As we have done in other islands, we decided to rent a car and give Curacao a "crash" tour on Friday. We headed for Hato Caves, first, which were discovered by slaves and used by them to hide from their owners. There are numerous stories of slaves hiding in these caves and the soot on the walls of the first part of the cave serves as testimony of their stay in the caves. The view outside the cave is impressive as the sea is only about 1/3 of a mile away.

As we drove around the island, going into its many bays and beaches, we started looking for a place to eat lunch. There was not much available since the bays/beaches were fairly empty. But we found a restaurant, Playa Forti, owned by a woman who happened to be from Colombia. Her Dutch husband, with whom she had eloped from Bogota 30 years ago, was deceased and she carried on the torch despite the fact that her only male son had jumped off a fishing dock on the gorgeous bay we could see clearly from the restaurant. This, obviously, added a degree of "spookiness" to this restaurant that was filled with beautiful birds, including the majestic Oriole bird. A picture and description of this bird is found on the next entry.

We finished our tour after trying to see Santa Marta bay and running into a Flamingo sanctuary. For most of us, this was our first time seeing Flamingos in the wild. The sanctuary was amongst salt deposit pods which had stone walls at the water level to keep just right amount of water so that it would dry up and leave the salt collected to sell.