11th February

12 03.520 N
68 51.216 W

Weather; overcast, wind n/a, waves n/a

A VERY HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY TO MY GREAT NIECE PAISLEY, WHAT A FIRST YEAR THIS HAS BEEN!

Day three with a hire car, what could we possibly explore today? Having found a site last night with details of the Beekenburg fort I had noted that it mentioned a couple more forts that we hadn't seen advertised as tourist destinations. Considering the views we had seen from the 2 that we had stumbled across this far we thought we would seek these other forts out to see what remained of them, both of the ones we were going to look for were in the city center so should be easy to locate - who am I kidding here.
We left it until 10am to set off from our boat as nothing seems to be open much before 10am and we didn't want to get caught up in the morning rush hour traffic, it would seem that a lot of people live around the area surrounding Spaanse harbor and travel into the city to work, which raises the question of why the public transport from here is so hit and miss. Anyhow we tied up the dinghy in the normal spot and headed out in the hire car towards the city where our first stop was to be the Best Buy supermarket which we had spotted yesterday, it appeared to be a bigger place than the supermarket we had gone to on the Monday free bus. Having parked and donned our masks we were disappointed to find that the place was closed today as they had a power issue, we will have to try it again another day. From there we made our way to Fort Amsterdam but on the way we found the waterfront arches that looked to be the walls of a fort or something equally as ancient and possibly as interesting. We found a place to park eventually and walked back to where the arches were located. We weren't sure at the time if these were part of Fort Amsterdam but they certainly could have been, I've since tried to find out about them and have discovered that they were former military jails but not a lot more has been written about them. Today they house several waterfront restaurants which sadly looked a bit run down and lacking in patrons, but it was a little early for lunchtime trade whilst we were there. There wasn't a great deal to look at but we walked along and assume that they were originally part of the extended Fort Amsterdam. So we jumped back in the car and headed around the block looking for the elusive parking spot to allow us to walk around the remains of the actual fort which is now in use as the seat of government for Curacao. This fort was built in 1634 by the Dutch West Indies Company and was considered the main of 8 forts (not sure where all the others are but will try to find them) on the island. Again we had little to no luck with the parking around the area even after doing 3 circuits and stopping to ask the security guard if there was parking inside the compound - that was a no, so we had to give going to view the courtyard a miss. The buildings aren't open to the public but from what we could see they have been either very well maintained (it is the seat of government after all) or they have been refurbished to modern day standards. The entire building walls and out buildings are painted in a dull yellow - almost uninspiring and I'm sure not the original colour! Apparently there is a museum and the original church inside the walls but none of it is currently open to the public which is a great shame. We didn't get any photos as we whizzed by in the car but did manage to get some from the other side of the bay a little later. So with one fort failure we decided to try for the next one - Rif Fort. To get there we needed to be on the Otrobanda side of the bay, it took us a while to get across and find the fort but at least there was parking available on this side of the bay. From this side we had a better view of Amsterdam Fort on the opposite shore and I took a few photos from this side. Rif fort was built a bit later than the rest, in 1828/1829 and the walls are in fairly good condition, the grounds having in more recent times been used by a water company, housing government institutions and a police station. It is currently a shopping mall with a couple of eating establishments thrown in for good measure. The outer walls are pretty much intact and we accessed the upper level and walked along the sea wall which had cannon sized gaps all the way along, blocked off by fencing to stop idiots from doing stupid things! At the very end of the rampart there was a steak and ribs restaurant - as you can probably guess Gerry's stomach was rumbling so we stopped in and had a damned expensive salad for lunch. We found a set of original fort steps to get back down to ground level and wandered through the rest of the place which was fairly empty - hardly any tourists thanks to Covid. Our plan was to originally to walk across the pontoon bridge, back to the Punta side of the bay and see if we could get some more photos of Amsterdam Fort but by now I was "forted out" and really couldn't face walking across the bridge so we had a quick change of plan and opted for our next choice, a visit to the Nautical museum which was on this side of the bay. We went on a magical mystery tour to try and get to the place. We could have walked it quite quickly from Rif fort but Gerry was trying to spare my knee the extra walk and decided that we would drive and park outside. Google maps can be fantastic but not in this case. We might as well have been playing blind man's bluff, it took us on a complicated route and didn't seem to know that some of the streets it was directing us down were one way or no entry streets - it was a good job we were in no hurry and that traffic on this side was light. We did get to see a lot of the area though, eventually finding ourselves outside the museum, having gone the wrong way down a deserted one way street! We donned our masks and made our way to the entrance only to find that contrary to the advertised open hours the place was closed every day except for 4 hours on a Saturday morning! Another strike out for the day and a victim of Covid. At this point it was beginning to spit with rain and we made the sensible choice to return home, stopping on the way for an ice cream, making it back to the boat just as the heavens opened - great timing on our part. I transferred a whole heap of photos to the hard drive for the rest of the afternoon, I just need to label them now before loading them to the gallery - it might take a while. We had booked for the cruisers dinner at The Pier restaurant just outside the dock area so at 5 pm we dinghied back ashore and made our way there and had a good set meal which is put on every Thursday night especially for the sailing community. Were ate and ran as it looked like it was going to rain again, making it back to our boat just as the heavens opened and we spent the rest of the evening watching Netflix, along with half of the world!