This morning was the beginning of diving with Karl. Karl comes down from Amsterdam to Curaçao for three months to take people diving. Karl does a good job and he wanted to work on my breathing and buoyancy. Yesterday they had me on a regular tank and Peter said it was a 45 minute dive but it felt shorter. The second dive the gave me a bigger tank and Jason said based on his computer it was a solid 45 minute dive. This morning I got a full hour dive with Karl and still had another ten minutes he said before hitting the limit.

I didn’t get to use my camera during my dive for my second dive today either. Karl invited another person to come along who was having trouble with her ear equalizing. They seemed to know each other very well but he only introduced her by name. She had some ear pain still so we didn’t go past 50 feet deep. It was a fairly good dive, it went 53 minutes, I still had 500 left but at that I have a hard time staying down even with extra weight. I’m not sure if I like the bigger tank. I need extra weight to keep me down as it becomes more buoyant but I need to air up my BCD when I first get in the water or I sink like a rock. I think I do fine at the lower weight with the regular tank. My dives always get longer as I do more. It would be nice if I was able to get more time to dive on a regular basis. I’m not opposed to being sponsored to live in a warmer environment with good diving if anyone feels like they have too much money. It could be expensive, Emily may wish to join me.

Tomorrow we should have some pictures, we will be venturing out to see some more sights. We will be going to some caves that are close to the capital so we may go into it or we may hit some beaches for snorkeling that are down that way.

I also signed up to do the night snorkel with Karl and a couple other people. Emily will snorkel. It’s probably going to be cold. The water here is a little cooler than the other places we’ve been. Maybe in the dark we will see some more activity with our flashlights. Hopefully no sea urchin incidents.

I believe Monday we will be going to a beach to for my morning dive that may have turtles. Karl said the fishermen clean their catch and put the waste into the water and the turtles come for a free meal. Better to see things that isn’t because of people doing something to change their behavior but it may be the only way to see a turtle here.

We are finding that a lot of the people who say the snorkeling and diving are great here haven’t been to very many other places. People seem to pick a place and stick with it. Emily and I have enjoyed being here but we also enjoy seeing other places and I suspect will keep trying to find a place that combines all of the things we enjoy doing on vacation the way we enjoy doing them. It’s neat to see all the different places and each has good things about them. Everyone has to decide what they like when it comes to vacations and places to visit.

Hopefully the lack of pictures hasn’t discouraged our readers. I will be sure to post some tomorrow!!

Also remember that you can find all of our blogs in the menu section or links to the previous blogs at the bottom

Today was my first day diving. It is an improvement over snorkeling but just slightly. There are more fish to see but that was about it. I did see part of a crab. Still no turtles, octopus or stingrays.

It does take time to get set up for the dive, I have to fill out some paperwork, they actually checked my certification card and being over a certain age they require a note from my doctor saying I am healthy enough for diving. I get my physical every year so I just have my doctor fill it out then. I’m not sure what will disqualify a person, they have a poster about scuba diving being inclusive of all kinds of people.

This is the first place that they have had me assemble my dive gear since doing it for my certification class in Jamaica. All the other places have it ready for you. I have a bin and hanger space assigned to me. My short fins are more suited for snorkeling so they gave me longer ones with my BCD and regulator. I used my mask and snorkel, I don’t use a wetsuit normally.

I did two dives, both 45 minutes according to the dive masters, I had two different ones. The first was Peter, he runs the shop and Jason an ex- homeland security guy from D.C. that has been living here the last two years. He’s logged over 400 dives and became a dive master in that time.

There is more salt in the water here so I need a few more pounds of weight to help keep me down, especially when the tank gets low, it becomes more buoyant.

The red filter shows up on some of the photos, I need to get an editor that will remove it or add it instead of keeping it on my camera. It helps with some of the deeper pictures and in blue waters.

Emily was able to go snorkeling from the same beaches with me and they didn’t interfere with her.

We went to Isabelle Off The Beach for dinner. The food was good but probably not the best value. It was a nice place overall but probably not somewhere that we will be going back to. Jason recommended the Jalapeno Watermelon Margaritas there, we skipped them.

I’m diving again tomorrow, I don’t know if anyone else is going with me. My first dive we took one of the employees learning to guide and the was a Canadian guy who might try for one more before he has to leave. He will need to wait before he can fly so I don’t know if he has the time.

Howdy everyone, we had a relaxing day today. Spent some time this morning visiting Hofi Mango. Hofi Mango was a plantation that grew sugarcane to make rum and Mangos.

Hofi Mango has the only sugar mill on the island, Curaçao isn’t good for growing sugarcane. Mangoes do grow well, they taste good too.

They have a tree here that is poisonous, you’re not supposed to touch it, eat the fruit on it or stand under it when it rains. manzanilla de la muerte, little apple tree of death.

We thought there should have been more signs marking them.

The plantation is now a destination to go visit, spend time in nature, sample rum and they have a restaurant.

We did look at some of the other options for activities here, which there are a lot. Jet skis, atv/buggy adventures, snorkeling trips, museums and there is a company that will take you skydiving. A lot of these activities with the tour companies originate in the capital Willemstad. We have done a lot of the adventure stuff, I offered Emily the skydiving option but she didn’t feel it was a must do.

This is going to be a good vacation, we have sun, water and it’s not cold here at all. We don’t have much interaction with locals and anyplace really to walk around to discover interesting dining options or boutique shops, without a 45 minute drive first. Willemstad may have those but we didn’t there would be much connecting with the locals as they were used to cruise passengers passing through.

Where we are it would be good for people who enjoy drinking beers by the pool or hanging out at the beach type vacations, Willemstad would be good for all that and all the tourist attractions but lacking the local connection we enjoy.

Tomorrow I start diving. I went down and talked with the guy at the dive shop and things are lined up for me to do 6 dives. I was going to do 8 but they don’t dive on Sunday. Sounds like tomorrow morning I will dive off the beach below where we are staying. Emily and I already snorkeled the coast so I’m not sure if I will get to see more reef or just from deeper down. I suspect that Emily and I have been spoiled by better locations. Either way I will get to log my dives. I have a new memory card in my camera and the batteries are charged. The water is really clear he so that’s a plus. I wonder if that is all it takes for the “great snorkeling “ reviews we keep hearing.

We do have a couple other activities that we are going to try and do while we are here, there is a cave we want to visit and a boat wreck we want to snorkel.

Stay warm!

Hello All: I have not done a post for the last couple of days because I haven’t had a whole lot to write about. We are having a perfectly fine vacation, but I can’t say this is one of our more exciting ones. The water here is beautiful and clear but there isn’t much to see. It’s like someone started building an aquarium but forgot to finish putting plants and fish in it. I did see a seahorse a few days ago. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen one, but it was in a weird spot so I’m a little bit suspicious that the owner of this place found a realistic-looking plastic one and put it out in the water for tourists to find. I have seen some real flounder and a couple of moray eels, but it’s been a little sparse.

The ocean here doesn’t have a lot of creatures, but it does have a lot of either jellyfish or siphonophores that sting! I never see whatever is stinging me, and it’s not a serious sting but it does create a small, temporary red spot. I have been swimming with a bright yellow shirt so my back doesn’t burn and I’m visible to boats. One of the little stinging creatures got into my shirt yesterday and stung me in several places before I either got it out or squashed it. It was very unpleasant.

The rest of the environment is similar. It’s greener here than in Bonaire, but still dry and arid. The plants are low to the ground and almost all of them have spines. This is a hard environment and you can see that in the kind of plants. There are tons of reptiles and this is a pretty good place if you are an ectotherm and need the environment to warm your blood.

This morning, Bill and I did a nature walk at a place called Hofi Mango. It’s a newer establishment and they are still working to create a pretty walking trail in an environment that’s mostly ideal for goats. It wasn’t bad, but I think it will probably mostly be good as a venue for events like weddings in the future. We ate at the restaurant, and that was pretty good. I had grilled tuna with grilled vegetable. It had okra in it. I like okra but it can be hard to cook. This was really good. Bill ordered a mango smoothie, but they didn’t have mango smoothies. We were both confused about how a placed named Hofi Mango that has its own mango grove doesn’t have mango smoothies? I briefly babysat for a Dutch woman who needed to use the bathroom but couldn’t fit the stroller into the stall with her. The baby, who was probably under 1 year, was watching something on an iPhone and didn’t bother to notice I was there.

We ran by the grocery store after lunch then spent the afternoon in the pool. We made spaghetti for supper because the hotel restaurant isn’t that good. Overall, I haven’t been that impressed with the food here. I have had some really good fish. Goat is a very popular meat here, probably because goats are some of the few animals that can live here. We went to a bakery a day or so ago and I got a piece of chocolate cake, some cookies and a flat round thing that looks like a frisbee. It would probably be better used as a frisbee because it’s terrible as food. The cookies and cake were also inedible. We did fine a lady selling banana bread from a food truck that’s pretty good, but the hamburger that I got from her was a weird orange color and was almost inedible. At least we have a kitchen so we can cook our own food.

The mangos are delicious! I got a fantastic coffee cup with flamingos on it in the capital a few days ago.

In any case, it’s warm and sunny here. We have a nice pool and plenty of swimming in the ocean. If we hadn’t been anywhere else, we would probably think this place was amazing. The more you travel, the pickier you get because you can compare all the places you have been. At least when I help other people plan vacations, I can help them find better places.

Bill starts diving tomorrow. I’ll go and snorkel over the divers. Maybe the dive shop will take us to some interesting places that we haven’t found. Either way, we are having a fine time. We don’t ever have really bad vacations, just some that we like better than others.

Yesterday we went to the capital city here and walked around a little and had lunch. It was very touristy. It is a port city for cruise ships and they seem to cater to that crowd. Restaurants were not as plentiful as I expected. They did have Subway, Pizza Hut and KFC.

There are a few smaller museums that we may have to visit depending upon what else we find. So far I don’t think either of us have felt this location is going to be a top spot. I think there are probably a lot of people who would enjoy visiting here. Mostly depending upon what you want to do while on vacation. There are locations where there are beaches to hangout at. The snorkeling is okay but not as good as we were hoping it would be. Mostly the corals are along the cliffs that seem to be on each side of the beach and then the coast. It’s not a very flat island and it just drops off into the ocean. The water is fairly clear and I suspect that is why the reviews for the snorkeling here are good. Timing also probably plays a part as well.

We sidetracked and found some flamingos.

We went snorkeling yesterday afternoon at the beach below our accommodation. It was okay. The beach isn’t too crowded while we have been seeing it and when we were there. The depth drops fast to where you can’t stand in it. It has waves but nothing big, not a surfing or boogie boarding place. I didn’t take my camera with me so no pictures from that beach yet.

Today we went to two different locations. Groot Knip and playa Jeremi. Groot Knip was a destination spot, the buses and tourist vans were there. It is a larger beach so more room for them to spread out and add people.

Playa Jeremi was better for snorkeling, there were more corals and fish along the coast. We went both ways along the coast there. To the north I think was better.

The restaurants here expect reservations, which is odd for open air restaurants. They seem to do themed nights and you need a reservation for that. I for see us eating supper in our apartment more often than not. I haven’t seen much as far as restaurants that really intrigue me anyway. Most of the food choices are burgers, fish and shrimp. There are some other things including some Dutch food, Bitterballen, is okay if you don’t look at what is inside it. Here it’s a brown meat liquid, with stings of beef. I think it tasted like pot roast with brown gravy that had been made into a ball and fried.

The restaurant where we are staying has some of the slowest service, I need to see if that is part of their dining culture. It seems slower than the laid back attitude of Costa Rica.

Getting a bit more used to the small space of our apartment. Starting to get a flow. The furniture is not the greatest, we brought in two of the plastic lawn chairs from our deck, there’s two wicker chairs and a loveseat out there too. We use the chairs with the three legged table that was inside the kitchen area. There was is a barstool but you can’t sit on it as it’s got a padding issue.

The kitchen seems stocked fairly well for light cooking. Should be sufficient for us.

Laundry service here is they have you drop your laundry off at the office in the morning, they take it put it all into a washer and wash it, then return it to you in the bags you took it to them in and you then have to hang it out to dry. No dryer means lint from the towels we bought is all over our clothes.

They recommend you bring your own beach towels. They do not have any to offer guests and they tell you not to use the bathroom towels. Maybe a culture thing?

That’s it for today! Hopefully we will see some more interesting stuff to share.

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!

We had quite the day already! We were up 2:45 this morning after light sleep wondering if we were going to get snow delayed. We were fortunate that our plane made it to St Louis last night around midnight so it was there this morning for our flight. Flights that were cancelled or delayed were due to the plane not being able to make it to St Louis. The snow really started coming down around 3 am so it really piled up on our plane and it took about 45 minutes to deice it before we left. I was concerned about the delay and our short layover in Charlotte we made that flight with enough time to go to the bathroom before boarding.

Once in Curaçao we got directed into the wrong lane because we hadn’t filled out the form prior to arriving. Little travel tip for Curaçao, they have a fast lane customs deal that allows you to scan your passport and walk on through if you fill out the form for when you arrive, leave, where you are staying and why you’re visiting. https://www.curacao.com/en/ there is a link, probably comes up in Dutch. She did come single us out again after we had filled out the form on their iPad and we still went through fairly quickly. I was not impressed much but I was tired.

Speaking of tired, we were also a little underwhelmed with our accommodations. The apartment is small, some things we are used to being available are not for some reason. They also track your air conditioning usage with a meter and you pay it separately from your regular room rate.

The apartment is small and lacks some little things. We do have enough to get by on and will pick up some of the little things after we get our car. We did stop on the way from the airport and got some food so we won’t starve.

The office here is only open from 9-1, so the gal from the restaurant checked us in.

There is a two hour time difference between here and Iowa. I was thinking it was only one.

The weather here is windy and has been raining. The taxi driver said this is the rainy season. I was expecting the weather to be more like Bonaire where is was drier. It’s more humid and there is a lot more greenery here. The island also is hilly.

I had started this yesterday but I fizzled out. We were so tired and hungry that we were being a little nit picky about things. We ate at the restaurant here, menu is limited a few burgers, a couple of fish choices, sandwiches and salads. It’s open air and they allow people to smoke. It does overlook the beach.

Hope everyone is doing well and the new year has started out well!