I visited and worked in Curacao from 1970 until 1982 many times and there was a time I flew twice a month from my home base in Suriname to this island. It was also my stop-over on my trips to South America and especially during a survey job I did in La Guajira in Colombia. My last trip in May 1984 was special, since it was our delayed honeymoon. While in Curacao we stayed in the home of my friend and business partner Wim ter Hart. This trip was even more memorable because of the fact that as KLM employees we could not get seats on the flight back to The Netherlands. So we flew to Aruba instead and spent a few great days on the beach in one of the American Resort Hotels. Unfortunately KLM only had space for me on board and I did not want Dorothy to stay behind, so I violated the rules big time to give Dorothy my first class boarding pass while I stayed behind and flew back to Curacao for my last visit.

So it was rather emotional when Curacao came in sight during our sail on Sunday morning from Bonaire. Like I described in my previous blog we had some main sail problems but it was a great relaxed and enjoyable sail. Entering Spanish Water showed that a lot is changed in the last 31 years, new houses and developments everywhere around this bay. Santa Barbara Beach is the first new development you see when entering Spanish Water.
In the past it was impossible without transportation to visit Spanish Water. Nowadays there is a regular bus service with an air conditioned bus and Wi-Fi onboard that connects Caracas Bay with “Punda” the oldest part of the capital city “Willemstad”. It was so strange to recognize the roads like the “Caracas Bay and Schottegat Roads” but at the same time see all the changes. This was especially evident after I rented a car and was able to find my way around the island without getting lost.

So after we exited the bus along the “Waaigat” a stretch of open water famous for the Venezuelan vegetable and fish market, we walked without any hesitation past the “Round Market” Building to Customs to clear in. Unfortunately the famous pontoon walk bridge to “Otrobanda” (The other side) was out of service for maintenance so we needed to take the ferry to cross the “St. Anna Bay” to visit the Immigration and Harbor Authority to complete our clearing-in process. Having completed all the official duties we started to walk through “Punda” with all its historical buildings and the first thing I noticed is that many of these building are very well maintained and/or being renovated. This showed everywhere on the island but probably mostly in “Otrobanda” which was in the 1970s a deprived neighborhood one definitely did not visit after sundown. It is good to see that money is available to maintain the historical buildings. The tourist office has a publication for the entire Island as well as a city guide for “Willemstad”. In the part describing “Willemstad” there are three photo tours that we did on three separate days: “Punda”, “Scharloo” a neighborhood between the “Waaigat” and the roads leading to the high bridge and “Pietermaai” a neighborhood along the sea shore. The results can be seen in the pictures accompanying this blog page.

The famous floating pontoon bridge was until the beginning of the 1970s the only connection between Punda and Otrobanda and all traffic had to pass this narrow bridge that needed to be turned to shore for every ship that entered the St. Anna Bay. The construction of the imposing Queen Juliana Bridge replaced the narrow pass way, but many people complained about the destruction of many historic buildings in Scharloo. But if you lived in the time before the high bridge was opened you must forgive the people who designed the road pattern from and to this bridge, because it saved Punda which is the main attraction beside the beaches for tourists visiting the island.

We rented a car and started crossing the island and visited many of the beaches. It is now even easier to find the more secluded beaches due to a very good road and location signing system. The local people will probably not appreciate that the secluded beaches are now also visited by the tourists. In the past it was difficult to visit the historic plantation houses on the island. Today there are still 93 plantation houses and most of them are very well maintained and accessible. Some of them are used as restaurants, art galleries and museums. So these two important tourist attractions are clearly big improvements and make the island more attractive for tourists.

The tourist industry is always a difficult part for the economic development of the island. Part of this is because the island has many other economic pillars. The island never had a great agriculture due to the dry conditions of the island, but it was always a very important trade center with one of the best natural harbors in the world. Shell built a large refinery and the island has a large oil transfer terminal. The Dutch Government also supported the island with an enormous influx of money to support the infrastructure and the most failing agencies. The large hotels and resorts of the 1970s are gone or are empty in different stages of destruction. However, new hotels and resorts have been built instead of restoring the old and neglected places which is in my opinion an ecological crime.

The diving in Curacao is great and you will find many very good dive schools, centers and shops. Since I do not have a dive buddy I mostly dive with these dive centers. I made a beautiful dive in a new development called “Papagayo Beach in “Jan Thiel”. This location is close to the fishermen harbor in Spanish Water which allows cruisers to use their facility as a dinghy dock. I wanted to do a few more dives with this great facility, but then we got the news that our FedEx package arrived and we needed the medications that were included in this package.

Since we had our 3 month supply of medicines shipped to us I expected more or less that it would take some effort to get this package cleared through customs. So we arrived early in the morning just after the FedEx office opened. The clearing of the medicine turned out to be a huge problem that involved the Health Inspection, many documents, forms, stamps and signatures. Luckily we had a rental car so we could get to all the different places in a relatively short time. We entered the FedEx office at 9:00AM and were handed our package at 6:30PM!

We intended to spend more time in Curacao; we love the place and we had a good time. But a unique weather window opened up with a complete collapse of the normal very strong trade winds for about 3 to 4 days and we decided that this was an opportunity we did not want to miss. The crossing to Colombia is known as one of the five most difficult crossings in the world. We left Curacao on Thursday at noon and sailed with a very light wind for about 4 hours and then the wind disappeared. Close to Aruba a large lightning show started over the coast line of Venezuela but before we passed the oil tanker parking area south/west of Aruba we were complete surrounded by these very large thunderstorms. These lasted until the early morning hours close to the coast of La Guajira. In the afternoon the same thing happened with storms leaving the coast of La Guajira. The next day we had no wind, no ripple on the water and it was extremely hot. On Sunday morning this crossing showed its true colors, when the wind started picking up to 33 KN and in no time we got high and short waves. With the wind from behind with the staysail and jenny out we made great speeds and we had a fun ride, but when I needed to turn to the coast to Santa Marta I took the staysail out and reefed the jenny big time and we still reached a speed of 7 KN.

It is hot in Santa Marta, but we are extremely happy to be in Latin America and in Colombia.