We sailed into the lovely port this morning soon after sunrise. I was up early so I was able to watch our ship sail into this charming harbor. The first observation is that the lovely old houses are all painted in different, bright colors. Fanciful gables, arcades, and bulging columns evoked the spirit of the Dutch colonial burghers Local urban legend has it that many years ago the mayor of the town announced that he had a visual problem with the color white because it created such a bright glare and impaired his vision. He ordered everyone to paint their houses in other colors. Everyone cooperated, and thus the town has many shades of green, yellow, blue, red, brown, purple, orange, etc. Later, it was discovered that the mayor owned a paint company!! Hmmm...pretty suspicious!!! However, it created a charming look for the village!
As soon as we arrived at the pier we left on our excursion. We had a somewhat quick tour of the town and then drove to the other side of the island where we took an hour ride on a semi-submersible submarine among the magnificent coral reefs. Although there wasn't a huge variety of fish, the ones we saw were beautiful. At one point, a crew member put on dive gear, jumped into the water, and proceeded to feed the fish. They surrounded our vessel immediately! In fact, some of them recognized the submarine as the "feed" boat so they followed us. Immediately, I saw hundreds of tiny whitish-clear jellyfish. They were so incredibly graceful as they floated through the water. Most of the fish were fairly small although they were beautiful and brightly colored. Most of them were either neon blue, yellow, pink, or striped. The ones I recognized were parrots, trumpet, and yellow-tailed snapper. In addition to the fish we saw some gorgeous and interesting sponges. There were sponges that looked like a human brain, some that were long and tubular shaped, and others which were shaped like a bowl of fine china, with thin, delicate sides which got bigger at the top. Some of them looked like sliced mushrooms while others had a bright white line around the top edge. Our guide explained that we must stay away from this coral because the edge causes burns worse than poison ivy. (Note to self: stay away from this stuff)! We also saw small sea turtles swimming around like they were completely carefree. That's probably because this side of the island doesn't have many sharks! After a delightful ride we rose to the surface and returned to land.
As we drove through the small towns our guide requested that we notice the cars and how well maintained they were. It seems that if the owner does not take good care of his/her car the police will come and pick it up and put it in storage. The owner can reclaim it to make the repairs and pay a $200 fine. If the car is not claimed in a short time it is sold for parts and the remainder is recycled. This might not go over too well in Southern California. I must, however, admit that all of the cars looked very nice here! As we drove we passed a small town that was filled with fast food restaurants such as McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, etc. Our guide asked us what we thought the locals called this area. He finally told us it was called "Cholesterol City."
Our final stop was at the Chobalobo Liqueur Factory to sample the orange liquor that is produced and exported from Curacao. They had five colors: blue, green, red, orange, and clear. There were three distinct tastes: chocolate, coffee and rum raisin. They encouraged us to mix the colors and tastes together. I mixed the orange and chocolate, then the coffee and chocolate. Whew!!! Feel the burn!! Guess I'm not accustomed to drinking hard liquor. That was enough for me. Yes, I'm a wuss!!!
We returned to the pier, then walked across the pedestrian bridge to the other side of town. We strolled along the streets and bought a small, colorful wall hanging and, of course, a magnet for our collection. Although we saw many lovely items, they were quite expensive and we were warned that many of them were actually made in China.
The town was quite charming and easy to navigate. There was an area of the dock where the small fishing vessels stopped and sold their catch of the day, a large fruit and vegetable market, and hundreds of vendors selling their wares from kiosks along the street. The town and wharf were bustling and teeming with tourists. There was another, and very large, cruise ship docked nearby so everyone was milling around the town enjoying the sights, Caribbean sounds and spectacular weather. After a nice walk around the town we returned to the ship and my wonderful husband went upstairs and got me a delicious non-alcoholic pina colada while I wrote the blog. What an amazing guy!!! Later tonight we're off to Aruba!
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