AROUND BONAIRE
On my last afternoon, Kiri and Taty gave me a guided tour of the island’s coast road from Lac Bay round to the airport. Off the side of the road we were lucky enough to spot a few of thttps://www.windsurf.co.uk/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=featured#he island’s famous pink flamingos wading around in the salt flats. It may look like a flamingo has a knee that bends backwards, but what you are actually seeing is the bird’s ankle. More than 10,000 birds call the island home, many taking residence in an 135-acre sanctuary created by Cargill, the owners of the salt mines further round the track. Back in the 1600s, when the Dutch took possession of Bonaire, much of the island was a planation owned by the Dutch West Indies Company. It was during those years that African slaves were forced to work and grim reminders of these days still exist in this part of Bonaire in the form of slave huts, which were laboriously constructed by hand. Right at the southern tip of the island we drive towards huge, cone-shaped mountains the colour of snow – salt! Owned by the huge Cargill Corporation, salt is produced in Bonaire in the beds of Pekelemeer, where it’s exported by sea and used mostly for industrial purposes. The pyramids of salt are pretty spectacular to witness and I was hoping maybe we could snag a few sailing shots in the surrounding salt beds, but with warnings of possible arrest, we decided that perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea.
