Hello All: It’s been several days since I did a post and now I don’t remember what I wanted to say. I started a post last night that I didn’t finish and now I can’t find the draft. We are having a fine time here in Curacao, but it’s not our most exciting trip and I don’t take any pictures, so I haven’t had a lot to post. Bill’s posts are better since he has the pictures.
There are a variety of very colorful birds here and it’s fun to watch them from the balcony in the morning. The palm tree beside the balcony is full of tiny, yellow birds called Bananaquits. The name refers to their color, not their food preference. I put some bananas out for them the other day but they weren’t interested. They are slightly larger than hummingbirds with long tongues and are also nectarivores.
There is also a bright orange bird called a Venezuelan Troupial that comes to the balcony in the morning and a variety of bright green hummingbirds.
On Sunday, we visited the Hato Caves. I like caves and this one had bats hanging from the ceiling so that was a nice trip. The bats eat primarily fruit here although they may also be nectarivores. Something ate the bananas that the Bananaquits turned down so maybe the bats came and ate them. I put out some pieces of mango this evening, so I’ll see what happens with that. I have not seen any raccoons or coatis or even rodents here, which is surprising. There probably is some variety of rodent, but I’m surprised that there are no raccoons.
Overall, the snorkeling and diving have not been great, but we did a fun night dive/snorkel a few nights ago. I swam above the divers and it worked out great. They had their lights on so I hardly needed to use mine at all and I could see everything they were seeing. I need to take a free diving course so I can learn how to equalize the pressure in my ears and stay down longer. Once I get so far down, my head feels like it’s going to pop like a balloon and the suction in my goggles gets really tight.
The water here has bioluminescent creatures, which is awesome! After I swam away from the divers, I turned my light off and swam in the dark. There was a full moon so I still had plenty of light, but every time I move my hands through the water, I hit the little bioluminescent creatures. They light up when you hit them, and it looked like sparkles were coming off my fingers. It was spectacular! I’m hoping to do one more night snorkel if the weather is better tomorrow. It stormed last night and today so the visibility in the water was bad today.
Yesterday, we went to a location with turtles. The turtles are super fun to watch but there were also a lot of people who were in the way.
Overall, I haven’t been that impressed with the food here, but I have had some good fish and shrimp. Bill and I shared a brownie and a piece of apple pie for lunch and both of those were pretty good. We also made some pretty good fettuccini last night for supper and my fruit salads have been delicious! I’m really going to miss the mangos when I go home. If you are a strict vegetarian this would be a hard place to come. The menus are meat-heavy. If you are vegan, I’m not sure what you would get except for lettuce salads. If you like goat meat, this would be a good place for you.
Tomorrow, we need to clean up our rental car and get gas so we can return it on Thursday morning. We don’t have any activities planned but I’ll try to night snorkel if the weather is good. We had people recommend a restaurant down the road so we might try that too. This has not been my favorite vacation but it’s freezing in Iowa so I’m not really looking forward to going back to that either!
Traveling with Emily! 