Flamingos at the Salt Pans

Salt Piles behind the Salt Pans

Slave Huts Used at the Salt Pans

Anxiety back to normal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well we are safely anchored in Prickly Bay Grenada awaiting RJ's arrival tomorrow.

We had one tense moment where we brought out our bearspray, flare guns and a plan. A boat was taking a little too much interest in us. We immediately got on the VHF and gave our lat/long to the other boats behind us. Now we know that the pirates have vhf as they take all the cruisers! Anyways as soon as we transmitted the lat/long the boat was gone. I will never know if it was curious fishermen or something else and I don't really care. We are now in safe waters. The real shame is that Venezuela has a wonderful cruising ground and the world would love to see it but until the government changes lesser and lesser people will travel this route.

Now back to why we are on this voyage.

We have just finished the most difficult portion to date. 1000 nautical miles. We were told by MANY we couldn't do it, we were headed in the wrong direction but we DID IT!.

These blogs will be behind for awhile based on what we have to write about.

Bonaire

We had planned on spending 2 days in Bonaire but it turned into 9 days due to bad weather. We made the best of it and didn't have a difficult time adjusting.

Bonaire's waters are a marine park and therefore you cannot anchor . They have set up mooring buoys to tie to and the charges for the useage goes to help maintain the marine parks.

The island is a snorkle and diving paradise. The parrot fish alone were enough reason to stop here. I have never seen a fish so beautiful. A rainbow of colours.

We rented a car and took our list of geocache sites along. We have learnt that geocaching takes us to some pretty awesome places.

Bonaire is a small island. It is 285 sq km. The main town is Kralendijk. The major road loops the island and the total island can be seen within a day.

There is no public transit and hitchhiking is a main stay for the locals. Hence we rented a car.

Our first geocache took us south to the salt pans where ocean water evaproates to produce salt . Metal windmills are used to transfer water out of the ponds. As evaporation progresses the water takes on a vibrant pink colour from tiny sea organisms. It is these sea organisms that the pink flamingos eat causing their distinct pink colour.

As you go down the coast you witness history. Slave huts that were used as shelters for the slaves that worked the salt fields. Living conditions in these miniscule shelters are hard to imagine now, but they were home to 100's of slaves. Ernie went inside one and he could only squat. 6 people would fit in each hut.

The pyramids of salt were breath taking. Hard to imagine that much salt.

The salt is bulldozed into the piles where they are put onto conveyor belts and put onto waiting ships.

Sea salt was very important to Bonaire's culture and history. Harvesting was heavy and all done

by hand.

Our next geocache site took us to Lac Bay. It offers nearly the perfect conditions for windsurfing. It is very shallow but gets great wind.

The mangrove forests in Lac Bay are one of the best maintained mangroves in the Caribbean. It is in here that you could see seahorses and turtles.

I do believe our highlight was seeing pink flamingos up close. We saw them wading in the salt ponds but did not get to see them fly.

Bonaire is a semi desert with cactus and shrubs. We however saw 9 days of continual flooding. It rained hard with no ground to absorb all the moisture.

I would recommend coming here if you love to dive as the whole island is a reef. The coral and fish are plentiful.

One of the things we like to do is try out the local dishes. This time it was iguana soup and goat stew, and salted fish which I had had as a kid. As the saying goes it tastes like chicken!