A Little Bit About Bonaire

**Bon Bini. Kon ta bei?** (see below)

Just thought we would give you some information about Bonaire. It has about 40,000 people on an island covering 10 sq miles (some of the Dutch people around Fort Macleod have bigger farms than that!!). There are 4 languages spoken here - Dutch, Spanish, English and Papiamento (a mix of mostly African and Spanish. The theory being it came from the pidgin used with the African slaves which was a mixture of Portuguese and African dialects). The island was under the governance of Curacao but has been working to become independently part of the Dutch governance. I think if was supposed to take place in July 2007 but now is scheduled for early 2009.

The main industry here used to be salt with fishing and tourism supplementing this. I would guess now that tourism has taken over quite a bit of the island money making. Bonaire is probably the dive capital of certainly the Caribbean and would probably give most other places a run for their money. Dive spots are all around the island as well as around Klein Bonaire, the small island that lies about 200 yards from the main island. There are 65 named dives on Bonaire and another 27 on Klein Bonaire. I believe that all of the spots on the main island can be reached by road, which is how most dive shops operate. It is said that although there may be more beautiful dives in other places in the world, Bonaire has the most consistenly good diving anywhere.

One aspect of Bonaire that stands out is the absolute focus on the environment. Anchoring is not allowed in order to keep the coral reefs as damage free as possible. They have started a recycle program and everywhere you look there are reminders that we are responsible for keeping our environment clean and safe. I noticed a sign the other day that said (I paraphrase) - congratulations to countries like USA and Canada that have battery disposal facilities - since we in Bonaire cannot afford these facilities yet, could you please ensure you take your batteries with you back to your countries for proper disposal and help keep Bonaire clean.This is also one of the cleanest islands we have been on as far as garbage on the roadsides and in the streets.

As in Curacao, the houses are brightly painted with all the colours of the rainbow. Unlike Curacao it extends into the countrysides and in the houses in the town. Overall a cheerful feeling place.

We have done some exploring and expect to do more. There is a park and village on the north end of the island that are both apparently worth seeing. the village, Rincon, contains buildings that were built by the original island inhabitants. The park has points of interest that I won't go into now as we will likely blog about it when we have been there.

The storm (Omar) that struck while we were in Curacao did quite a bit of damage along the waterfront. You can look on Youtube under Bonaire storm. It has some good pictures. Meanwhile people are being very industrious in repairing the damage so it will not be long before things are back to normal. The "noisy" bar that was wrecked is already back in business full bore and the marina has a couple of boats parked there even though the docks haven't been fixed yet.

This is a bit of a short blog but I promise when we get back from our tour you will see more. For those of you who have been asking for more videos, we will do some more but we kind of like to save that for the more exciting moments because it is usually difficult to get the videos to download with the wifi hook-ups we have. We will try!!

Quiz for the day - what does this street sign mean?

**Welcome. How are you?**