The One Thing EVERY Traveler MUST Know About the Bottled Water in Bonaire

7/9/2016

Three weeks ago, I had never heard of a place called Bonaire. But then, one day, I decided to Google "world's best shore diving," and Bonaire kept showing up -- usually in the number one spot -- on every list.

So I did an image search for Bonaire, fell in love, and booked a flight.

As my departure rapidly approached, I checked the CDC website to read their recommendations for water and food safety in Bonaire.

Like many things, the government got it all wrong.

As per the CDC recommendations:

Drink

Bottled water that is sealed
Water that has been disinfected
Ice made with bottled or disinfected water
Carbonated drinks
Hot coffee or tea
Pasteurized milk

Don’t Drink

Tap or well water
Ice made with tap or well water
Drinks made with tap or well water (such as reconstituted juice)
Unpasteurized milk

Okay, I thought. I'll bring mymost favorite piece of travel gear ever -- my Oko Advanced Filtration Water Bottle, which allows you to drink river, tap, or even mud puddle water from almost anywhere in the world safely -- without creating tons of plastic waste like bottled water would.

(I also bought a new Lifestraw GO Water Bottle, which I actually liked a little better -- the flow rate was faster.)

But very soon after I arrived in Bonaire, I realized something:

The person who made the bottled water recommendation has clearly never been to (or even Googled) Bonaire.

The drinking water here is perfectly safe. It comes from a desalination plant right here on the island. I have been drinking it this entire trip without any problems whatsoever.

How disappointing, then, that the US is making careless, clueless recommendations that cost travelers money while harming the environment.

I was at the grocery store the other day, and was sad to see so many travelers walking out of the store with tons of plastic. We all know exactly where that plastic is going to end up:

Note: this is NOT a picture from Bonaire. But it's not like they and their neighbors have such great waste management systems that I haven't seen any plastic washed up on the beaches here.

In short, buying bottled water in Bonaire is not only completely unnecessary -- it's also really horrible for the environment. So please don't. If you're super worried about the (completely safe) tap water here, invest in an Oko or a Lifestraw water bottle. That way, you can still minimize your plastic footprint and keep Bonaire beautiful.

4 Comments

Zeph

12/1/2016 03:27:02 am

"Like many things, the government got it all wrong. "

"How disappointing, then, that the US is making careless, clueless recommendations..."

Seems unduly harsh, unless one has exceedingly high expectations of every government agency and employee. If one wants to believe that government often gets everything wrong, then this sounds like confirmation bias personified. If one assumes that there must inherently be some mistakes in the millions of pages of information the US government publishes - along with many non-mistakes, then what's the big deal? Write and suggest an update, with citations. Now if you did a survey and found that most of the information on the CDC website about everywhere was wrong, that would be worth writing about. or if the CDC was promoting information which when it was wrong, erred in the direction of false assurances of safety.

"The person who made the bottled water recommendation has clearly never been to (or even Googled) Bonaire. "

Much better. Some employee at the CDC made a mistake regarding Bonaire, without indictment of the entire US government.

I would imagine that the person writing that might love to be funded to do frequent visits to Bonaire and other foreign islands so as to have up to date and accurate info for American tourists. I doubt they are tho.

Or we could expect them to do Google searches from time to time, and use that as the basis for the content of their website. The CDC, not having the resources to verify for itself, could just publish regurgitated google search results. After all, what could go wrong with that?

A quick search tells me that their desalination plant was upgraded and expanded in 2015; i don't know the state of it previous to that, and the quick search didn't reveal whether all drinking water on the island has always come only from the desalination plant.

Or we could take the CDC website as containing useful but imperfect and sometimes generic information about non-US locations, aimed at providing at least some advice to American tourists as a minor courtesy rather than a core mission; and assume that they will often need to use generic regional info biased towards safety rather than local knowledge; and then do our own up-to-the-moment google searches if we want more specific and current information.

Overall, I'd rather the CDC be careful NOT to give false assurances of safety based solely on a web search done at a given date. Which is worse (supposing that the CDC was the only source you checked) - your bringing your filters and not needing them, or you arriving without filters and needing them?

As for buying bottled water on the island - that's easily modified with local knowledge. "Ah, it turns out the local water is safe, so the CDC was overcautious; I won't be buying bottled water after all". Again, which is the wiser course for the CDC, if they don't have a mandate to do frequent and detailed investigations of all possible destinations - caution which can be relaxed with local information, or assurance which MUST be overridden with local information?

carpet cleaning Miami link

3/13/2017 10:49:42 pm

I am hoping the same best effort from you in the future as well. In fact your creative writing skills has inspired me.

Michael Richardson link

6/10/2018 11:14:55 pm

Thanks for sharing your experience. I also loves to travel. What I love about travelling is when I got to a place that have a good and clean water supply. I want to travel to Bonaire. I will include it to my bucketlist.

Nataly

4/17/2020 09:25:12 am

It is true about Bonaire tap water - very safe to drink and tastes awesome. We went to Bonaire and brought a bottle of sea water back with us ( in our checked baggage - of course) and tested a few times to see how clean it is. To our surprise, the sea water’s pH level was perfect. We have 4 reef tanks at home to which we use filtered osmosis water to do water change. If we live in Bonaire, I think we will use the sea water for our aquariums instead. Quick and easy. My point is Bonaire is one of the best place to visit. Coral reefs are phenomenal. We’ll definitely be back soon.

The One Thing EVERY Traveler MUST Know About the Bottled Water in Bonaire

Leave a Reply.

Want more?

Categories