Curacao

I do love the tropics. I love the way its so humid that your skin changes. It goes softly plump, like ripe fruit. I love that you know you will never need a jumper. I love that you can step out of a warm shower, or into the sea, and there's no temperature change.

Four days in Curacao was enough to unwind, feel a million miles from the noise and intensity of a city, and fall back in love with scuba diving. The country is tiny - you can drive from one end to the other in just over an hour - and the guest house we stayed at included a car rental, so we explored the whole place. Curacao is a mishmash of Dutch people, Venezuelans, Indonesians, Chinese, Indians, African West Indians, people from other Caribbean islands and the locals, who are a mishmash of the above. I don't think I've ever been anywhere that had signage in so many different languages, or where people were nearly every colour in the rainbow.

Curacao felt incredibly old in parts - crumbling buildings from the 1600s form the old town - and is evidently going through a lucrative period because there was construction everywhere. Not just big resorts, although they were increasingly creeping along the coastline, but also housing and office buildings. They have massive oil refineries quite near the capital, Willemstad, and tourism is growing.

Each day we did pretty much the same thing:

1. crawl out from under the mozzie net and chug down a bowl of cereal
2. leap in the car and nearly melt until the aircon kicked in
3. drive to a beach
4. do a shore dive
5. laze in the sun
6. eat goat stew and rice/ fried fish and rice / chips & mayo / drink fruit punch with unidentifiable fruit flavours
7. drive back home and crack a Polar Beer and play Scrabble
8. find somewhere for dinner and marvel at the lack of herbs used in Dutch cuisine
9. fall asleep by 10pm

Highlights:

• seeing a flock of beautiful bright pink flamingos
• hearing a Jamaican tell the girls behind a bar that they were too slow. Hilarious given Jamaicans aren't known for their sense of urgency.
• coming up with our own hand signals for effective communication underwater
• renting dive gear & tanks on the beach for about US$30 and just swimming out to the coral reef. saw scary moray eels and a spotted eagle ray!
• getting horribly sunburned and smearing aloe vera plant leaves all over myself and watching the sunburn disappear. what a miraculous plant. no peeling! no heat, no pain. i had no idea it was so effective. i am now an aloe believer.
• walking on a floating pedestrian bridge in the city that simply slides to one side when a ship needs to pass down the river.
• finding out that Curacao is of course the home of the bitter orange-flavoured blue curacao, and it is indeed their national liqueur and only one distillery is officially allowed to make it. Mr Cointreau first came up with it, after Valencia oranges originally planted by the Spanish on the island failed as a crop, went wild, and changed flavour, and suggested to him another opportunity to make something alcoholic. I sampled a Bon Bini ('welcome' in the local patois) cocktail that featured blue curacao, and it was actually delish. I shall no longer scoff. (thanks Fi for the reminder!)

While away 2 more minutes and take a look at our photos on Flickr.