Travel on Bonaire: an island where the reef starts at the road

How visitors reach Bonaire and the other two islands

Almost every visitor to Bonaire arrives at Flamingo International Airport, south of Kralendijk, built by the United States Army during the Second World War and opened in 1945. The Wikipedia article lists scheduled services from the United States and the Netherlands and short flights from Curaçao, the neighbouring island to the west. In November 2024 JetBlue began flying from New York, and the Tourism Corporation Bonaire recorded 19,522 visitors arriving in December that year. Of all stay-over visitors in 2024, 45% came from the Netherlands, 25% from the United States and 13% from Curaçao, and 56% had been before.

Cruise passengers arrive at the terminal in Kralendijk for a day: Statistics Netherlands counted 392,100 in 2023, against 457,800 in 2019. The major cruise lines do not call at Sint Eustatius or Saba.

Since 1 July 2022 every non-resident visitor has paid a visitor entry tax to the public body of Bonaire, which replaced the old room tax and car rental tax. It is paid online before travel or on arrival, and the QR code that confirms payment is scanned at the airport. Residents of the former Netherlands Antilles and children pay a reduced rate. Cruise passengers pay a separate charge collected by the cruise line. The Dutch government points travellers from the Netherlands to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' travel advice for the three islands, published in Dutch.

Bonaire runs on Atlantic Standard Time, four hours behind UTC all year, with no summer time. The currency is the US dollar, and cars drive on the right.

When the wind and the rain suit a visit

Bonaire is warm and dry all year, and the difference between seasons is mostly wind and rain. The Meteorological Department of Curaçao's normals for 1971 to 2000 give an average air temperature of 28.0°C and show how little the months differ:

Rain falls mainly from October to January, often in short showers, though InfoBonaire's KNMI-based summary notes that when the trade winds slacken in October and early November rain can last longer. The wind blows from the east more than 95% of the time and is strongest from February to June, which is when windsurfers favour Lac Bay; from mid-August to mid-November it drops and occasionally reverses, which flattens the sea and suits divers on the more exposed sites. Sunshine is steady through the year, and the sun is strong enough that local guides warn visitors to build up exposure slowly. The island lies south of the main hurricane belt.

How shore diving works on Bonaire

The Bonaire National Marine Park covers the sea around Bonaire and Klein Bonaire from the high-water line to a depth of 60 metres. Along the west coast the reef begins at the low-tide mark, so a diver can walk in from the shore; the Wikipedia article puts the tidal range at only 55 to 60 centimetres. The park lists 86 public dive sites, and the Wikipedia article reports 89 named sites in STINAPA's own count; the reefs hold about 60 species of coral and more than 350 recorded species of fish. Klein Bonaire, an uninhabited islet off Kralendijk, is reached by boat or water taxi, and the old Salt Pier in the south, part of the salt works, is itself a dive site.

The park has no subsidy. It runs on an entrance fee paid by every diver, with a lower fee for swimmers, snorkellers, kayakers, windsurfers and kitesurfers, and the same fee gives entry to Washington Slagbaai National Park. Rules change with the reef's health. Because of stony coral tissue loss disease, diving is suspended off Washington Slagbaai, Klein Bonaire is closed to visitors in the afternoons and divers are asked to disinfect their gear at rinse stations between sites; snorkellers entering Washington Slagbaai stop at a ranger station to do the same.

Most resorts and hotels have a dive shop on site or an arrangement with one. The shops teach courses for the PADI, NAUI, SSI and CMAS certifications, rent tanks and gear, run boat dives and snorkelling trips, and some blend gases for technical diving. Bonaire hosts a dive festival in November with guided shore and boat dives, underwater photography workshops and talks on marine biology.

What the north of the island holds

Washington Slagbaai National Park covers the northwest of the island. Its gate and visitor centre stand at the old Washington plantation entrance, with a museum, signposted walks and roads open to cars and mountain bikes. Inside are Brandaris, at 240 metres the island's highest point, with a view over the whole island, the Ramsar wetlands of Gotomeer and Slagbaai, inlets, dunes on the north coast and freshwater springs. At Slagbaai stand four yellow plantation buildings put up in 1868 and 1869, among them the customs office and the salt storehouse. Parrots, parakeets, flamingos and iguanas are found in the park, the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance notes, the yellow-shouldered amazon among them.

Rincon, in a valley in the north settled under Spanish rule, is the place to see Bonaire's own festivals: Dia di Rincon on 30 April, the Simadan harvest feasts in spring and Nos Zjilea, a market of local food, crafts and music on the last Saturday of each month at the Mangazina di Rei cultural park. Caquetío rock paintings survive in caves at Onima and Spelonk, and the island has more than 200 caves, some of them home to bats.

What the flat south holds

South of the airport the road runs along the coast past the salt works, where seawater evaporates in pink and turquoise ponds and the harvested salt stands in white pyramids beside the loading pier. Flamingos feed in the ponds and in the Pekelmeer behind them; the breeding sanctuary itself is closed to people. Along the same road, 13 and 18 kilometres from Kralendijk, stand the two rows of stone huts built in 1850 for the enslaved salt workers, with an obelisk beside each to guide ships to the right pan. They are free to visit at any hour.

At the southern tip a windsock in the Dutch colours marks the southernmost point of the Netherlands, with Venezuela about 90 kilometres away. On the windward east coast, Lac Bay is a shallow lagoon behind a barrier reef across its mouth, where the trade wind blows strong and constant and the reef lets windsurfers of every level pick the conditions they want. Sorobon, on its shore, has hosted rounds of the professional freestyle windsurfing world cup, among them in 2014. The mangroves at the north end of the bay can be explored by kayak.

How visitors get around Bonaire without a bus

There is no public bus service on Bonaire. Collective taxis run between Kralendijk and Rincon, ordinary taxis wait at the airport and in town, cars are rented at the airport, and bicycles and scooters in Kralendijk. Water taxis leave from the centre of Kralendijk for Klein Bonaire and several resorts along the coast.

Distances are short: the island measures 38.6 kilometres from end to end, Rincon lies about 12 kilometres from Kralendijk and the salt huts 13 to 18. Donkeys, goats and pigs descended from the animals the Spanish landed in the 16th century roam freely, and a donkey sanctuary gives a protected home to the island's donkeys.

What visitors find in Kralendijk

Kralendijk is small enough to walk. The Tourism Corporation Bonaire's historical walking tour lists 25 sites in the centre, among them Fort Oranje of 1639, whose cannons date from between 1808 and 1812, the government office built as the governor's house in 1837, the Protestant church of 1847, the Pasangrahan of about 1890 where the island council now meets, and a monument to the Bonaireans who died at sea in the Second World War. The main shopping street, Kaya Grandi, keeps houses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries with shops below and living space above. At the old fish market of 1935 a boat from Venezuela sells fruit and vegetables each week.

The Terramar Museum holds exhibitions on the island's history, and Wilhelmina Park on the waterfront is where the flag is raised on Dia di Boneiru, 6 September. Taste of Bonaire, a local food and music evening, is held four times a year. Two public beaches lie close to the centre: one known as Windsock, about 1.5 kilometres south at the western end of the airport runway, and another about 2 kilometres north at the site of the Bonaire Sunset Beach Hotel. Klein Bonaire, whose beaches are turtle nesting grounds, is a short water-taxi ride away. In October the Bonaire International Sailing Regatta fills the waterfront and hotels for a week; its swim to Klein Bonaire has drawn more than 700 swimmers.

What visitors hear and eat on Bonaire

Papiamentu is the language of the street and the radio, but visitors rarely need it. Statistics Netherlands found in 2021 that more than three quarters of Bonaire's residents also speak English and Dutch, and Spanish was the main language of about 15%. Official business is conducted in Dutch.

Local food is easiest to find at the festivals and at Taste of Bonaire: kabritu stobá, stewed goat, with funchi, a cornmeal staple, piska kriyá, fried fish, and pan bati, a corn bread.

How visitors reach Saba and Sint Eustatius

The sources on file list no direct service between Bonaire and the two other islands in the record, which lie more than 800 kilometres to the north; both are reached from Sint Maarten. Saba's Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport has a landing strip of about 400 metres, open only to small short-take-off aircraft flown by specially trained pilots, with flights to Sint Maarten and Sint Eustatius, and two ferries cross from Sint Maarten three times a week each to Fort Bay, the island's only harbour. The only road, built by hand between 1938 and 1958, climbs from the airport through Windwardside and The Bottom to Fort Bay, and the Saba tourism office calls a half-hour drive on it an attraction in itself. Mount Scenery National Park takes in every vegetation zone on the island, from dry coastal scrub to cloud forest, and The Ladder, about 800 steps cut in stone, climbs from Ladder Bay to The Bottom, the route by which goods once came ashore.

Sint Eustatius has the F. D. Roosevelt Airport, with flights to Sint Maarten and Anguilla. Visitors come for the Quill, whose trails lead up through woodland to the forest in its crater, and for diving at the more than 30 sites of the marine park around the island, among wrecks, lava flows and archaeological remains. Tourism on both islands is small: Statistics Netherlands counted 5,800 visitors by air on Sint Eustatius and 5,700 on Saba in 2023.