Hello All! As you probably all saw from Bill’s post, we arrived in Curacao yesterday after a very long travel day. We were up by 2:45am and because of delays we didn’t have time to get either breakfast or lunch. We were starved and exhausted by the time we got to the hotel. We did have our taxi driver stop at a grocery store so we could stock up on a few things for our apartment on the way here. The mangos here are delicious! I found yogurt and musli, so I’m excited about that. Bill got some bacon. The grocery stores are well-stocked and prices seem similar to in the US. Everything has to be imported so food is not cheap, but we expected that.
This morning, we got our rental car and decided to explore the island. It’s a good thing we have an apartment and a rental car because I think this is the most undeveloped place I’ve visited. We haven’t visited the capital yet and I’m sure there are lots of shops and restaurants there, but outside of that, there’s almost nothing. The closest grocery stores are about 20 minutes by car and there are almost no restaurants nearby that we have found. We did find the access to various beaches where we can dive and snorkel and we checked on Bill’s dive days. I’ll go with him and snorkel when he dives as long as I don’t have to wear a life vest.
We ate at a little restaurant by the grocery store that apparently gets good Trip Advisor ratings according to another American couple that we met. I had some delicious red snapper with mashed potatoes and Bill had fried chicken. The menu was only in Papamiento, the creole language here that I’m probably misspelling. The server translated and they were serving goats head, tongue and liver, and a few other things that are not served in the US. I was relieved when she got to the pasta and fish options because I was concerned that I wouldn’t have anything to eat.
It’s really windy here and I developed a pretty awful headache while we were exploring the island. I didn’t have any medicine with me so when we got back to the apartment, I took some medicine and slept for a couple of hours. I felt pretty bad for most of the afternoon. I’m feeling more normal now but I’ll have to keep medicine with me. We ate supper at the hotel restaurant and got brownie with ice cream. I think we are going to swim for a while this evening in the pool since we haven’t been in the water at all yet and we need to work off some of the food we ate.
We’ll have to see how we feel about this location over the next few days. So far, I don’t like it quite as well as some other places we’ve been, but we have our apartment set up comfortably now, we have a car to get around and we have beach access, so everything will be fine. I’m interested to see what the capital is like. It’s about 40 minutes by car. We may set up some tours there.
Hope everyone is having a good new year!
Traveling with Emily! 