Harvest

Our herb garden is going crazy.  I cut a huge bowl of basil and the plant still looks huge.  I am thinking of starting to sell this stuff because it grows so fast and plentiful. We have made pesto, we put it in salads, we use it in everything.  Still can't keep up.

After trimming.

This is the Thyme harvest. I am drying this batch to replenish our spice bottle.  We usually use this fresh on chicken, fish, steak and potatoes.

This was Thyme before harvest.

Our tomatoes, grown from seed, are coming up.  We planted half with dry packaged seeds and half from seeds out of our tomatoes we bought at the store. It took four days for the seeds to germinate on pop out of the soil. Things grow really fast on the island.

 

Patio Rennovation

We have completed the renovation of our back  patio. We took down a palm tree that was growing through the bamboo roof and getting too tall to trim by ordinary means. Our gardener took a chain saw and cut sections of the tree down and carried them off to the landfill.

This is the before photo of the tree going through the roof.

This is the after photo.  We made the palm tree stump into a table, covered the roof hole with bamboo, and rehung the bamboo hanging chair. We also had the lighting redone.  Now, we have a nice seating area without a tree blocking our view.  It is also a cleaner space since we don't have the palm tree dropping all it's blooms, seeds and fronds.

We repurposed a wood table top for the palm stump table. It fit perfectly which never happens for us when we are renovating.

Project completed.

Oh Crap

I know that talking about sewage is not very socially polite. However, for those of us that live with septic tanks, it's a big deal.

Bonaire does not have a wastewater system that reaches all parts of the island. Most houses have a septic system that needs to be pumped out periodically. The trick is to figure out when it's full and when it needs pumping.  You certainly wouldn't want it to over flow...ever!

We have a big-ass septic tank that collects all wastewater from toilets, washing machines, dishwasher, and showers. It is located underground and has three chambers with large outlet pipes. 

The only way to figure out when it's nearing capacity is to look inside the three chambers that hold the waste.  As new home owners, we have no idea how long the capacity will last and how often we must  empty it.  So we called the "honey-dipper" (actually, they are called Damascus Disposal Services). You get an immediate response and they come to your house within 24 hours and usually on the same day you call. This is one service that does not have any dilly-dallying....thank God.

The guys come and snaked a huge pipe from the truck to the septic system and suck out all the sewage in a matter of 15 minutes. They also look in the tank to see how full it it.  The two guys that came were not conversationalists. First of all, they didn't speak a lick of English. Secondly, I don't think they are used to people talking to them because of their line of business.

We are no longer full of shit.

 

Sunset Moonrise

The skies are very different when you are so close to the Southern Hemisphere.  Bonaire is located about 12 degrees north of the equator. Many of the planets and constellations that are seen from the Northern Hemisphere are below the horizon here and visa versa.

We had never seen the Southern Cross before. Crosby Stills and Nash sang about it and we were finally able to see it from Bonaire's southern sky. The North Star, which has guided sailors for centuries, is seldom visible from the island.

This day, we were able to see the sunset and the moonrise in less than a few minutes.  We watched the sunset and turned 180 degrees to see the moon rise. It was also a full moon which made it even more interesting.

Venus, which we could often see low in the sky in Denver, now is  also low in the sky in Bonaire.  It seems to stay in the same position. The Big Dipper is upside down from what we had been used to seeing. We have not seen the Little Dipper at all. 

The most interesting thing is seeing the Milky Way.  With so little lighting on the island the galaxy is bright and large.  It fills the night skies.  I am the one that can see it as Rick is night blind and can only see the brightest stars. 

 

International

Bonaire is an international island. I am always amazed by things on the island that represent other countries.

This is a bigger than life bust and monument for Simon Jose Antonio de la Santisima Trinidad Bolivar Palacios Ponte y Blanco. Or, as he is commonly known, Simon Bolivar, El Liberator, who helped achieve freedom of Venezuela, Columbia, Panama, Peru and Ecuador from Spain.  He was also the founder of Bolivia. For some reason he sought refuge in Bonaire in 1816....and so he got a monument.  It was recently decorated with flower wreaths.

This looks like Denver International Airport. Interestingly, it is not. It is the shade cover for a seaside restaurant call Karels where the Dutch camp out with an espresso and work on their computers and phones.

We were amused to see three seagulls perched on the top of the spires.  You would never see this at the airport (DIA) because of their bird hazing efforts.

This is a Chanang, a car made in China found here on Bonaire.  In the Chinese language, CHANG means lasting and AN means safety.  So together the car is named "Lasting Safety. It is one of the top four automobile groups in China. 

Our electrician told us that he installs solar panels and batteries made in China.  He said they are the cheapest place for purchase but he has to have an agent working with him so he doesn't get cheated.  He brings them over in a container and installs them on Bonaire. 

So there you have a taste of international Bonaire. They trade with different countries than the US, they use products from all over the world and they import goods from everywhere.

 

Anniversary

Rick and I have been together for 29 years. This is our 19th year of marriage. We celebrated at Sebastian's.

I remember meeting Rick when we both worked for Chen & Associates a geotechnical engineering firm in Denver.  We have had a lot of adventures: scuba diving, island travel, water skiing, and snow skiing. Seems to be a water theme. 

Its no wonder we picked a seaside restaurant. We feel so lucky that we get to live on Bonaire and enjoy the sea everyday. We have visited many beautiful places (Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Virgin Islands, Grenadines, Cozumel) but none compare to our new home. We discussed all of them over dinner and concluded that this was the right time and the right place for us.

By the time we finished dinner and a bottle of Prosecco, the night lights of Kralendijk were out.  What a sight!

Happy Anniversary!

     

 
 

Turtles

Bonaire is prime turtle territory.  From May through November, sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs. 

Our morning walk on the beach was very exciting as we saw these turtle trails.  The tracks came from the sea and headed up the beach to a mound of sand.  First time we have ever seen turtle tracks and egg mounds! Usually by morning the tracks have been washed away.

Sea turtles deposit 100 eggs in each nest and lay between 3 and 7 nests during the nesting season. We saw four tracks and nests.

So if you think walking on the beach is all fun and games...think again.  Hit a rock with my foot and it ripped open.  It's really great to have an open wound with salt water washing it....Ouch. Rick hit the same rock and dinged his arch and ankle.  This is going to slow us down for a few days.

We were also able to catch a bad photo of three flamingos who cut away from the herd 

(actually a group of flamingos is called a Flamboyance).  They were feeding along the road which is an unusual sight.  They are usually miles away in a protected area.

So there you have our morning:  turtles, toes and flamingos.

Herbs #2

We started an herb garden in our back yard.  We purchased the concrete planter box and risers.  Rick hooked it up to our irrigation system. We moved our basil and thyme plants to the new planter. As we find plants or grow them we will add to our garden. Since we have a year-round growing season, we can start plants anytime.

We planted cilantro.  The climate is so hot and the sun is so bright that the cilantro just melted.  Rick rigged-up a sun shade. It's not pretty but it does the trick. 

The rosemary that we tried to root, died.  We will try again but are not hopeful of any success. We may have to import a plant.

We also wanted to grow tomatoes.  We eat a lot of tomatoes. We could save big bucks if we grew our own...Ha! There are no starter tomato plants on the island so we have to grow them from seed. We are going to use a package of tomato seeds and also harvest seeds from the tomatoes we purchase at the grocery store.  Hopefully, one of them will germinate. Stay tuned for an update

We toured a little Bonaire museum today.  They grow all sorts of native and imported edible plants. The curator gave us three cuttings of Cuban oregano. Rick is partial to Mexican oregano but it is not available on the island.  So we have to improvise.

 

Only on Bonaire

I didn't think that Bonaire produced agricultural products. But they do. I purchased eggs the other day and the carton read "made on the Island of Bonaire".  There is a chicken farm somewhere on the island.

This guy was cleaning the beach at Sorobon.  I noticed he had this long tube from his head to his butt and then tied onto his belt.  It encased his long hair and or dreadlocks. He had a crocheted cover for his hair that was longer that he was tall.

This salon and spa got really creative.  To appeal to any visitor in any language, they published their services under 22 different flags and 13 languages.

Hermit crabs apparently live all over the island.  We found one in our palm tree (look to the center of the photo and then to the upper right just a little, within the trunks is a hermit crab). We have also had one in our pool that was certainly lost.  We fished him out and returned him to dry land.  Since they change their shells on a regular basis, I have decided to leave all the little shell that were in the house outside so the crabs will have their choice for new homes. 

We laughed at the weather report that called for rainbows.  We thought it was a typo or a poor translation. It really was a weather prediction. Today, while on our drive to the beach we saw our first Bonarian rainbow. 

Only on Bonaire will they sell you a whole tray of takeout Sushi on an 80 degree day. This tray was made up by a Sushi chef named Jamie that works out of a junk yard/restaurant in a dilapidated neighborhood called Tera Cora. We took it home and ate it all and lived to tell about it.

  


 

Canarbo's

We found a great importer of meat, seafood and gourmet cheese and sausage. It's called Canarbo's.  It is located in a what looks like a self storage complex. They supply high end goods for every restaurant on the island.

Canarbo's offers catalog sales from the reception area that looks like a doctors office.  To get the good stuff that is in consumer size,  you have to ask to go to the back room to shop.

A person in a winter parka is a very, very unusual site in Bonaire. Most of the back room of Canarbo's is a freezer kept at -18C. You tell them what you want and they get it from the freezer. The woman and her sons work the back room, and she wears a parka.

Canarbo's was started by the Venezuelan Ambassador to Canada.  His appointment allowed him to make connections around the world. Thus he was able to create import supply chains. As a result we can purchase high end meat and seafood on Bonaire.

We purchased a tenderloin from Brazil, 16-20 shrimp from India, and two lobster tails from who knows where.

Canarbo's meats are delicious. I assume they are corn feed and pumped up with hormones, just like we like them! The red meat that you get on Bonaire is not American style and tastes very funky to us. Brazilian meat is really good. 

Our freezer is full and we will eat well for weeks to come.

Pots and Lampshades

It used to be easy for Rick and I to do yardwork all day. Now if we get one project done we are happy.  Replanting the palms in new pots just about killed us. 

The old pots were too small for the plants and had been broken prior to our arrival.  It was time for repotting.  Lifting the plants out of the old pots, removing the old plastic pots and placing the plant in the new pots was a herculean effort.  Rick's bad back and my weak arms did not make for a good team.  But we persevered and finished the project.

Now the palms are repotted and look great on our patio.

We will be working on our herb garden planter next.  A bit more complicated as we have to run a water dripper to this planter.

It is very difficult to ship lampshades.  They don't travel well and most often get destroyed in the process.  As a result, it is hard to find lampshades on the island.  However, we found a guy that handmakes lampshades.

We dragged our shell lamp downtown to the lampshade maker.  Never in our wildest dreams would we have picked a black lampshade with gold designs.  This designer picked the palm tree design and flared shade. Since our bedroom is done in black, white and gold, we thought it might work.  So here is the finished product.

Beaches

The beach is always changing. Every time we are there it looks different.  After the tropical wave that later became hurricane Elsa, the beach was littered with sea fans that had broken off the coral and washed ashore.

 

When the tide is low, the rocks 

(really old coral) jut out of the sand and sea. At times we have a wide sandy beach.  When the tide and/or waves are high, the beach diminishes to a small slice of sand that winds around the rock.

It was a gray, rainy day when this photo was taken. Still, the  contrast of the bright blue and dark blue water is visible. The rocky beach looks very different than the sandy beach.

No two sunsets are alike at the beach. Sometimes we have clouds with no sunset to watch.  Sometimes we have a great after glow sunset that color the clouds. We have seen the green flash a few times when the sun sets. Sunsets are always a treat at the beach.

Discovery

Rick and I took our first scuba lessons and got certified by A1 Scuba in Englewood, Colorado. What a surprise to see our scuba shop represented on Bonaire.

We were touring the Plaza Beach Resort.  Their inhouse scuba shop has 50 or more rocks painted with logos from scuba shops that have visited. Typically, when a shop brings a group, they partner with the local scuba operators to book boats and equipment to serve their tour group. Each one leaves a painted rock.  This is the traditional way to mark a dive site in Bonaire.  It's only fitting that dive operators would follow the tradition.

The Plaza Beach Resort is an all inclusive, swanky place.  They have a marina that houses huge yachts and pleasure boats. They offer all sorts of water sports, have the typical resort big swimming pool, and lots of amenities.

We were actually looking for a restaurant called the "Tipsy Seagull" purported to be on the grounds. We walked all over and finally found it

but it was closed.  Since it was so hard to find, we decided to pass on this one and went a different direction.

On the recommendation from our liquor store owner (an Indian guy named Depak) we went to a local Columbian restaurant called "Fogon Latino" for lunch. Definitely not as swanky as the Plaza but more our style.  It is all open air with about 4 tables and a bar. They do a brisk business with the local community as Spanish was the main language spoken. The menu was in English so we felt right at home.

 

Shopping Carts

Bonaire has a very clever way of of making sure shopping carts are not littering the island. It's an ingenious system.  At first it stumped us. We couldn't figure out how to get a shopping cart released.  We had seen this system on Aruba.  It's much harder to navigate on Aruba because they have their own currency of tiny, tin coins.  Let me explain...

The carts are tethered together by a chain with a push lock at the end. 

When a quarter or token is put in the slot on the handle it pushes the chain key out of the cart.  Thus freeing the cart for use.

Many times, when you return the cart, another shopper will approach you and give you a quarter for the cart.  That way they do not need to retrieve it from the lock system.  It makes for a quick transfer.

At first, the Dutch shoppers would offer us quarters.  They were speaking Dutch, of course, so we had no idea why they wanted to give us money.

Now we have quarters in our car for use at the grocery store.  I also keep a plastic token handy along with my shopping bags ( plastic shopping bags are not available on the island).

When returning the cart to the storage line, the key can be inserted in the handle, pushing (releasing) the quarter and locking the cart.

It's a perfect system.