Washington Slagbaai National Park

Washington Slagbaai National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Washington Slagbaai occupies the whole north-western end of Bonaire, a small, dry Dutch island in the southern Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela, of which it covers nearly a fifth, and it is the island's one large area of wild land, a complete contrast to the hotels and dive shops of the capital, Kralendijk. The entrance lies beyond the old village of Rincon, about forty-five minutes by road from Kralendijk. The park is managed by STINAPA, the island's non-profit parks foundation, and admission is covered by the nature fee that every visitor to Bonaire must pay in any case, the receipt for which, with identification, is shown at the gate. The essential point is the vehicle: the park's roads are one-way dirt tracks, steep, rocky and rutted, and only a pickup truck or another vehicle with high clearance is admitted, ordinary hire cars, scooters and quad bikes being turned away, which is why many visitors prefer the guided day trips from Kralendijk or Rincon in a suitable vehicle, with snorkelling gear and a picnic lunch.

At the entrance are a small museum, in the buildings of the old plantation house, toilets, and the start of two short walking trails. Two driving routes, marked in colours, leave from it: the short one, of twenty-four kilometres, which takes about an hour and a half, and the long one, of thirty-four kilometres, which follows the wild north coast before crossing to the west and needs two and a half hours without stops, and in practice most of a day. The gate opens at eight and admits no one after mid-afternoon, those intending the long route or the climb of the hill having to enter considerably earlier, and everyone must be out by five. There is no food, drinking water or fuel inside.

Visiting Washington Slagbaai National Park: what you will see

The park consists of two former plantations. Washington, the northern one, was bought by the government on the death of its last owner, Julio Caesar Herrera, known as Boy, who had stipulated that it should never be developed, and was opened in 1969 as the first nature sanctuary in the Netherlands Antilles; the adjoining plantation of Slagbaai was added in 1979, making 5,643 hectares in all. From the seventeenth century such estates had produced what little the arid island could yield, goats, charcoal, aloe resin, divi-divi pods for tanning, and salt, and at Boka Slagbaai, whose name is a corruption of the Dutch for slaughter bay, the goats were killed and salted and shipped to Curacao; the ochre-painted customs house, storehouse and manager's dwelling of the 1860s still stand on the beach beside a salt lagoon, and make the most attractive stop in the park. The landscape is a rugged one of low volcanic hills, the oldest rock on the island, surrounded by terraces of fossil coral limestone raised from the sea in steps, and covered with thorn scrub and a forest of columnar cacti, the kadushi and the yatu, which the islanders use for soup and for living fences, with prickly pear, acacia, brazilwood, from which a red dye was once exported, and wind-bent divi-divi trees.

Mount Brandaris, 241 metres, is the highest point of Bonaire, climbed by a marked path, which becomes a scramble over boulders at the top, in forty-five minutes to an hour and a half, with a view in clear weather to Curacao and the mountains of Venezuela. The north coast is a wall of jagged limestone, battered by the trade-wind swell, with blowholes at Suplado, the narrow inlet of Boka Kokolishi, with its black sand of crushed shells, and the little lighthouse of Seru Bentana; turtles nest on the pocket beaches. The west coast is sheltered, and Playa Funchi, Wayaka, with a flight of steps down to a tiny beach, and Boka Slagbaai offer some of the finest snorkelling on an island famous for it, among parrotfish, angelfish and elkhorn coral a few metres from the shore, for the waters belong to the Bonaire marine park. The salt lagoons, above all Salina Slagbaai and the Gotomeer, which lies just outside the boundary, hold Caribbean flamingos, of a startling pink, which feed here and breed in the south of the island. At the watering places of Pos Mangel and Put Bronswinkel one may wait for the lora, the yellow-shouldered amazon parrot, a threatened species of which Bonaire has one of the few healthy populations, for parakeets, troupials, bananaquits, pearly-eyed thrashers and caracaras. Green iguanas, blue whiptail lizards, and feral goats and donkeys, which do great damage to the vegetation, are everywhere.

Washington Slagbaai National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open daily from 8 am to 5 pm, except on a few public holidays, and closes, sometimes for days, after heavy rain, when the tracks become impassable. Bonaire lies outside the hurricane belt and is warm, sunny and windy all year, about 30 degrees, with a short rainy season from October to January, when showers are brief, the scrub turns green and the closures occur; the driest and windiest months are February to June. The trade wind makes the heat deceptive, and the sun is fierce.

Enter at opening time, climb Brandaris first, while it is cool, and snorkel in the afternoon. Bring far more water than seems necessary, food, reef-safe sunscreen, a hat, sturdy shoes for the hill, water shoes for the rocky entries, snorkelling gear and a spare tyre in working order. Allow a full day. Rincon, the oldest village on the island, with its cactus distillery, is ten minutes from the gate, the Gotomeer fifteen, and Kralendijk forty-five.