I’m falling a tad behind on my blogging. Fortunately, I have lots of pictures to tell the story.
Monday night, the ship hit some wind and strong currents, and Mark started getting seasick after several hours of rocking. We decided to retire early and watch reruns of The Love Boat (which was a Princess ship, in case you don’t recall) on the ship TV.
Because of the medical delay that set our arrival in Curaçao back by four hours, we had plenty of time for breakfast and relaxing. I took some photos of the island as we navigated to the port.
At the last minute, I realized that neither of us had any small bills, so I stopped at the purser’s desk and changed out a twenty for singles. Then it was off to our tour of the Hato caves. We were only allowed to take photos in one location—partly to avoid disturbing the bats that live in the caves and partly to protect—in the words of our guide—the copyright. They’re commercially marketed.
The caves were interesting, if a bit hot and humid. I’d always read that caves are cool, so the temperature surprised me. The indigenous peoples used them for shelter more than a millennia ago. In more recent times—though still centuries ago—escaped slaves used them to hide.
After the caves, we took a short, guided walking tour of Willemstad, the capital of Curaçao and then struck out on our own for a little while. I am a little more adventurous than Mark, so when we wandered out of the tourist area—and when someone offered Mark some “good stuff”—he got a little anxious to get back to the ship. He was also hot and hungry and was coming down with the cold that I’m just plodding through. Here are some of the photos I took on our walk.
Here are some “artsy” detail shots.
(Notice the Hebrew above the door below; this is the oldest continually operating synagogue in the Western Hemisphere.)
This was one of the coolest clock towers I’ve ever seen. The photo below this one shows the figures that I assume emerge on the hour, though they appear to be stuck. They were mounted a few feet below the lowest bell but still 10 to 12 feet above street level.
And some architecture shots. The whole commercial area of town was colorful like this. It was beautiful, and you couldn’t help but be happy walking in the sun among the vibrant colors.
The local market on the right is right on a waterway, and the shopkeepers (from Venezuela) used to sell right off their boats. They come up on the sidewalk now to get closer to potential customers.
And these are the vendor boats from the other side.
Here is some indigenous flora and fauna (and one invasive species, urbis Markii).
These guys were everywhere. There were dozens of them in the lawn of one of the seaside hotels. I only show a couple species here, but there were many, all with varying colors and markings.
Willemstad was decked out for Christmas; this was just one of many displays. It was weird, though, to hear “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” piped into the arcades of the commercial district. (I’m not kidding. Along with Christmas songs by the Carpenters, Dean Martin, and others was that classic American gem.)
We got back to the ship around 5:30.
I would have like to have milked the visit for the four hours we had left in port, but that’s okay. We got cleaned up, had a nice dinner, walked a bit, then settled in to listen to the lounge piano player. Four of the fellas we’d met two nights previous wandered by and joined us, and we had an enjoyable evening dishing and listening to the piano.
It’s Wednesday as I write this. We’ve arrived in Aruba and are waiting for the announcement that we can go ashore. We didn’t see any excursions in Aruba that particularly interested us, so we’re going to just wander around. Perhaps we’ll buy a tour on the docks, but in all likelihood, we’ll just spend the day exploring on our own.