Photos

I'm mostly done posting about Bonaire. I have a few posts half-written about the weather and the language, which may show up this week, but most of the good stuff is done. I took about 200,000 words worth of pictures (that makes 2000 I think, I don't math well), so what you've seen here represents only a small portion. They're all unedited, but I've posted them on Flickr here, so if you're dying for more vacation slides, there ya go. Any editing I've done for posts was just cropping/filtering via the Ipad... I'm not big on post-production.

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.

 

Dracula's Linoleum

The hallway is finished, and that means I'm completely done with floors... for now. I like the way it turned out, it looks to me like the type of floor pattern Bram Stoker's monster would pick out for his kitchen. I am now somewhat regretting not having pulled up the rest of the kitchen floor, but I know if I decide to I can always extend the stencil.

 

The good cat, on the other hand, decided to hit the books, which is good because school starts again next week.  

Houses

like everything else here, Bonairean architecture is a mixture of styles. Much of it is european looking, filtered through the island aesthetic. (which is to say things are painted more brightly than your average drag queen.)

 

 

 

The majority of houses here are made of concrete, either concrete block or poured concrete.

 

 

This means that even when the buildings are abandoned they seem to stick around, just waiting for another coat of paint.

 

 

This old theatre is next to the Cadushy distillery in Rincon. It is the oldest movie theatre on the island, and currently they are trying to raise money to resurrect it.

 

 

The inside is mostly empty, apart from some old projection equipment, and it needs a new roof.

 

 

Most of the photos I took of houses were taken from a moving vehicle, so apologies for the occasional off-focus/frame and motion blur. The best gauge for how bumpy some of the roads are is my mothers car decoration, which spends most of any ride earning her singles like a madwoman.

 

 

My last full day on the island, my dad drove me around so that I could get pictures of some of the islands less-fancy accommodations. I generally find these more interesting than the larger, rich-folk houses, which tend to be in more European styles.

 

The first thing we saw was some donkeys, which may or may not have been real estate agents. Or maybe they were just for sale.

 

 

 

We saw a few houses that were made from old cargo containers. I think the main thing about houses for the locals here is that they seem largely to exist only to have a place to sleep. Larger houses require more cooling, which is not something everyone can afford. Smaller houses let the wind go through both sides, keeping things slightly cooler.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see from most of these pictures, fences play a large role in island architecture.  There is a fairly large division between the have and have-nots here. Some fences are mostly ornamental and seemed designed just to keep out wandering wildlife.

The more seriously security-minded employ guard animals. Goose-stepping dogs...



Goats...



Even a donkey will do in a pinch.

 

My parents' complex, on the other hand, has chosen to employ a 24/7 security guard to deter crime in the area.

 Even the most hardened of criminals quakes in his boots when he sees Securitree!