(Drivebycuriosity) - My wife and I are back from our vacation on Curacao where we stayed 7 nights. Curacao is a small island in the Caribbean Sea close to the coast of Venezuela. It is a pleasant place and we enjoyed our stay.
The island was for a short time a Spanish colony but the Spaniards gave it up because there was not enough water for farming, so they couldn`t plant sugar there as on other Caribbean islands (sugar was very important because much of it was turned into rum). The Dutch West India Company, a global private corporation, overtook the island and Curacao became a Dutch colony till her independence in the year 2010. The Dutch operated there salt plants and started an oil refinery to process oil from Venezuela (discovered in 1920). It seems that the oil refinery`s business is shrinking because Venezuela`s crises leads to a falling oil production. So the island depends more and more on tourism.
Curacao has two assets: Pleasant weather and clear sea water. Temperatures oscillated around 80 F (26 C) and we had a mix of sun & clouds and some minutes of rain. We stayed in a hotel at the beach front which has a small sandy bay. We enjoyed swimming in the clear ocean and could spot some beautiful fish there.
Curacao has not much tropical landscape and most areas are just covered with bushland - thanks to the water scarcity. But the hotel area has some coconut trees and we could see some beautiful birds (above you can see some of the troupias - also the national birds of Venezuela - who were preying on the breakfast buffet) and (just) one iguana.
We stayed most time in the hotel area because the tiny island hasn`t many attractions besides weather & ocean. The hotel crowd was busy with tanning, snorkeling, reading & some other sports.
The best was watching the gorgeous sunsets.
.... and observing how the evening sky turned into an orgy of fire & ocher tones. Priceless!
One day we hiked to Willemstad, Curacao`s capital, which is a a sleepy little town. The historical center is an example for the Dutch colonial style (18th 6 19th century) with Caribbean and African influences. One source says that once a governor, who also was an investor in a paint producing company, launched a law that houses have to be painted with nice colors, other sources say they chose fancy colors to avoid white walls which would painfully reflect the tropical sunlight.
Anyway, there were a lot interesting buildings.
We also could spot some pretty street art.
Our Curacao vacation was fun and a nice escape from New York`s ugly winter weather.
To be continued
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