What a great little island, nestled between Aruba and Bonaire just north of Venezuela.  For such a tiny and relatively unknown island for Americans, it is rich in culture and history.  The island is dotted with old forts to prevent pirates and enemy nations from entering some of the bays.  We could see a fort and the old governor’s mansion from our house, which overlooked Caracasbaai (Caracas Bay in Dutch I believe).  Curaҫao was used as a hub for shipping slaves to the New World, and we later learned from a Dutch expatriate (more later) that Curaҫao was used as a location to place slaves who were not fit to work.  This is a very tragic and embarrassing part of history for Curaҫao and they don’t like to talk about it, but I feel that it is important to keep history alive—so it doesn’t happen again.

The main language on Curaҫao is Papiamento, followed by Dutch and then a tie between Spanish and English.  Most menus and a lot of signs were in Dutch.  Papiamento is a hybrid of multiple languages mostly based on Spanish with heavy Dutch, English, and African influences.  “Bon bini” is the common phrase and means “welcome!”  Despite the language differences, I felt no trouble communicating with people, their accent was understandable and everyone spoke English…well, almost everyone.  We took a walk by the floating market in the Punda district of Willemstad where boats from Venezuela come every day to sell fresh fish and produce right from the boat.  This was really cool and is a popular place to get food for the locals.  The fruit looked too good to pass up, so, after conversing with a Venezuelan in Spanish for a few minutes, I was able to buy a good amount of watermelon, mangoes, and a pineapple from him for 15 Antillean Guilder, or about $8.  We turned this into a fruit salad to go with our Memorial Day cookout.  Just because we’re on vacation doesn’t mean our troops are too!

I found the people to be exceptionally nice considering they had to deal with our driving and language.  We had a waitress one day named Martha (pronounced Mar-ta) who we asked if she knew a company who would take us on a boat tour.  Martha said no, but came back a few minutes later and hooked us up with her friend John (the Dutch expatriate) who gave us a tour on his boat boasting twin 300s!  This was one of the highlights of the trip.  It’s kind of funny thinking that we got on a boat with a random stranger, but he gave us a great tour and shared great stories.  We got his contact information in case we ever go back, we’ll be sure to meet up with him again.

Curaҫao is known as a snorkeling/scuba diving hotspot, shadowed by its neighbor—Bonaire.  Snorkeling is one of my favorite activities on vacation.  I’ve been privileged to snorkel in Hawai’i, Duck Key, Key West, Jamaica, The Bahamas, St. Lucia, and now Curaҫao.  I love marine life and it’s always fun being on a boat and just getting to float around in the water and talk with other tourists.  On our last full-day, we went snorkeling on a catamaran we had seen around the island through a tour company.  They took us to two spots, both in front of the fort and mansion mentioned earlier.  The main spot to go snorkeling in Curaҫao is where a tugboat sunk some 30 years ago.  It’s covered in coral and marine life which has become quite accustomed to humans.  I was swimming in the middle of a school of tiny fish, literally surrounded 360 degrees by hundreds of these fish just inches from my camera lens—what an experience!  The tugboat was surrounded by hundreds of fish of all different types.  I even got a few pictures of some barracuda, sea urchins, flounder, and a fish that looked like a sergeant major.  We also had some fun diving off of the catamaran into the clear blue water.  They also served us an intense lunch for an excursion like this.  The island is teeming with wildlife, and we had no issue finding an array of lizard species, including several over three feet long—but they run at any hint of your presence.

I learned some tips that I think will be useful for future travelers to Curaҫao.  I learned that spelling is optional.  On anything, there are frequent typos.  For example, “pork” was spelled “porc.”  Even though they have phones, answering them is purely optional.  There is no GPS network there and there are rarely street signs and what street signs exist aren’t reflective, so they are impossible to see at night.  Arrive in Curaҫao in the day with a map to avoid navigation issues.  The street names are in a different language, so pronouncing them is difficult only adding to the navigation issues.  With all that said, no one had any issues getting anywhere, but it is easy enough to get lost.  When sitting down at a restaurant, you must ask for a menu—I guess it’s not implied that when your hostess seats you that you intend to also eat.  And Diet Coke is called and labeled as Coke Light in Curaҫao.

All-in-all, it was a great trip and I would highly recommend anyone to travel there.  The people are nice, the weather is great year round (they don’t get hurricanes, they’re too far south), the food is exceptional!  I think my 700+ pictures are proof that I enjoyed myself!