The diver's island — a marine park that wraps the entire coast, shore diving at 60+ sites reachable by pickup truck, and flamingos at the salt flats
Bonaire, a flat coral island in the southern Caribbean 80km north of Venezuela, is almost entirely defined by its relationship to the sea. The Bonaire National Marine Park — established in 1979, one of the world's first — protects the entire coastline and the reefs that drop off from the shore in walls of coral to depths of 60m. The diving is exceptional: over 60 named sites marked by yellow-painted stones, reachable by driving a pickup truck to the shore and walking in — no boat needed. The coral health is markedly better than most Caribbean sites because Bonaire has no rivers (no agricultur…
Bonaire was inhabited by Caquetío people (Arawak) when the Spanish arrived in 1499. The Spanish used it primarily as a source of enslaved indigenous labour for Hispaniola; the Caquetío were nearly wiped out within a generation. The Dutch West India Company took control in 1636, and Bonaire became a salt-production island using enslaved African labour — the slave huts at the Rode Pan salt pans, where enslaved workers slept during the work week before walking home on weekends, are preserved as a historical site. Bonaire became a special municipality of the Netherlands in 2010.