Adventure: Part One - Posada Para Mira

I am being eaten alive. Last count i made of my mosquito bites, i had 31 entries into the Dengue lottery. As a result and because of an allergy reaction, i am taking lots of hydroxyzine, which is also used as a sedative, so i have been pretty groggy.

Yesterday we went out adventuring. As we left the house, two Trupials made their way into the iguana trap, which had been baited with mango skins. 

They may have thought the skins were dead Trupials, and turned to cannibalism. In retrospect this seems like a bad omen for the days adventures. "Trupials in the morning... Tourists take warning."

My mother had an itinerary planned out: lunch in Rincon, flamingo viewing at the lake, the museum at the park, a quick stop in to see the golf course, then we would hit the shops on the way home for a fan and some food. Because many adventures were had, i am splitting this into multiple posts.

First we gassed up, and thank god we did, or i am pretty sure we would have been eaten by scavenging goats later in the day.

Lunch was nice, we went to a local place called Posada Para Mira I had seen reviews for last time i was here. Since then, my parents have been several times and said it has a good view and decent local food. It is located above Rincon in its own little valley. 

Like most restaurants here, Posada Para Mira is open air. The location means with the winds, we were basically dining in a hurricane. We had to change tables at one point because the wind was enough to blow around my mothers half-empty water bottle.

They had a variety of local specialities, which are all pretty much same sauce, different meat.

Here is the tourist version of the menu, with translations:

You may notice that goat features prominently on the menu. I can vouch for the fact that it is likely fresh goat, as one of them ran through the restaurant while we waited for our meals. My dad had ordered the goat stew, so this may just have been how they tenderised the meat.

Most of the goats family was hanging around outside in the playground. Kids will do that. There were two trampolines as part of the play area. I am disappointed the goats didnt bounce around on them.

My mother ordered an ayaka, which is a local tamale style food that this restaurant normally only has around Christmas. It is wrapped in banana leaves.

I got the chicken stew, which comes with salad, rice, pumpkin, a plantain, and fried cornmeal. They had a good onion/scotch bonnet relish on the table that was liberally applied. My dad and i used nearly the whole jar.

The scenery is pretty, and gives you a good idea of how arid and scrubby the island interior is. Theres thorns in them thar hills!

Fine Dining

There's a pretty big difference between the local Bonairean joints like the one I wrote about here and the stuff that caters towards ex-pats and tourists. It's less like the difference between going to Azteca and eating from a taco truck and more like the difference between no stars and five stars.

The first fancyplace we went was my parents favourite. It's called At Sea. If you peruse their menu, you can see they're big on fancy European technique and serving things "three ways".

I had the Skirt Steak duo, which was tasty, but maybe a little too fancy for me to appreciate fully. The meal started with an amuse-bouche that was a shot glass filled with a raw wahoo salad topped with lemon foam.

 

Like most restaurants in Bonaire, At Sea is open air and near the sea. They have giant umbrellas which they put up as shade from the sun. I'm not sure what they do on the rare occasion when it rains, because very few of the tables are near any sort of shelter, and the umbrellas would just drop water onto the outside tables.

 

The second fancy place we went to is fairly new to the island. Ingridients was rum-punch-party adjacent.

 

They are located directly above the sea, and are also open air. We were there around sunset, which made for some nice photo opportunities (not just for eels.)

 

One of the resort dive areas is directly below where we were seated, so we got to watch a bit of a dive lesson, and a couple head out on a night dive.  

 

 

Ingridients is big on the spectacle, several of their menu items are prepared tableside, including a truffle parmesan pasta that they make in a big parmesan wheel, adding flaming cognac to get it melty.

I took a picture every few minutes after the sun set from our table, so consider this like a do-it-yourself timelapse. They lit some bonfires out in front of one of the resorts when it got dark, which was fun to see. The lights you can see furthest to the right are near the parental homestead.

 

 

 

On the way out we were also treated to a super bright full moon. Between the fact that we were near the equator and that it was a supermoon, it looked ginormous.

 

Ice Cream for Breakfast!!

its my penultimate island day and we are running around again. 

We went downtown this morning. Apparently it rained last night which in combination with the sun makes for oppressive mugginess and mud puddles.

we visited Cultimara the old supermarket, which was the only one on the islane when my parents started coming here. 

it is big and mostly open, apart from a cold section where anything that might spoil is kept. a small fan keeps the temperature down in the rest. My mother poses for scale.

There are a lot of rules downtown. As there are so many languages spoken around here it is easier to use pictures. No emo beach boys, happy cats, or dogs allowed in this store.

The bank has a more extensive list of outlawed items. Id never get in, the only thing on the list i dont usually have on is the baseball hat. 

No idea what this one means. it was next to some shops. Toilet for disfigured women only?

We got gelato at ten AM, which is something of a coup in my family. I high fived six year-old me. 

I got Bubbly (bubblegum) and Stracciatella (chocolate flake). They put a nice bubblegum pig on it for me. my mother tasted it before I could get my camera out to take a picture. Now I will never be famous on instagram.