The Lesser Known Caribbean: Curacao

This is the second year I’ve spent the weeks leading up to Christmas in a tropical place. Growing up in the North causes a cognitive dissonance between balmy weather and palm trees and Christmas carols and Santa Clauses. The coexistence of Christmas, snow, and cold are so deeply drilled into my psyche that I’m not sure I could ever get into the Christmas spirit in the tropics.

That said, I was not disappointed at all to take a week-long break from winter to lounge on the beach beneath a palm tree. My hotel was right on the water with its own private beach. While I made sadly little use of it due to the whole work thing, I did manage a few beachside runs and amazing sunsets.

Curacao, as a former colony of the Netherlands, was unsurprisingly filled with Dutch people and other Europeans. It is however not a common vacation spot for Americans except for those dropped off for the afternoon by cruise ship. The very colorful downtown Willemstad is organized around a port waterway with Dutch colonial-style buildings flanking either side. Connecting the two is a literal floating bridge, built upon a series of rubber floats. When a cruise ship comes to port, the entire bridge swings open horizontally, pausing pedestrian traffic for a few minutes. At night, the lights strung over the entire length of it create a bright and bouncy celestial canopy.

Walk a little further and you can find a colorful, large block lettered CURACAO and a ton of charming outdoor cafes and liquor stores selling the compulsory blue curacao liquor. My favorite part of the island though was the exceptional situated restaurants serving creative, modern deliciousness like goat cheese bruschetta. Many of the restaurants were perched right against the water, where we watched the surly waves churn against the small rock wall separating us from the sea.

I think Curacao surprises and perhaps disappoints some people because it’s not at all the stereotypical island in the Caribbean. It does have gorgeous half-moon, white sand beaches cradling calm jewel-toned lagoons, but where the lagoons aren’t, the water is rough and wild with black island rock rising up to rugged cliffs. The sea slams into the cliffs with such force it sends pistons of water shooting straight up into the sky. I could have listened and watched the angry, hypnotic cadence of the waves crashing in and out for hours.

A local man that I worked with took me and Ryan on a tour of the island over the weekend, along with his wife and 10 year old son. By far this is the best part of my job, getting to work with the local people of a country and the rare invitations and glimpses I get into their lives and culture. Nearly across the board I’ve been blown away by the hospitality and universal warmth of the human species. I think one of the greatest mysteries of humanity is how naturally kind people are to each other one-on-one, and yet how such hatred and conflict can co-exist between groups. I digress, but this thought weighs heavily on my mind with all the conflict and tragedy occurring in the world right now. I highly value genuine interaction with people from outside my own country and culture and religion, and at that, interaction with fellow Americans whose backgrounds and worldviews are different than mine. And these people were just plain cool.