From Sunrise to Sunset

It’s 3 o clock in the afternoon and I’m lying under the shade of a thatched pavilion trying to squeeze in a midday power nap. We’re in the city of Rincon for their children’s Karnaval parade, and have been waiting on the sidewalk for an hour for it to start, they are on Bonaire time; the street food has been a welcome distraction though, pumpkin pancakes and meat pies. Karnaval is a 2 week festival here in Bonaire, comparable to Carneval, Carnivale, Fasching, Mardi Gras, etc. People are lined up on the streets waiting for the parade to start, and the students of CIEE are trying to be patient, but we’re running on very little sleep.

We woke up at 5 this morning so that we could travel to the north end of the island for a nature hike at sunrise. After a late night, 5 o’clock came much too soon for us and the drive up is silent as we all doze off in the van. We get to Rincon at the foot of the mountain, they call it a mountain anyway, and we begin our hike still under the cover of dark and quietly we trudge. Our trail leads us up the side of the mountain where we can look out across the valley and see the scattered kunukus (family farms) and past the valley, the ocean. As we continue we come to a road that leads into a village that established themselves at the top of this mountain hundreds of years ago, the road is lined with the all too familiar cacti of Bonaire, but as the sun is rising the tropical birds are starting to stir and fly off; a flock of parakeets flies out of the brush right in front of us. We hear more about the vegetation and geology of the island and we continue walking towards the ocean until we reach Karpata, one of our favorite sites on the cliffs on that side of the island. We stop here for breakfast, baracoba (bananas), watermelon and bran muffins. Sitting on the cliffs, banana in hand it was a very good morning. We finished up and drove back into Rincon to tour a cultural museum, a typical Bonairean house from the 1950s that had been preserved as it was – the cistern for well water in the kitchen, the handmade furniture. Then we headed back to the van to drive back to Kralendijk to crash.

With a solid 2 hour nap and a quick lunch, we drove back up to Rincon for the parade. We stake out our section on the sidewalk under the pavilion across the street from a little bar where Caribbean music plays while we wait and some people dance on the sidewalk. We cam prepared with little bottles of bubbles, which are honestly one of the cheapest forms of entertainment out there, I just don’t think people get too old for bubbles. But our patience wanes and our attention spans drift in and out, when we run ionto some of our friends from Kralendijk who tell us that the parade doesn’t actually pass in front of this pavilion, and we run down the street to where the parade will go through, beginning to hear the loud music and sounds of the parade starting. The kids in the parade are adorable and have pretty nice costumes for a local parade, dancing and singing their way through the streets of Rincon.

We finish the day where all good days should end, a swim in the sea. Some of our friends from the dive shop had invited us to a barbecue after the parade, so we leave Rincon and (unknowingly) head down a one way road past Karpata to another site on the cliffs. We make it there fine, running on a fear/adrenaline high from driving the twisting road in the wrong direction. As soon as we’re out of the car we jump into the ocean, with only a brief hello to our friends, soon joined by their dogs. Sometimes it’s nice to go for a swim just for fun, not to collect water samples or take underwater video transects, just go out and swim. We catch the sunset as we get out of the water and head for the van once again. We don’t stay long, but it’s the best possible ending to such a long day. That, and I had a fish taco waiting for me at home, and I do so love fish tacos.

p.s. As it was 5 o'clock in the morning my brain wasn't in order, so I forgot my camera during the hike, but click here to see more pictures.

A Sunday Well Spent

I wake up to the sounds of Gibi, our cook, delivering brunch at 10. We get the quintessential Dutch breakfast spread, sliced meat and cheese, fresh fruit and fresh bread. It's still raining outside, the rain hasn't stopped all weekend, (making my Saturday laundry plans more difficult to line dry my clothes) some of the roads in the park reserve have been washed out. But around noon the sky clears up and we can resume our weekend plans: biking across the island. I had bought a bike here from a previous student before I even got here, so my bike was waiting for me; this is ironic because I spent the last 3 months in Minnesota without one. So the few of us that have bikes have been itching to take them out for more than just beach cruising and grocery shopping; we plan to bike to the other side of the island, the Wild Side. Our house is on the eastern side of the island, protected from the winds. The western side is called the Wild Side, as it gets all the wind; it isn't a very good place to snorkel or dive, but it is the windsurfing capitol of the Caribbean. We set out for Lagun, an inlet on the Wild Side, and the site of the first Bonaireans.

Our route takes us out of Kralendijk, the main town, away from cruise boat tourists and dive shops and into the more rural Bonaire. We ride through residential areas, and see the real Bonaire, people in their yards hanging laundry, cooking outdoors, waxing their boats, all as Caribbean music drifts in and out of houses down the street.

We ride further away from the houses into more rural areas, passing goats and donkeys on the side of the road, all the while, the blue whiptail lizards dart around our bike wheels. I try to snap a few pictures, but riding and taking pictures is harder than it sounds, and I don't really want to stop.

We ride over a few hills, past a few family farms, and into a cactus covered landscape, when out of nowhere we pass a castle. Someone has built a castle on Bonaire, and probably declared themself king, though I don't know the story, I just know that we stopped to take a picture with it.

We ride on, past the landfill, past some windmills and finally into the mud flats for which Lagun is named. It turns out that the lagoon is all mostly mud now, and there really isn't much trace of any ancient civilization so we head to the coast. We ride out there, and the as you look out across the water there are these coral cliffs that are just getting slammed by the waves, we hike up the cliffs for a bit and look out at the water for a while, taking it in. My camera died standing on the overlook, but I still got in a few pictures.

Then we got back on the bikes for the long haul back, though with the wind at our back this time, we made much better time. We made it back to the house smelly and sweaty, and decided the best way to end the day would be to jump off the pier at our dive shop. We drop the bikes off and head over to the pier, run off the end of it into the water and into the rain. It's raining again. After a day on a bike, floating in the ocean is just about as good as it gets. Click here to see my other pictures from this trip.