Bonaire – Bon Bini

Bon Bini is welcome in Papiamento and truly these islands are very welcoming.

Bonaire is the eastern most island in the ABC’s. As the wind blows mostly from the east a trip by sea from Curacao or Bonaire has the wind on the nose. The distance from Curacao Marine to Bonaire is only about 45 miles. Impossible for us to sail directly into the wind and to sail there would have required us sailing off of the wind. Tacking back and forth would have increased the 45 miles to about 90 miles. At a speed of 5 or 6 knots the travel time would increase from 8 hours to 16. This being our first trip in over 21 months, Ron took pity on me and ran the motors. I say this because I am often sea sick on our first day out. It started off pretty good until he asked me to go inside and fill out some health forms for Bonaire. As soon as I focused on the screen and not the horizon, a wave of nausea engulfed me. I quickly swapped places with him and took over the helm position and let him do the paperwork. Honestly it wasn’t very rough, I think the seas were only between one and two meters.

Clearing into Bonaire is relatively easy. We arrived the day before the regulations required everyone to do PCR tests. Curacao was considered low risk. That has escalated now to high risk as it has everywhere else.

On-site Customs and Immigration share offices not like Curacao where they were on opposite sides of the harbour and not an easy walking distance

Bonaire is considered to be one of the top 3 diving destinations in the world. Even though Ron and I are certified divers we have not actively dove for many many years. I am very enticed to do a dive here before we leave.

That being said snorkelling here is amazing. In my opinion it is one of the best locations in the Caribbean. The sealife that can be found right off of the boat at the mooring close to the main road is awesome.

Just off of Bonaire is Klein Bonaire (Little Bonaire) a small uninhabited island that was designated as a world heritage site in 1980. We will be heading over there in a few days and will update the sealife sightings.

Today was our day for sharing a vehicle with other cruisers. The group is called the Rust Bucket Brigade. For $20.00 per day you use a nice little clubcab pickup. The truck was actually pretty nice compared to the one we shared with other cruisers in Curacao. This one doesn’t have a high speed wobble and or a clutch that is ready to go. Although that one in Curacao did only cost us 5.00 per day, such a deal. If you are new to the group you start off with Sundays and if someone else departs the island then we have the option to switch to their day. Sunday is also dominoes so we took the truck for a drive out to the east coast of the island this morning before dominoes started at 2.

Here are a few photos from our drive:

We took a detour off of the main road to get a close up of 12 large power generating wind turbines located on the windward side of the island. They are huge with a tip to tip span of about 44 meters. Ron is standing near the bottom for size comparison. These turbines when spinning at capacity can supply up to 90% of Bonaire’s power demand. An average year has the wind producing about 40% of the power with the remainder coming from solar and diesel.

After our road trip a quick trip to Van Den Tweels, a first class Dutch grocery store chain. The distance is about 2 km from the boat, so small backpack size shops only when on foot. Having access to a vehicle once a week definitely simplifies shopping.

Next stop Mexican Train Dominoes. Cruisers gather at El Mundo’s a lovely restaurant that lets us take up a table or two to play dominoes. Another opportunity to meet fellow cruisers. It was a lovely afternoon with some very good dominoe players.