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Caption: BONAIRE
Caption: Bonaire is one of the beautiful Caribbean islands that still are connected to The Netherlands. This Steller story is about the island, it's inhabitants and it's history.
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Caption: The yellow ship on the next picture is the taxi boat to Klein Bonaire, a small but beautiful uninhabited island. Locals told us that the yacht behind the passage-boat is called the 'Tatoosh' and is owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
The boat was on sale for 130.000.000.000 dollars some time ago (but strangely enough no one bought it) and has 34 staff people when docked here. Also the ship isn't anchored, but it keeps itself in place using the motors, which costs over $1500 a day.
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Caption: Funny: on Bonaire they draw their own versions of the original Dutch traffic signs, but as you can see on the next picture they're not that good at it. I call this one 'crested midget gimp doing some shoveling'.
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Caption: After the Dutch occupied Bonaire in 1636, they immediately started to harvest salt from the island's salt ponds. It was quite laborious work, done by slaves - one of the many 'black pages' in our history books. During the Dutch 'Golden Age', salt was worth quite some money.
In Roman times, soldiers were already paid with salt, hence the word 'salarium' ('salary' or 'salaris'). The Bonairean salt ponds now belong to 'Cargill', a huge multinational that ships the salt crystals to all over the world.
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Caption: I tried to take a picture of six iguanas sitting on a wall, but they saw my phone and came running towards it - I blamed the little apple on the back. Or my Targaryen blood, of course. 🐉
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Caption: The people of Bonaire used to fish for 'karkos', aka conches, that live in the Lac Cai lagoon. They'd drill a hole in their shells to blow the 30 centimeters (12 inches) long mollusks out and threw the empty hulls on a huge pile, resulting in a massive 'shell graveyard'.
Nowadays, karkos are protected creatures, and hunting them is illegal. Restaurant menus do offer grown, imported conches from Venezuela though (I haven't tried them yet!). 🐚
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Caption: On the island, barred snack bars like the one on the next picture are very popular because they sell alcohol for a low price and they're open until late at night. We saw a lot of people drink and drive - one guy was sipping from a bottle of gin while driving his big-ass SUV.
There are a few big supermarkets on Bonaire (there even is an Albert Heijn which almost only sells imported Dutch stuff), and the smaller super markets are often run by Asian folks.
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Caption: On the next picture you'll see George Thodé, the chief ranger of Bonaire's Washington Slagbaai National Park. He just came back from his first trip to The Netherlands.
"I saw 'fog' for the first time," he told us, "I woke up and all of the houses were gone!" He liked the cold climate though: "It's nice and chilly. The wind is like the air-conditioning in my car."
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Caption: Did I already mention Bonaire is a beautiful island? It is. To conclude this Steller story, here are 4 more pictures of the island.
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Caption: _______ BY JOOST BASTMEIJER instagram.com/joostbastmeijer