Qualla: Washington Slagbaai National Park

Washington Slagbaai National Park: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD, CC BY-SA 3.0. The name gives away the history. "Slagbaai" translates from Dutch as "Slaughter Bay" -- a reference to the thousands of goats butchered here and shipped to Curacao during the colonial era. The other half, "Washington," was simply the name of the neighboring plantation. Together, these two former estates occupy the entire northwestern fifth of Bonaire, 5,643 hectares of thorny scrubland, hypersaline lagoons, and rocky coastline that became, in 1969, the first nature reserve established in the Netherlands Antilles. What was once a landscape organized around extraction -- salt, aloe, charcoal, livestock -- is now a landscape organized around what happens when extraction stops. The answer, it turns out, is flamingos.

Image: JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD | CC BY-SA 3.0

Washington Slagbaai National Park: Two Plantations, One Park

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD, CC BY-SA 3.0. Archaeological evidence shows that people lived in this area 3,600 years ago, long before the plantations that gave the park its name. Plantation Slagbaai was established in 1868, producing salt from the natural saliñas -- shallow, hypersaline ponds left behind when ancient sea l...

Image: JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD | CC BY-SA 3.0

Washington Slagbaai National Park: Brandaris and the View from the Top

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Boris Kasimov from Toronto, Canada, CC BY 2.0. Mount Brandaris, at 241 meters, is Bonaire's highest point, and it sits within the park. The hike to the summit takes roughly 45 minutes along a moderate incline through the thorny, low-growing scrubland that characterizes most of the park's vegetation -- xerophytic shrubs and ka...

Image: Boris Kasimov from Toronto, Canada | CC BY 2.0

Washington Slagbaai National Park: A Refuge for the Threatened

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble, CC BY 2.0. The park's saliñas, the same salt pans that once supported a modest industry, now serve as nesting and foraging grounds for Caribbean flamingos. During the dry season, the birds concentrate in the park's five major lagoons. In the rainy season, they scatter to temporary pools tha...

Image: Paul Asman and Jill Lenoble | CC BY 2.0

Washington Slagbaai National Park: What Grows Back

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Burley - User: (WT-shared) Khemicals at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 1.0. Washington Slagbaai is managed by STINAPA Bonaire, a nonprofit foundation that operates on behalf of the island government. The park's story is not one of untouched nature but of recovery -- a landscape that was farmed, grazed, harvested, and abandoned, and that has spent the pas...

Image: David Burley - User: (WT-shared) Khemicals at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 1.0