KRALENDIJK, Bonaire (dpa) – Car number plates are as colourful as the coral reefs in Bonaire, the second largest island of the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean. This year they are yellow, in 1999 they were green and in 2001 they will be pink.
Yet unlike the coral reefs, this colour coding aims to detract rather than attract the interest of tourists. For vehicle number plates here all contain the island motto “Bonaire, N.A. – Divers Paradise,” which tourists find irresistible.
“Number plate theft was getting out of hand,” said Corinne Seket, a tourist guide on Bonaire. “Tourists just unscrewed them and took them away.” The authorities have therefore developed a system providing car owners with new plates in a new colour every year, and the old plates are sold to visitors.
Diving enthusiasts are not the first visitors to these islands to take something home with them: 500 years ago the Spanish occupied the ABC islands, as the Netherlands Antilles islands of Aruba Bonaire and Curacao are sometimes called. Since the stony coral beds did not offer much profit, they carried off Indians as mine workers to what is today Cuba.
Dutch merchants later came here, and have remained until today. They were more successful at doing business, and exported salt to Europe. The hot climate and very little rainfall was ideal for drying out sea water to produce salt. The labour was provided by African slaves. The demand for labour in the New World was so great, that trade in human beings became the most important source of money over the next 250 years.
Willemstad in Curacao flourished especially and became the rich centre of the Netherlands Antilles. Merchants houses dating from this period are painted bright colours because a governor with an eye complaint could not bear the sight of white facades. The United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation a few years ago declared Willemstad a world cultural heritage sight.
The slave trade died out in the middle of the 19th century. But the development of oil refineries further increased the islands’ wealth. Crude oil from Venezuela is refined on Aruba and Curacao.
Only Bonaire remained economically underdeveloped. Then in 1939 the Austrian zoologist Hans Hass made films of his expeditions of the underwater coral reefs here which fascinated millions of people and encouraged them to take up diving.
Visitors today can retrace his expeditions. When divers look down into the reef, it appears bottomless. If they look up, they see the black shapes of the fish in the light blue water.
The water here is so clear that the sea bed is clearly visible from a depth of 30 metres. The reef looks like a completely unplanned, crazy city with skyscrapers, telecom towers and swimming chimneys. Under the glare of the divers’ lamps, they show up their luminous bright yellow, blue and violet colours.
“The reefs around Bonaire are among the most protected in the world,” said diving instructor George van Vliet. “To make sure it remains that way, we offer every guest a free diving lesson. We want to make sure that the divers keep a reasonable distance from the fragile corals,” he said.
Diving conditions are similar on all the islands. Trade winds force waves to crash against the northern coasts and create strong currents, so that diving is only safe here on a few days of the year. Even then you risk meeting a shark. But the southern coasts are protected from the wind, making for easy diving in swimming pool conditions.
Visitors who take any notice of life above sea level will see some clear differences between the ABC islands. Aruba and Bonaire are poles apart. Aruba is small and nouveau riche, Bonaire is characterised by raw nature and is home to many thousands of flamingos.
The hotels on Aruba are skyscrapers. The architects seems to want to make them ever bigger, broader and brighter. They are square and practical, well suited to the majority of U.S. American tourists. But the island also offers classically tropical and dazzlingly white sand beaches and a constant wind that has made resorts such as Fisherman’s Hut famous for windsurfing.
Curacaou lies somewhere between these two opposites. The island is large and offers plenty of nature, but 170,000 inhabitants also work and live here. Tourism is important here, but it is not the only source of income. There is the port and the oil refineries.
And of course, there is the liquor, which comes not just in the usual blue. Like the car number plates on Bonaire, it also comes in green, red and yellow.
