Netherlands’ Last True Wilderness
Netherlands is known for tulips, dykes, windmills and such, its beaches are not usually one of them. And yet, north of the mainland is a string of islands fringed with ribbons of the most pristine sands. These are known as the Wadden Islands and they are separated from the mainland by the Waddenzee, or Wadden sea. The word ‘wad’ means wetlands and this region, shaped by the dynamic interplay between strong tidal currents and the wind, is considered to be the Netherlands’ last true wilderness. This rich natural diversity characterizes many of the region’s islands. Stretching from Den Helder on the Dutch mainland, to Esbjerg in southern Denmark and Germany’s north-western coast, the Wadden region covers 10,000 square kilometers, making it Europe’s largest area of tidal mudflats and one of the most important wetland areas in the world.
Twice a day, the scenery changes drastically as the tides go in and out, exposing vast mudflats teeming with life. This is one of Europe’s richest feeding grounds for birds. Surprisingly, it is here, and not some Spanish playa, that you will find Europe’s widest beach. This claim to fame is made by the smallest and most easterly of the islands, Schiermonnikoog, which was also voted the most beautiful place in the Netherlands. While Schiermonnikoog may be a paradise for birds, Terschelling, the middle island, attracts flocks of a different kind. Every summer 50,000 visitors come to see a ten day, open-air theater festival called Oerol, one of Europe’s biggest. The word means ‘everywhere’ in the local dialect and refers to the springtime tradition of letting cattle and sheep roam freely. What started 28 years ago has since become an island tradition. During Oerol everyone cycles from one show to the other.
Terschelling’s Brandaris lighthouse offers a view of a different type of open-air performance entirely. Against an ever, changing backdrop of sea and sky, ships of all descriptions navigate the Wadden sea in an intricate maritime choreography. From a height of over 50 meters, the VTS operators stationed here are the maritime equivalent of air traffic controllers. They are the eyes and ears of the entire Dutch Wadden area. Dating from 1594, this is the oldest lighthouse in the Netherlands and the view is sublime. The lighthouse isn’t open to visitors, but a tandem parachute jump at Texel’s parachute center, Paracentrum Texel, can provide that sought after bird’s eye view. This is one of the world’s best places to jump, you can see the whole coastline and you get the most amazing castles of cumulus clouds. However, if you don’t fancy jumping, the ways of discovering the Dutch Wadden islands are as varied as the islands themselves. For some, the ideal Wadden experience is speeding down the beach in a wind-powered cart, or island-hopping by sailboat. Yet others swear that the most scenic spots are discovered on foot. If in doubt, just wait and see which way the wind blows you upon arrival, the very wind which helped sculpt these islands.
Standing on this endless sandy expanse, waves crash down in the distance on one side and on the other side rolling dunes disappear into the horizon. In between is nothing but beach four kilometers wide and 18 kilometers long. But more impressive even than the size is the resounding emptiness. There is nobody around. “Keep your eyes peeled for seals,” said Teun Talsma, as a volunteer for a seal rescue organization, he is one of the few people allowed to drive on the beach. In fact, even off the beach there are not many cars as visitors must leave them on the mainland. Teun spends a lot of time on the beach, and knows exactly when the sea is likely to cough up some treasure. “Once the beach was covered with bananas. I’ve found brand-new trousers, Nike sports shoes, lemonade, we had enough bottles for the whole island for a year,” he said. He saw it as a form of divine recycling. “If something was thrown into your lap through a higher power, you had to accept it. If you’re not a beachcomber, you’re not a real islander,” is his motto. Judging by the netting, weathered wood and brightly colored buoys outside many houses in the island’s only town, there are a lot of real islanders. As also a serious birdwatcher, Teun’s records go back to 1963. At his farm, over a kobbeslokje, a local liqueur, he sums up the island’s appeal: “There are always more birds than people.” The demographics are indeed impressive, with 1,000 residents versus the 500,000 birds which stop off here annually. Most of the island is a nature reserve, and during the spring breeding season, a large section is reserved for up to 150 different species of birds, from Eurasian spoonbills to hen harriers.
The Majority of Travelers to Bonaire
Bonaire is an island without even a single set of traffic lights. Here, fish and flamingos outnumber people. Bonaire has largely avoided the kind of development that blights other Caribbean islands, the glitzy resorts and malls, jet skis and beach-side discos. This island, the least populated of the so-called ABC islands of the Leeward Antilles (the others being Aruba and Curacao), prides itself on pioneering sustainable tourism, the first nature reserve and marine park in the Caribbean were founded here exactly 40 years ago. It helps that the beaches aren’t big enough to accommodate mass tourism, and also that the majority of nightlife here is underwater. That underwater activity is exactly what draws the majority of travelers to Bonaire. With over 500 species of fish, visibility up to 50 meters and calm waters, the island is considered one of the premier dive sites in the Caribbean, and it is certainly one of the best managed.
Bonaire tries hard to educate both visitors and residents about the fragility of the reef, its major asset. Regulations “it’s forbidden to dive wearing gloves”, for example, are aimed at minimizing damage. Yellow stones mark the island’s 62 diving and snorkeling sites, plus 24 more on the neighboring islet of Klein Bonaire, and all of them have fixed moorings to protect the reef. So glorious is Bonaire’s marine life that you only have to walk a few hundred meters from the airport and don a mask to enter an astonishing, through the looking glass world filled with brain-jolting colors and psychedelic patterns, where purplish blue tangs nibble at algae, while clouds of yellow-tailed jack fish and blue-striped grunts weave through luxuriant blooms of coral. Vividly pigmented parrot fish, in glowing shades of blue, yellow, green and red, seem to be everywhere. Not much further away, off Klein Bonaire, turtles wing alongside you, seemingly without fear, above an ocean floor carpeted with colored sponges and Daliesque coral forms.
Above water, the island landscape is equally surreal. With its arid climate, Bonaire is a true desert island. In the national park of Slagbaai, the hilly terrain is densely forested with giant candelabra cactuses, some five meters tall, like fantastically oversize pot plants. Between them is a dense blanket of thorny foliage, prickly pears and fat, round Turk’s Head cactuses. The landscape rustles, whistles and screeches with life, with lizards, iguanas, parakeets, tropical mockingbirds, scarlet and black trupials and yellow-shouldered parrots. See them flying overhead, in perfect formation, and their grace surprises, they look so clumsy and ungainly on the ground, picking the shrimps that give them their rosy tint out of the briny waters of Lake Gotomeer. At its fringes, the island gradually morphs into a barren moonscape of bleached rock, with here and there a twisted divi divi tree, bent at a 90 degree angle to avoid the ever present trade winds and just about clinging on to land and life. The white rock bears the recognizable imprints of brain corals and sea fans, a reminder that the island, actually, the peak of a huge underwater mountain, is still rising out of the sea as the earth’s tectonic plates continue their inexorable drift.
Here and there are signs of Bonaire’s mysterious past, rock carvings left by the island’s first inhabitants, Caquetio Indians who sailed here from Venezuela. There are the lighthouses built by the Dutch, Bonaire’s longest-ruling colonial masters (the island remains a part or the Kingdom the great outdoors in of the Netherlands to this day), and the bleak little huts, not tall enough for an adult to stand up in, where slaves brought from Africa lived while they labored in the southern salt flats. The salt flats are still here, stretches of blue, pink and purple water that, over an eight month period, gradually turn into thick crusts of snowy crystals, which is actually the island’s only export product.