phenomenon in Bonaire, and I’ve never been anywhere else where it happens, nor have I heard about it. Apparently it does happen in other places, but the best place in the world to see it is supposed to be Bonaire.

If you’ve ever been around the ocean at night, especially in the tropics, there are microorganisms that cause bioluminescence to happen. Many people, especially sailors, would be familiar with this. It’s kind of like a glowing soup that happens for a second next to the surfaces that are touching the water, for example, next to a boat, or next to your hand if you wave it through the water. This happens nearly every night at varying levels.

The Ostracods are not that.

Ostracods are basically microscopic crustaceans, like shrimp. The Ostracod phenomenon happens roughly 4-7 days after a the full moon. You can see them at the surface, but the Ostracods live in hard and soft corals, so the best place to see them is around 25-30 feet deep. Roughly 40 minutes after sunset the Ostracods put on a light show. It looks like stars under the ocean. It is the tiny crustaceans putting on an underwater light display to try to attract a mate. Some of them last nearly a minute.

It is one of the coolest things you can see on a night dive, maybe on any dive. The ocean is truly a wonderful and majestic place.

Caves

Much of Bonaire is limestone, meaning it was a huge coral reef millions of years ago. So the rock is very porous and erodes quickly. There are quite a few caves on Bonaire, we found some on our own, but there are others where you need to hire a guide. There are even some that you can snorkel in.

Lionfish Burgers

If you’re not familiar with the lionfish epidemic in the Caribbean, it is a real problem. As the story goes, someone in Florida had some escape a couple of decades ago. Lionfish are not native to the Atlantic basin, they are from the Indo Pacific region. As such, there are no natural predators in the Atlantic basin and the Lionfish population has exploded. They can be found in the Carolinas all the way to Brazil and everywhere in between. We have killed dozens over the years. The real problem is they eat the juvenile reef fish, a lot of them. The other problem is they breed like rabbits, which is how they’ve been able to colonize the Caribbean so rapidly.

The Great thing is they are delicious. A lot of islands encourage you to kill them, and in areas where it’s illegal for foreigners to spearfish they look the other way for killing lionfish. The only way to kill them is with a spear, they will not eat live bait.

We usually make lionfish tacos. However, there is a food truck on Bonaire that makes delicious lionfish burgers. They’re not cheap, but if you go it’s definitely worth a stop for lunch.

Flamingos

I’ve been other places that have flamingos, but not as many as Bonaire. They are everywhere. They can be found just about anywhere there is a lake on the island, and the salt pans have tons of them.

Flat Tire

If you get off road in Bonaire, which is easy to do when you go exploring, it isn’t difficult to get a flat tire. Yes, we got one driving on ancient coral, which much of the island is made of. Make sure your rental has a spare.

Moorings

If you come to Bonaire by boat, you cannot anchor, period. The fines are huge for anchoring. You have to take a mooring.

There is also this double mooring ball situation there, essentially there are two lines and two small floats, you need to put one on each of your mooring lines. It was a pain in the ass for us, I much prefer a single line and ball situation. Our friends on Mon Amie liked it though (they’re crazy power boaters).

Just a note for anyone taking your boat to Bonaire, I am not a fan of the mooring situation. The moorings are actually two lines that go to the seafloor and have a float on each side. We are not set up for this, I prefer to have one ball to tie to. We made it work, but we had to tie the lines together.

Expensive

For sailors Bonaire is very expensive. You are not allowed to anchor, so you have to take a mooring ball, er, or two mooring balls. This will cost you $35 a night. We are used to anchoring for free, so this really eats into the beer budget. Just kidding. I would eat rice and beans every day before cutting the beer budget.

Additionally the food is pretty expensive compared to most other islands. The grocery stores aren’t so bad, but eating out is pretty expensive.

Most people who come here to dive cut costs by shore diving all week, so if you come for a diving vacation it probably evens out. But we’re cheap sailors, so we like to anchor for free, dive for free, and find good happy hour deals.

Go With Friends

If you rent a car there’s a very good chance you’re going to get a flat tire, so go with friends, specifically ones who off-road a lot so you can all pitch in to change the tire. Thanks Aimee and Scott!

Plus it’s much more fun to go diving, fishing, exploring, etc. with friends.

Salt Pans

The entire southern part of Bonaire is a huge industrial salt pan operated by Cargill. This salt pan has been in operation since the 1800s, it is massive. They pump the seawater into the pans and then let the water evaporate. The tradewinds blowing across the water and the 90 degree days make quick work of it. After the salt dries out and crystallizes they scoop it up with heavy equipment and create huge mountains of salt. It is then transferred to ships via the massive salt pier.

Incidentally, the salt pier is one of the most popular dive sites on the island.

They have a huge bin right by the salt pier where you can take as much salt as you want. Unfortunately the salt crystals are so hard you have to smack them with a hammer to get them to break apart, and even then they’re still in pretty big chunks. I never knew salt crystals could get that big and were that hard.

New Years Fireworks

We heard about the fireworks displays on Bonaire long before we had intentions to go there. It did not disappoint. We arrived a few days prior to NYE, and there were already a lot of fireworks. They continued to escalate going in to New Years, but by the time it got dark on NYE, it was unreal. This went on all night, from dusk until nearly dawn.

Apparently the locals spend so much money they have to take out loans to buy the massive amounts of fireworks. They spend upwards of $5000 for one night of fireworks. The locals say it gives them good juju for the coming year. We were happy to witness the spectacle, but we welcomed the peace and quiet when it was over.

Dust

Bonaire receives very little rain. I’ve never been to a place in the tropics that receives so little rain. As a result the amount of dust that gathers on the boat is just unbelievable. It is basically worthless to wash off the outside of the boat, because in 48 hours or less it’s going to be just as dusty. It gets everywhere.

As a bonus, the limited amount of times it does rain, the dust turns to mud. So you have a bunch of mud on the boat. It’s fantastic.

As I write this, we’ve left Bonaire a good couple of months ago. We still have Bonaire dust everywhere.

Overall, Bonaire gets a huge thumbs up from the crew of Wild Rose.