Curacao - First Impressions

Griff says it is my turn to write a blog so I will give you some of my impressions of the trip here and Curacao.

The three night trip seemed long at times. I couldn't really get into a routine to accommodate splitting the 24 hours into watches (where only one of us is at the wheel). We basically just set up watches during the night. I was amazed at how easily we slipped into the habit of using Oscar, the autopilot, on a full time basis except for when we changed course. Originally we thought we would only use it at night when one of us was sleeping. Having the autopilot on full time enabled us to relax more during the day as well as rest better at night. Although as Griff said in his blogs we still did not get good rest during the trip.

What a disappointment it was to pull into the harbour at Bonaire and see that there were no mooring balls available. This meant another 6 hours of sailing when we were looking forward to a dip in the ocean and an opportunity to sleep without wearing a lifejacket and being tethered to the boat. Oh well - forward we went.

We are back to the amazing blue colour of the water that we were seeing along the northern islands. It is also very clear. When we were watching the dophins it looked like they were swimming on the surface that's how clear the water was. They were amazing animals. I also enjoyed the antics of the birds we saw. It was surprising that as soon as the sun rose there were birds flying around the boat. I assumed that maybe they spent the night on the ocean since we were a fair distance from land, but then I read that the frigate birds have wetable feathers that means if their feathers get wet they cannot fly. That explained the 'fight' I witnessed between a frigate bird and a brown boobie. The frigate would dive bomb the boobie who would land in the water and would then 'jump' up at the frigate bird seeming to try to pull it out of the air. The brown boobies were swooping and flying around the boat most of the day and were always in pairs. We also had a little hitchhiker one day. A ruddy turnstone, about the size of a robin, sat on the bow lifeline stretching his wings for a while.

Our first impression of Curacao is that it is definitly not a tropical island as we most often think of them. It is a very low island, difficult to see from a distance and with none of the lush tropical, rainforest type vegetation that we have been used to seeing. In fact it looks a lot like southern Alberta or the interior of British Columbia. Lots of cacti and desert type vegetation. The guide book says it has a dry desert climate and scant rainfall, although we have had thunderstorms and downpours daily since our arrival.

We went into Willemstadt, the capital, to do the customs and immigration thing. The town is not what you would expect in the Caribbean. The atmosphere is very European. I haven't been to Holland, but it looks like I imagine Holland looks. There are canals lined with tall, narrow, red roofed buildings that are painted in a rainbow of crisp colours. It is a very clean looking city. We were in the city centre and it has a lot of open market areas. Along the main canal the markets are similar to those in other centres - t-shirts, hats, dresses etc for the tourists off the cruise ships. One shopping area is situated in an old fort that is a World Heritage Site. In front of it was a calliope. We stopped to take a picture and a local fellow came up and asked if we wanted him to take our picture. We said yes and then he said we could put the donation in the wooden shoes. He took quite a few pictures, none particularly good, including one of us putting in our donation. We spent some time walking around the downtown area and then headed back to the boat on the big green bus.