Sorobon

Sorobon is on the wrong side of Bonaire — the windward side, the side the diving industry ignores, the side where the trade winds come in off the Atlantic without breaking and the water doesn’t have the protected stillness of the leeward coast. To get there you drive south past Lac Bay, through the salt pan landscapes and the flat scrub, and eventually reach a small resort that is almost the only developed accommodation on this coast. The road conditions the approach: by the time you arrive, you’ve already felt the wind through the truck’s windows, already seen how it moves through the cactus in a way that it doesn’t on the other side of the island’s spine.

The lagoon at Sorobon is formed by a long sand spit that curves out from the main coastline, creating a sheltered stretch of flat water that is simultaneously exposed to the wind and protected from the open ocean swell. This combination makes it one of the best windsurfing locations in the Caribbean — the water is flat enough for control, the wind is strong enough for speed, and the shallowness means that when you fall, you fall into waist-deep water rather than the open sea. I do not windsurf. I watched from the beach for two hours on my second visit, genuinely transfixed by the geometry of it: the angle of the sail against the sky, the spray jumping off the board’s nose, the way a skilled windsurfer appears to have negotiated personally with the physics rather than submitted to them.

The resort that operates here has been running since the 1970s and has the slightly time-blurred quality of a place that found what it was early and didn’t feel the need to update it. The cabanas face the water. There’s a restaurant-bar that serves cold beer and food with the pace of somewhere that doesn’t care what hour you’re eating. I had a late lunch there that stretched into early evening without anyone noticing or minding. The clientele are mostly returning visitors — windsurfers and kitesurfers who know the winds here by name, who compare this year’s conditions to last year’s with the earnestness of farmers comparing harvests.

What Sorobon gives you that the leeward coast doesn’t is the feeling of the island’s original exposure — the sense of what Bonaire is when the diving infrastructure and the marine park designations are not the organizing principle. The sea here is a different colour from the leeward side: less saturated, darker in the channels, running white with wind chop at the lagoon’s open mouth. The birds are different too. Magnificent frigatebirds hang in the thermals above the entrance with the menacing stillness of kites, waiting for whatever the wind delivers. Roseate terns dive at angles into the shallow flats. The cactus comes almost to the sand.

The beach itself — soft sand, shallow entry — is the closest thing Bonaire has to a conventional Caribbean beach, which tells you something about the island’s general indifference to that standard. It is not long, not postcard-perfect, and not crowded. Most people on it are either preparing to enter the water or recovering from having been in it.

When to go: Sorobon’s wind is most consistent between December and July — peak season for wind sports. January through April offers the most reliable conditions and clearest skies. The beach itself is pleasant in the calmer months too, but the lagoon loses its character without the wind. If you’re coming specifically to windsurf or kite, book gear rental in advance during the Christmas and Easter holiday peaks.