This year, Steve earned a four week paid sabbatical and we couldn’t think of a better place to spend it than on the island we love most. I was able to take three weeks off, so in July 2024, we headed to the beautiful island of Bonaire.
We couldn't wait to live the island life!
This was our 5th visit and we had just been with some friends in March, so we decided to rent the same Airbnb. We love having our own space and a private pool is awesome and makes for an even better experience. There were a few days we spent the entire day at the villa...and even made dinner at home!
We also rented a Jeep Wrangler and a golf cart from Bonaire Cruisers. We love having a golf cart for many reasons, but the Jeep allowed us to get from point A to point B much faster and allowed us the opportunity to visit the National Park (more to come...)
That’s what I call family fun in paradise.
Before dinner, we typically enjoyed watching the sunset downtown while drinking an ice cold beer or cocktail...usually at Karel's beach bar. Not a bad life.
Dinner at Brass Boer is always on our Bonaire itinerary, especially when we’re showing off the best of the best! It's been named the best restaurant in the Caribbean for several years and the sunsets are always a sight to see. We enjoyed dinner at Brass Boer 3 times during this visit. We created our own 5-course menu with lots of wine and lots of laughs. We eventually tried everything on the menu...there are so many amazing creations, but our all-time favorite is the corvina.
We love having dinner at Osaka for the best sushi on the island. So fresh and sooooo good. We dream about the tuna tataki!
El Bigote is a (not-so-hidden) treasure with the best ribs, homemade jalapeno poppers and Caesar salad on the island. Yes...a Mexican restaurant with the best ribs and best salad. Crazy!
We went to El Bigote 4 times and I ordered the ribs EVERY SINGLE TIME! It's important to note that I don't really like ribs. I only eat ribs at El Bigote on Bonaire. Facts. We didn't find out about the salad until our last night, but I can promise it's a high priority during our upcoming visit.
We tried Donna & Giorgio's for the first time. This is a local favorite for Italian food.
Sugar Thief is a place Steve found on Reddit. It's one of the smallest places I've ever eaten and they're only open 3 nights of the week. It's owned and operated by a husband and wife duo from Texas. They brew their own beer and make one homemade dish per night. We visited on their taco night. The beers were quite good and would recommend. They even gave us a complimentary piece of homemade tres leches cake.
Our 18th anniversary was another one to remember! We started with high tea (at 11 am), because who doesn’t want hot tea when it’s 90 degrees outside?
Of course I do!
It was actually very enjoyable and the A/C was pumping.
Our anniversary dinner was at Zara's for another 5 course Chef’s Table with wine pairings. Zara's is an intimate and interactive experience with great food and perfect pairings.
The island offers quite a few options for lunch.
Between 2 Buns is our favorite choice when we're heading to the north side to snorkel. They have great breakfast and lunch options. Our "go-to" is the jalapeno popper grilled cheese. They also have a great dessert case.
The Bucket is located it the middle of downtown. It's open air and very casual. The portions are substantial.
Food trucks are probably the most popular lunch option on the island, especially after a morning of diving and snorkeling.
The King Kong truck is our favorite. They are known for specialty burgers, hot dogs and French fries.
Other options include Stoked, Kite City, Caribe and Cactus Blue.
Jibe City has become one of our favorite places...not only on the island, but in the world!. We don't do much, but the drive there and the total relaxation we feel once we get there are both incredible!
As the shore diving capital of the world, the underwater world is like no other. You’ll find reefs with 57 species of coral and 350 species of fish.
We love the ease and affordability of snorkeling and it's one of our favorite things about this part of the world. The diversity of the sites and the beauty of the fish is simply beautiful. With over 85 dive sites, we spent most of our time in the water and snorkeled every day. Each site is identified by a yellow rock. Some areas are more challenging to enter, involving underwater rocks, reef stems, and in some cases long rock stair cases to the beach below. You must wear water shoes. All are marked clearly where to safely enter and exit.
We experienced our first Bait Bail at Bachelor’s Beach. This was a massive storm of Big Eye Scad stretching anywhere from 50-70 feet wide and similar height. It was a little terrifying, but way more cool! We floated and watched in awe for 15-20 minutes. I had read about this recently and was so excited to see it myself. Wow!
While we typically partake in our own shore snorkeling adventures, this visit we went on a snorkel tour with Sea Cow snorkel trips where we visited 4 snorkel sites on Klein Bonaire.
Bonaire has some of the most protected reefs in the world and these 4 sites are only available by boat. I can’t take credit for the photos, but they did such a lovely job capturing all the great sea creatures we saw! We floated over a coral restoration area, saw countless coral, lots of angel fish, a barracuda, a tamoya ohboya jellyfish (eek!) and THREE turtles.
Our visit to the donkey sanctuary was quite the experience! Let's just say...we didn't last long!
We went on a five hour adventure through the Washington-Slagbaai National Park. A legitimate four-wheel drive vehicle is required to enter the park, so we were ready for the worst. It was actually really cool! Our jeep wrangler rental was used and abused, but we had fun.
We saw the most gorgeous natural landscapes on the island. The 3 sites we snorkeled were a nice reprieve from the heat, salt and dust. In the end, we couldn’t wait to get out of there, but we were pleasantly surprised and happy to check it off the list. Five hours on a one-way road is simply exhausting! Cheers to unwinding with dinner and drinks by the pool.
The highlight of this trip was definitely SAVING TURTLES!! We volunteered with Bonaire’s Sea Turtle Conservation nest monitoring patrol. We learned so much about the nesting process during this not-so-glamorous adventure.
We traveled via boat to Klein Bonaire where we spent five hours hiking 5,000 meters along the beach on a beautiful 90 degree day (hint the sarcasm...) We looked for new nests and monitored the existing 37 nests. Only 8 nests had hatched prior to our visit, so we were some of the lucky ones and found TWO nests to excavate and released 42 babies!
We released two different species. The hawksbill (19 babies) and loggerhead (23 babies) are two of the world's six endangered or critically endangered species of marine turtles. Sadly, only 1 in 1,000 of these little guys will survive to adulthood. We also saw 10+ adults turtles swimming in the nearby turquoise sea. What an incredible experience! https://www.bonaireturtles.org/wp
You're always going to see donkeys and flamingos, and the Cargill salt mines and salt flats are fascinating!
Our last few days were spent doing what we love most.
Driving the southern part of Bonaire is hard to explain. It’s why we fell in love with the island. Turquoise water, pink salt pans, not a house in sight, too many flamingos to count, and an open road. It’s breathtaking.
The island life is what we expected and more. We spent 22 days on Bonaire and it was incredible! We were never bored and we had so much fun. Following 4 previous visits to this little Dutch island, I’m so proud of us. We accomplished so much while still relaxing and napping as often as humanly possible.
Here’s a quick recap….
30 sites snorkeled
15 restaurants visited
6 food trucks for lunch
42 baby turtles released
1,000’s of flamingos!
1 National park explored
500+ donkeys (with t-shirts to prove it)
10 bottles of sunscreen
3 weeks in our paradise
Memories to last a lifetime
Bonaire is rustic, beautiful, unassuming and totally unexpected. It’s not for everyone, but it’s definitely for us.
We’ll see you again for two weeks to celebrate Christmas 2024 and ring in 2025!
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