Sunday, July 6, 2008

Island Tour


Bonaire is just above Venezuela in the Netherlands Antilles. It's famous for it's donkeys, flamingos, scuba diving, and the salt mines. We got to see all of these. We drove around the island in our little truck and saw all of the sites with our friends M and A. It was a great day.


One side of the island has these amazing waves that are just huge. We stood on the rocks watching them for quite awhile. Red Fish got a big kick out of watching the spray.

We saw the salt mines that are a huge part of Boanire's history. They were originally run by slaves during the 1800s when salt was huge commodity for food preservation. The slaves lived in these really sad little huts that are still there.

The huts are positively tiny. I'm not sure how many people were forced to live in each one but I'm sure it was too many.
There are four obelisks, each painted a different color, red, white, blue and orange (the colors of the Dutch Flag and the Royal House of Orange). They were erected strategically near areas of the salt lake. The idea was to signal ships where to pick up their cargoes of salt. A flag of the corresponding color was raised atop a flagpole, thus signalling the ship's captain where to drop anchor.
The salt is in these huge mounds next to the fields of water they use to evaporate the salt.

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