Curacao!! Hello & Goodbye

I suppose it's true that time flies when you're having fun... but 4 nights in a country isn't going to feel like forever even if it didn't (fly).

We flew in on Monday, with our plane setting down at 7pm. Yikes! Lucky for us, there was a bus directly to the center (had to wait a good 40 minutes!), and so we just walked around until we found a nice hotel.

Trekking through the streets of Willemstad in search of a hotel

Our Hotel!

No Prostitutes.

The capital, Willemstad, is really the only place that most visitors see when they come to the island. It's divided into 2 main parts: Punda, where all the shops and cafes are located, and Otrobanda, where there are also shops, but fewer cafes. They're separated by the St. Anna  Bay (really just a channel), and connected by a floating bridge (and a tiny ferry, which shuttles passangers across in 4 minutes when the bridge is open).

On the Punda side of the water, there is the quintessential Willemstad postcard: the colorful Dutch-style buildings lining the waterfront. They're so proud of it here, they even put it on their license plates!

One familiar sight to locals is the cruise ship, and when we arrived there were two in town. One was docked in St. Anna Bay. From our picture taken from the Queen Emma Bridge, you can see the sky-high car bridge connecting the two main parts of downtown.

Besides the tourists, there seemed to be two things in Punda: expensive shops (Ralph Lauren, Levi, Lacoste, The United Colors of Benneton), and Banks, with ATMs scattered throughout. The purpose of this cute little historical district is obvious, and the visitors usually oblige. Heck, even I bought a pair of shorts.

The floating market in Punda

We even found a Dutch cheese vendor, who, after some delicious sampling, convinced us to buy some komijnekaas to replace our peanut butter sandwiches.

The city by night was equally stunning, and we went out a couple times to the Wilhelmina Plein (city square) for drinks. We discovered quickly though, that at night the flocks of tourists in the narrow streets of Punda are replaced by hoards of rats (no pictures, sorry).

Just like in Holland!

Wilhelmina Plein

For you, Simon!

 

Abra on the Queen Emma Bridge, with the colorful city skyline

Some of the awesome fashion on display

Can't fit in my backpack..... :(

Dutch Cheese!

Stealing more internet

This is for you, mama!

Internet at the Plein Cafe

We spent two days in Willemstad, before exhausting what the city had to offer. We also made a point of visiting the Kuna Hulanda Museum, which examines the history of slavery, which is, of course, a significant part of this island's history.

On Thursday, we left the city, and traveled north to Playa Lagun. The beach is almost at the northernwestern-most point of the island (Willemstad is in the southeast), but since the island is only 50km long, it took less than an hour. There, we went on our first dive(!) with Bas, our Dutch dive master.

He first took us both out to go over the basic tools we need to know: equalizing our ears, clearing water from our masks, and re-finding our breathing tube if it's lost. Then we went in for lunch, before our afternoon exploration.

After lunch, he took me out into the bay, and we followed the bottom, seeing lots of trunkfish, colorful fish, brain-looking coral, schools of fish swimming perfectly together, and old staircases/ladders that had sunk to the bottom. The water was crystal clear, and the sites were beautiful! Quickly my legs got tired though, and I only found out later (once we had gotten out of the water), that Bas was hanging onto my belt, so that he was dragging behind me almost the entire time! He said he was trying to keep up with me, and also slow me down so I could see more instead of just race. Whoops! No wonder it was so much work.

Then Abra went out for her personal dive. They went a different direction, and apparently she even saw a turtle! Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of anything under the water. But I'm sure you're all capable of google-searching "Underwater Fish." The instructor and Abra were getting a little cozy and they admitted to holding hands during their dive. Supposedly it helped her get down though! She was under for about 15-20 minutes!

The sights were what you would expect on a dive, but actually experiencing it, swimming 25 feet down, and hearing the bubbles rush by your ears as you breath in and out is an awesome experience. I have to do it again.

After the dive, Bas offered to drive us back to Willemstad, and we soon realized we had gotten more than we had bargained for. First he took us to a snack-shop, where we had awesome Chinese/Indonesian food (there's a surprisingly huge Asian population on the island, yet they speak Dutch also??) and a few beers. Then he brought us to a Salsa class, where he was helping out the instructor. For 2 hours we danced salsa on top of a rooftop overlooking the bay. Bas swept Abra around the floor, while I was left to a very nice old Dutch lady. Fun times were had by all.

After Salsa, he took us to the Cafe De Tijd, which is the thing to do for young-adults on Thursday nights. We each had plenty to drink, and there may have been an impromptu salsa-refresher course in the middle of the bar (which had overflowed onto the sidewalk).

Friday was another get-out-of-town day, but with a 7:50pm flight we still had most of the day to tie up some lose ends around the city. We went to the post office and mailed 25 (double-layer!) DVDs worth of photos back home. I also shopped my old pair of shorts around to a couple stands, and got $6 USD for them. Then we wrote this blog before heading to the bus station. It's a short flight so we'll be in Venezuela by 8:10pm, with another late night of finding a hotel.

Goodbye, Curacao! It's been awesome to be back in a Dutch-speaking country. And in the Caribbean, no less! Hopefully it won't be so long before we're back!

Posted by Hans