Today, we go around the national park. It takes all the northern part of the island. The east is windward side, and some places looks like a lunar landscape (never been on the moon, but that’s a common place to say).
Along the coast, there is display of the geological formation of Bonaire, where the three layers that form the island are clearly visible. When diving, you can see some sorts of similar formation as well, but it’s less common to see them like this.
It has a lot of “boka”, which are very narrow but deep creeks that have been dig into the land by the strength of the waves for millenniums. A majority of those bokas end up with a small sand patch, and they are natural nesting places for sea turtles. But some of them have not been dug long enough and ends up with an abrupt wall, and the waves crush strongly against them; there are some places where some invisible rock formation creates the ideal condition to eject water in the air.
The west side of the park continues to be much higher than the sea level with sharp cliff of several meters. But the bokas on that side are protected from the wind, so some of them don’t have crushing waves. There even is a sandy beach at boka Slagbaai, Jackie goes snorkelling and I decide to go for an easy shore dive. There is quite a lot of current, so I don’t go too far from the shore line and remain at a very conservative depth. Again, I find the variety and quantity in marine life a bit disappointing. I wanted to take the opportunity to experiment some settings with my new TG5 and its underwater case, but I need some more of that…
