Our Great Adventure : Christmas in Bonaire

After leaving Los Roques a little earlier than we wanted due to a front moving in and after having low expectations for Bonaire we were pleasantly surprised when we arrived! It looked quite industrial with cranes and mountains of salt but once we rounded the point it was very pretty.

There are a LOT of cacti in Bonaire

Sunbathing Lizard

Mountains of salt

The best part of our arrival was finding out our friends on Delphinus were there! It’s always exciting to pull into an anchorage or mooring field and find your friends :) To preserve the coral, there is no anchoring in Bonaire so we took a mooring ball in water that looked like a pool. We could look overboard and see lots of fish swimming around and under our boat.

Fish swimming around our boat

After taking the mooring ball and checking into the country, Immigration informed us there was a Christmas street party that evening so we wandering the streets sampling treats, mulled wine and listening to live bands.

Popular Bonaire Christmas decorations

Since Noomi was also coming to Bonaire and we had already planned to spend Christmas together we were happy to learn that Delphinus always wanted to spend Christmas together. So Delphinus, Noomi and Nomads all spent Christmas day together! We found an amazing grocery store where we were able to stock up on all our Christmas favourites including fresh brussel sprouts and egg nog! Delphinus invited us all to their boat for the day to play games and have Christmas dinner. We had a fantastic time! We ate tons of great food and played a game of Cranium, ladies verses gents. I won’t go into the details about who won. Jane on Delphinus went all out and made a proper Christmas dinner with all the trimmings - lentil loaf, roast potatoes, carrots, peas, cabbage, sprouts, bread sauce, stuffing and more! She even made homemade mince pies!!! I’m in awe of how much she cooks on her boat! Things I would never tackle in a galley kitchen.

Our amazing chef Jane!

James and Daniel

The gang for Christmas Dinner

Heaven

Nomads stellar Christmas decor

Trying to cool our Christmas bubbly in the ocean over the side of the boat!

After the Christmas celebrations we did a little exploring on the island which is known worldwide for it’s incredible snorkelling and scuba diving. We took our dingy to several places around the island and were amazed how much we saw. There were all kinds of fish and coral and even some coral regeneration projects. After we’d had our fill of snorkelling, we rented a scooter for the day which allowed us to drive around the entire island, that’s how small it is.

One of the highlights for me was getting to see wild flamingos in their natural habitat. We had seen several homes with flamingoes wandering around their gardens but they were so pale they were almost white. The wild flamingos were such an incredible shade of coral pink!

Flamingos in someone's garden!

Wild Flamingos

We also visited a cactus distillery where most of their liquors are cactus based and all are made with local ingredients - we did some sampling and purchased a small bottle of the neon green cactus liquor then hopped back on our scooter and headed to the salt ponds.

Cadushy cactus distillery

Cactus Fence

The salt ponds are an important part of Bonaire’s history. There are large brightly painted obelisks on the shore and each colour reflected a type of salt and quality. The allowed the incoming ships to anchor near the correct colour for the load of salt they were purchasing. From here slaves loaded up baskets with salt that women would put on their heads and walk with over to small boats that were rowed to the large ships. The city has preserved the original slave huts where the slaves lived who worked the salt ponds - they are grossly small and must have been really hot.