Hello blog post reader! Hopefully you are enjoying our blog, some times it is more interesting than others. Today we took the car and drove down to Willemstad to visit the Kato Cave. The Kato cabe got its name from the Kato plantation which is also how the airport got its name as it sits on a good portion of the plantation. For those that are not familiar with the Dutch Trading Company, they were heavy in the slave trade and used Curaçao as a stopping off point before taking slaves onto their final destination and were also used on the island. There is some residual dislike we will say of the Dutch by the people of darker skin tone here on the island. Dive master Jason said he thought when he first got here it was a “white/black thing” but after people figured out he was American they were much more friendly. The cave was where slaves as you can imagine didn’t enjoy being slaves would run away from the Kato plantation and hide. They were eventually found and the cave was closed off with a gate that is still there and used today which I found odd that it was left in place. There were some bats in the cave, the bats here are fruit bats. The cave system is quite large but they only have a small portion that is accessible for tourists. They did not excavate any of the natural cave to put in walk ways. They did run electricity for lighting and fans. The cave system is actually very warm and at a higher level than a lot of the island. It’s higher than the Queen Juliana Bridge.
I said I would have some pictures, so here are some!!
We tried to go to a Sunday market, we found where it was supposed to be but they must not do it there anymore if at all. Kind of disappointing. It was a lot of driving through the capital metropolitan area. The like their KFC, Pizza Hut, Burger King, McDonalds and NAPA here in the capital, there are multiple of each.
This afternoon end up being kind of a lazy day as Emily got a bit of a headache, some rain, occasionally pretty heavy came through and I was just tired from all the sun. We had lunch at a restaurant Emily likes and then we took it easy until the evening.
After a light dinner I had a night dive lined up and Emily joined us for snorkeling.
The dive went well, I figured out that my BCD is trapping air and that I have way too much weight, it is also why I tend to be more face down oriented when I’m diving. I got another 60 minute dive with a good 500 left at the end. Karl said I have good air consumption and buoyancy. I think I do okay for only going for a handful of dives a couple times per year.
There was more creatures out tonight, a big green eel some lion fish and a fair number of lobsters. We didn’t see any octopus which Karl had been seeing on his night dives.
I have a couple more dives to do tomorrow so we’ll see what happens on those. Hopefully the new areas will provide some more to look at. I think Karl mentioned there may be a sculpture garden at Alice in Wonderland and we will go where the turtles like to hang out. Hopefully there will be some!
Traveling with Emily! 