Bonaire
From Freepedia
- For other uses, see Bonaire (disambiguation).
Bonaire is an island in the Netherlands Antilles. Together with Aruba and Curaçao it forms a group referred to as the ABC islands. While English, Papiamento and Spanish are commonly spoken, the official language is Dutch.
Bonaire has a land area of 288 km² (111 sq. miles). At the 2001 Netherlands Antilles census, the population was 10,791 inhabitants, which means a population density of 37 inh. per km². In 2004 the population was estimated at 10,185 inhabitants.
Salt
Exploiting its natural topography, Bonaire has been a major supplier of salt to the USA for many years, and continues to do so through the flooding of flat-lands with sea water. Bonaire was originally settled by the Dutch in the late 15th century as a source of salt, using the same evaporative methods used today, albeit on a small scale. Much of the early population of the island was in the form of slaves used to work the salt ponds. Today the slave huts remain as a historical site, and are the names of two popular dive sites "Red-" and "White Slave Huts." Salt production today covers much of the southern half of the island, and is run by the industrial giant Cargill.
Diving and Other Natural Features
Bonaire is world renowned for its excellent scuba diving and snorkeling consistently rated among the top shore diving and Caribbean diving locations in the world. The island is ringed by a coral reef that is easily accessible from the shore along the Western and Southern sides. Furthermore, the entire coastline of the island has been declared a marine sanctuary, preserving local fish life. It is also famed for its flamingo populations and its donkey sanctuary.
Washington Slagbaai National Park, located at the north side of the island, is an ecological preserve. The highest point of Bonaire, Brandaris, located within this preserve has a complete view of the island.
Lac Bay on the eastern side of the island is a windsurfing|windsurfer's paradise. Locals Taty and Tonky Frans in 2004 were ranked in the top five of the world's freestyle windsurfing professionals.
Klein Bonaire is a small, uninhabited island just off the coast of the main island, called Klein Bonaire.It is within the rough crescent formed by the main island. In the view from space shown in the photgraph above, the north/south axis is horizontal. Klein Bonaire actually lies to the west of the main island.
External links
- www.gov.an - official governmental portal of the Netherlands Antilles
- Bonaire-gov.an - official website of the government of Bonaire
- BonaireEconomy.org - Department of Economic & Labour Affairs (DELA)
- InfoBonaire.com - Tourism Board of Bonaire
- Lonely Planet - Bonaire
- Caribbean Adventures - Bonaire
Maps of Bonaire 12.16° N -68.23° E
- MapQuest: out 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 in
- Multimap: out 4M 2M 1M 500k 200k in
- MSN World Atlas: out 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 in
- Google satellite image
Mapquest zoom level 7 only has the Kralendijk region; this region is also available in zoom level 8, 9, and 10.
