Sunday, December 21, 2008

A walk in Bonaire - Part 1

To make it easier to load, I'm splitting up my pictorial (the lazy writer's travelogue) into separate posts.


As previously mentioned, I loved our little stop in Bonaire. We didn't have much time, so decided to spend it strolling along the waterfront area of Kralendijk, Bonaire's capital. I'm not much of a shopper, so avoided going into "town" and the shops.

For those unfamiliar, Bonaire is part of the Netherland Antilles and along with Curacao and Aruba form what is often referred to as the ABC Islands of the Lesser Antilles.

This is at the beginning of our walk:

In the distance you can see black smoke billowing off the water. More about that later.

Interesting buildings and architecture along the way:







I couldn't quite figure out if this was a bar or a closed restaurant:



The water was unbelievably clear (but what's with the black smoke?):


We saw lots of parrotfish that swam right up to the seawall:




Fisherman and his fish:




Fisherman of a different sort:




Remember the billowing smoke from the first picture? It turns out that it was a burning sailboat. This is all that was left by the time we walked over there:


We missed all the excitement. Apparently, several boats and a brigade from the nearby marina had tried to put out the fire, but they took too long to get there. All they could do was get the owner off and watch the whole thing go up in flames.


To be cont'd . . .


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow!!!!!!!!!! I think I need to put Bonaire on my vacation dream list. (I'm a sucker for white sand and blue water.) It's soooo beautiful! And with it being 7 degrees F. today, it's a lovely dream.

Anonymous said...

Oh please tell me the down side of living in Central American area. Was it hard to have it over? or are you a homing pidgeon? when I go anywhere I have to be gone three weeks before I get over regretting the trip.I'm really agorophobic.
xoxo charlie

Anonymous said...

Whoops...should mention..the pictures are so clear and beautiful. Of course the landscape helps, but you must have a pretty decent camera too. Nice job with them.
xoxocharlie

Anonymous said...

Kay: It really is beautiful. The water is wonderful, but the beaches are not too sandy in Bonaire - mostly rocky, due to the coral. Now, Barbados - that's where you find miles of white sand!

Charlie: I love going away and discovering new things. I miss my family when I'm gone, otherwise I could be away for months.

I enjoy taking pictures and like to experiment a bit with the settings. The camera is a Canon SD600 that I got with airmile points. Not fancy, but with enough manual settings to play with.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful! Odd about the sailboat. I, too, love to travel and explore and learn about new places. I would like to follow the kind of weather I like and live there for a while. Then I'd get to know the place and meet people. But enough about me.

It's lovely there and fun to see it through your eyes!