Plants

I was brought up in the western United States and know about plants that grow in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.  I had a sunroom where I grew orchids and jade plants.  I had bulbs that came up every spring and flowered.  I knew how to trim, fertilize, transplant and root new plants.

Bonaire is very different.  It seems I will have to learn a new skill set.

In my yard, there are orchids that grow on trees without soil, bark, charcoal or pots.  They look awful and dry.  But they bloom and live with little or no care, as far as I can tell. 

The flowers in my yard are exotic, unusual and colorful. They grow from palm type plants, trees, and bushes.  I have no idea what they are or how to take care of them.  It seems they do fine on their own.

My neighbor gave me some plants that I know how to grow. She has a 3 foot tall basil plant.  It's the biggest herb plant I have ever seen.  I have a cutting from that beast that is doing well.  I also have a cutting from her coleus that is also in a huge pot and is 4 feet tall.

I have some giants of my own.  This beauty is about 30 feet tall.  It has big beautiful leaves and never gets watered.  It lives on the sparse rain we get.  When we trim these giants, the big leaves go out in the street for the wild donkeys and goats to eat. Trimming is a constant activity as things grow so fast here. 

We also have two golden mango trees that produce fruit. Once again, we know nothing about fruit trees in general and even less about mango trees. We do know that the Lora Parrots love mangos and we are happy to share.

We spend time on the internet to learn about the plants in our compound.  We are also planning a garden. The constant year round temps mean that we can start growing any time as there really aren't seasons.

 

Radio

We keep looking for a radio station(s) in English.  So far we have found radio stations in all sorts of languages, just none we can understand.

We also realized that we are very ignorant of the music industry of other countries.  We found that there are top 40 stations in Dutch and Spanish that have nothing to do with the American top 40.  Imagine that!

There are religious radio stations on Bonaire. Trans World Radio Bonaire constructed a superpower broadcasting site on the island in 1964 to broadcast Christian programs to Latin America. They try to reach millions of people living in Cuba, the jungles of Brazil and the surrounding Caribbean islands.

These are the towers for Transworld Radio.  They are visible from our house at night with red lights and you can see them in the southern part of the island.

Christian radio is not our cup of tea so we continue to search. In the mean time, we are happy to listen to our iPods on our little speaker or our laptops.

 

Lockdown

The government has put the island on lockdown. The Covid cases jumped from 10 to 600+ as a result of one super-spreader, after hours party of young restaurant/bar workers. They were drinking, singing and dancing.

So now we all have to act like Baptists. Everyone is encouraged to stay home.  So you seldom see anyone walking the ocean front street. No large gatherings, only one family member can go to the grocery stores, all the liquor stores are closed, and there is no singing or dancing allowed. There is also a curfew from 9:00 pm to 4:00 am.

Restaurants (they only allow take-out) have to close by 8:00 pm.   So the KFC closed at 8:17 and the police gave them a citation, fine and closed them down for two days as punishment for non-compliance. 

We think our liquor store got caught by the police for selling liquor and they closed the store. We hope it is not permanent.  We did however, find a liquor store that we could order online and they would deliver....thank God! 

The authorities also cited some beach partiers for curfew issues and drinking.  They were fined $150 each. For a tourist island and spring break time, it is really a hard lockdown.

These people are serious about lockdown measures. The small hospital has been over run.  They have 7 people in ICU unit which is all they can hold.  They have shipped people off to Aruba and Curacao that need special care. Also 10 people have died. So for a population of 20,000 that's a lot of death.  They have vaccinated just over 3,500 people with the first shot.  They have opened up vaccinations for 18 and older as they were just doing oldies and medical professionals. So they have a long way to go.

This isn't much different than lockdown in Colorado.  Only we are in a sunny, warm place and we can still go to the beach everyday and swim in our pool.

Stay well everyone!

Sunday Drive

I don't think Rick will take me for a Sunday drive again. I wanted to go see another light house that is on the sea about mid-island.  I told him it wasn't far and we would make an afternoon of it.  So we set out for a new sightseeing adventure. We packed water, sunscreen, hats and towels and a worthless tourist map.

This is what the landscape looked like.  This is also what the road looked like.  The road was a rock strewn, rutted, bumpy area that never really looked like a road anywhere.  It was 3 km of this until we got to a turn off.

We came to this ominous sign and concrete columns. It says "you have the right to enter" in English, Dutch and Spanish. The columns were barely wide enough for the Kia to enter.  We saw a pickup truck drive through so we thought we could too. We had no idea where we were, only where we were going.   

As you know, it is impossible for me to get close enough to get a decent picture of the flamingos on this island.  You can see a couple of sticks with pink blobs on top in the middle of a pond.  Those, my friends, are flamingos.  Big pink flamingos.  This is probably the best picture I will ever have of them.  They are illusive and we are not allowed to get close to them.

Spelonk Lighthouse is on Bonaire's eastern coastline.  We could see it as we drove across the Moon-like terrain.  It guided us through the desert, gulleys and rocks because there was no actual road to follow.  From both land and sea it is a beacon.

We could feel the spray of the sea as we walked the property.  This is on the windward side of the island and the seas are rough but beautiful.

There is an abandoned, spooky, rock building that served as both a lightkeeper house and fort.  It's abandoned now but still has window frames and a roof and some floors.  We think it serves as a party place for weed smoking, drinking, partying young adults, as we saw several, fitting this description  coming in as we were departing the site. 

The seas are really rough on this side of the island. Just looking at the 3-4 foot waves makes me nauseous. The land is moon-scape coral that has been sprayed with saltwater for eons.

This was the roughest road trip we have taken.  We drove 10-15 kmh the whole way.  Next time, I will check the route and road conditions.  


 

Night Time

We have not watched TV for two months. We have a TV in every room but we haven't turned them on.  I am sure the programs are only in Dutch or Spanish. We haven't missed TV and have found that we have lots to do in the evenings.

This dive site made me think about how well we sleep here and how our evening routine has changed.

Many evenings we pack up our chairs, and cooler with adult beverages and go to the beach to watch the sunset.  This is a big tradition at every island we have visited.  Everyone comes out to watch the sun setting.  Families bring dinner, everyone plays in the water and watches the show.  The sun sets at about the same time every night and it is always beautiful.

This is the harbor at sunset.  There are lots of sail boats in port these days.  I think it is a stopping point on the way to South America. The clouds make for a beautiful sunset.  this photo was taken by a local...the woman that owns the KFC in town.

We often sit by the pool and can't believe we actually made the move to Bonaire.  We feel lucky that we slipped in between Covid lockdowns and now live in a beautiful home on an island. Our dream came true.

Star gazing at home or on the beach is a favorite of ours.  We were so used to seeing the stars and planets from Colorado, that we don't really recognize things in the southern skies.  There is no big and little dipper or north star.  We do have Orion and Orion's belt, Gemini, and what we think is Mars. The moon is one of the only familiar things we see.  So it's a whole new world to learn the constellations from this view point.

These are the prime lounge chairs for star watching at home.  When there is not a curfew we often go to the beach to see the moon rise or moon set. Also a big deal with the locals.  We have seen lots of people at the beach watching the stars and the moon.... and doing other things.

We also read in the evenings.  I read my trashy love novels and Rick reads his espionage or who-done-it books with an occasional historical figure biography.  This past week was a book on Elon Musk.  Very interesting.

 

Ice

Rick and I had talked about not having a fridge with freezer or ice maker in our new place. I know, first world problems.

We have a freezer located outside the main house in a storage closet.  It works fine except it is not very convenient. 

We buy bags of ice at the Chinese market  close to our house. We all know that bags of ice are always solid when you buy them.  They require a good bashing on the sidewalk to get the cubes to break up. 

Our Chinese market provides a place exactly for that purpose. They even marked it so we would use the appropriate place to break up our ice. 😊

 

Donkeys and Goats

Bonaire has a fragile environment. It's a semi-arid, coral island with little top soil and mostly scrubby trees and little ground cover.  Which means that its soil, when disturbed, eventually finds its way into the sea and coral reefs as do other contaminates that are detrimental to the sea.

One of the threats on the island are the donkeys.  They were left by the Spaniards who used them for labor in the salt flats.  They roam free all over the island. 

They have become a tourist attraction. All are very friendly as they wander the neighborhoods because everyone feeds them.  They lay in the roads, fields and poop anywhere and everywhere. They also breed with no control.

There is a  sanctuary for sick, injured and orphaned donkeys.  They take care of some 700 donkeys.  But there are herds all over the island which probably number in the 100's.

There are also goats that roam free eating everything in their path.  There are also some goat farmers that contain their herd.  Once in a while a goat is reported stolen.  But who wants a goat? Goat stew is a popular local dish.  Not for us.  We tried it once and that was enough.

The island government has developed an environmental management plan which includes bringing the donkeys and goats into a manageable number that will not destroy the island ecology.  

The plan also includes recycling.  Recycling centers have been set up throughout the island.  We are thankful for this because we had  tons of cardboard and Styrofoam from the move. And the beer and wine bottles were piling up. The island had previously discontinued one use plastic bags at the grocery store.  I am glad I shipped my shopping bags.

Limiting the number of visitors on the island is another issue in the plan. Everyone likes the income from cruise ships but the hoards of people have an adverse impact on the reef as well as the land. The island government wants "high-end yachts" with limited people.  Really, they want only a few  rich people to come that will spend loads of money. 

 

 

 

No Free Market

Our house has a combo oven/microwave.  It's okay but not great for cooking.  Our cooktop is a glass top induction model that uses special pans. So we decided to buy a gas grill with a gas burner because we prefer it to ovens with broilers and electric burners. We went to Kooiman (our favorite Home Depot type store) and got a  grill with a side burner.  

Rick puts it together on the patio. It does not come with a propane tank nor does Kooiman sell tanks.

There is only one company that sells propane and tanks at only one facility on the island.  Curoil has a monopoly on the island. Asko, our favorite food truck owner, gives us directions to the facility.  Nothing has an address here. It's just directions using landmarks. So we head to the propane company, which is located on a dusty country road in the middle of nowhere.

At the Curoil facility, we are told that they currently have no propane tanks and it will be three weeks until they come in.  It can not  be ordered and they do not take names to reserve one.  If we already had a tank and wanted to exchange it for a full tank then we could get that done on Tuesday (today is Friday) on a first come first serve basis. 

We ask if we can buy one on the spot.  No, that was not possible.  Only one per customer and you can only buy it when they come in, not before. It's a little vague, but Rick and I both may be able to buy a tank even though we are in the same family. The cost will be $30 and $9 to fill each tank.....if they had tanks.

This is what happens when there is no free market. The supplier calls the shots, does not need to provide good customer service and has no incentive to provide products or services in a timely fashion. The customer has no options to go to another supplier. We are at the mercy of the monopoly, controlled by the socialist government.

In the US, we take it for granted that we can get whatever we want when we want it.  We know that companies that don't cater to us will fail as we will go to a competitor....or order it from Amazon and have it within 24 hours.

We have this brand new grill and no propane. Its like having a cigarette with no lighter.  Three weeks....we wait for propane. 

In the meantime, we find this great BBQ place (it's really someone's back yard) that smokes and BBQ's ribs and turkey legs on Saturdays and Sundays only. "Holy Smokes" is minutes from our house.  So we will have BBQ this weekend in spite of the socialists.

 

A Walk on the Beach

 

On the way back, we noticed that a cargo ship was pulling into the Salt Pier for a pick up.  Two tug boats maneuvered the 200+ foot ship up to the pier.  We watch for 30 minutes as it is a slow process but interesting to see.

Electricity

There are two types of electricity on the island and in the houses: 220 volts and 110 volts. Most of the Dutch appliances run on 220 volts.  Most of my appliances (hair dryers, curling irons, clock radios) run on 110 volts. We also charge our electronics on 110 volts and use a surge protector because the power is not consistent. That is about all I understand about how the electricity works on the island or anywhere else for that matter.

Converters are a way of life here for Americans.  Most Europeans use the 220 volts system and have no problems here.  But for Americans, everything runs on 110 volt so you have to have converters from what I call "Dutch to English" and "English to Dutch".

And there is "homemade wiring". This is a typical scene around the house.  It's a combination of extension cords, electrical boxes, wires and timers.  The seller was a fix-it guy and a DIY handyman.  So the electrical system is a system designed and implemented by a Dutch handyman.  It's a complete mystery to us. We also don't know if there is an electrical code for the island. We are definitely not in the US regulatory system.

However, we have a beautiful timed lighting system that comes on at 6:30 pm and off at 11:00 pm that lights up our outdoor spaces.  The timers are in Dutch (again with the Dutch language) so we are not completely sure how to work those either.  

We also have battery operated decorative lights on pots, in glass vases and on plants. These, however, tend to rust and seldom work.  I have been working to eliminate these as the clutter, for anyone that knows me, makes me nuts.

So if we have to put up with this...

to get this....it's a fair trade!

 

When it Rains it Pours

Its been raining all day.  Just like when it snows all day in Colorado, we hunker down and watch and take pictures of our patio from inside the house.

Rainy days are few and far between.  One of the reason we liked Bonaire is because it is out of the hurricane zone. Its weather is usually mild and dry.  But not today!

This weather made us realize that we need to have an emergency plan, if for some reason, we get a big tropical storm, hurricane or invaded by Venezuela. 

This is what we do on a rainy day.  Rick is doing work for Freedom Environmental and I am working on my blog. We are fortunate to have reliable internet and VPN on days like this.  It allows us access to Amazon Prime and Netflix which is not available on Bonaire without a VPN. So far the power has not been interrupted.  We keep every electronic devise on a surge protector because we have heard that the power is sometimes unreliable and surges when it comes back on after a failure.

This is the dirt road (looks more like a fast running river) in front of our house. There is no infrastructure for drainage. The water just ponds up or moves to the lowest point.  I am sure this will turn our roads into muddy messes. We may need to add a boat to our emergency plan.

Aw, the joy of living on an island in a rain storm.  

And just for fun...

The jewelry cabinet I purchased from Amazon for our Bonaire house, is made in Germany. And just so you can learn something new today, the word for jewelry cabinet in German is: Schmuckschrank

😜

 

Indoor-Outdoor Living

There are some things about indoor-outdoor living that HGTV doesn't tell you.  For one thing, everything that is outdoors comes indoors....leaves, dust, dragonflies, bugs,  critters, wind, ants, humidity, etc.

It is a constant activity to clean and eliminate critters, ants, and bugs. If there is the tiniest crumb on the counter, the tiniest ants are on it within minutes no matter how much bug spray you use or how clean the counters are kept. Our tiles floors throughout the house make for easy sweeping but it is always like living completely outdoors.

And, we have frogs. They live in the plant pots, in our storage room and sometimes end up in the house.  We have found a mummified frog while cleaning the spare bedroom.  Rick found one on the door handle on our glass doors.  These are jumping and climbing frogs. They seem nice enough and always seem to jump away when we are near.

We also have small lizards and gecko which are welcomed because they eat mosquitoes and other bugs. The island is full of iguanas.  Thankfully,  the previous owners of our house built a wall with spikes on the top encompassing our house.  This keeps the iguanas out which is a good thing because they poop large quantities and swim in your pool like unwanted guests.

Although we have indoor plumbing and bathrooms, we also have an outdoor shower.  It's perfect for rinsing off with cold water after diving, snorkeling and swimming. Funny thing about Bonaire, not all the houses and apartments have hot water. We have hot water throughout the house, however, we take warm showers because it is too hot to take a hot shower. 

It rained last night so hard that it woke us. For the most part, our patio roof covers our living room, dining room and seating areas.  However, our back patio has a bamboo covered patio and is not water proof.  So the rain gushes in and gets everything wet... furniture, floor, pillows, rugs, and lights.  Most everything is made to withstand the water elements.  Thank goodness for rattan, metal and finished wood.