December 24 – Kralendijk, Bonaire

Weather – 29º, sunny

today...Bonaire

Steps – 6,940

Humidity – 85%

Bonaire (pop 26,500), the B in ABC Islands, is our country 103! The city we are in is called Kralendijk (pop. 10,000; means coral dike) and is much more chill than yesterday. It is still tourist focused, but not as busy. We are one of 2 ships in town today, but there are many more locals around than there seemed to be in Aruba. The island is 25x5 miles. Bonaire is a ‘special municipality’ of the

island hero

Netherlands – it is too small to survive on its own and has a closer relationship to the Netherlands than Aruba and Curaçao. Many people here have a Dutch accent.

main road

We have 2 tours today, the first is described as a tuk-tuk tour – a better description would be a large golf cart tour. Either way, 6 of us are driven around the

island (mostly the city) for an hour, as Timon our guide tells us this and that about Bonaire. There are no traffic lights on Bonaire, just traffic circles.

We saw the hospital, school, church, market, main street, and other various smalltown fixtures.

Part of the outdoor market even had an Indonesian food stall for cruise ship workers – many cruise ship

swimming pool

workers are from Indonesia.

post tour refreshment

We also learned that they have a public swimming pool built into the sea. Many Bonaire locals don't swim, so now they are offering free lessons.

After the tour we found a charming overwater bar/restaurant for a 270mL beer from Curaçao - that’s as ‘local’ as it gets on Bonaire.

crab spotting

Lunch was back at the boat, then a nap and out again for a late afternoon glass bottom boat tour.

We met the boat very close to where our ship is docked. Being a cruise ship passenger on Bonaire is very easy to be docked and walk into town or to where tours start.

While we waited for our tour boat, Chris and I watched a bunch of crabs scurry on the side of the pier. The biggest one was probably the size of my palm and the smallest about half that.

Then 10 of us boarded Captain Mark’s glass bottom boat for a 90-minute sail

happy Christmas Eve

waterfront

around the reef, just offshore. The glass bottom part of the boat is kind of like a horizontal window parallel to the water in the middle of bench seating on either side. Through this window we could see everything beneath of the surface. The highlight was seeing a couple of green turtles. These were pretty big…about a metre across.

one scene of many

The rest of what we saw were lots of types of corals and of fish. All along the way, Mark told us what we were seeing and accompanying info. We also saw a couple of pelicans closer to shore.

love this!

The photos don't look like much, but it was lovely just watching the sea floor, listening to Mark's descriptions.

After about an hour we headed back to shore to cruise through the marina and shore as Mark told us more info about living on Bonaire.

Dinner was a special Christmas Eve menu. I had Christmas goose!

Christmas Eve menu

 

Dinner was a special Christmas Eve menu. I had Christmas goose! If I didn’t know, I would have thought it was turkey - I think it was the

bûche de noël

seasoning. It was very tasty and I’m usually not the biggest fan of turkey. It came with potato croquettes which were fantastic! For dessert I had bûche de noël…a chocolate cake formed and decorated to look like a log.