CURACAO!!!!!

Julia came over at 4:30 Saturday to pick up Vicki, Phillip, and me to take us to the airport! We were super excited that she offered to take us! Otherwise, Phillip would have had to drop us off with the luggage, bring the car back, and then take a bus to get there! We flew to Curacao on Insel Airlines. (Definitely the only airline I know of that gives out pastries filled with some sort of spicy meat, for the snack!!!! WEIRD!!!) We arrived at 8:10pm, finally made it through customs, and eventually managed to rent a car! The rental car place gave us decent directions to our hotel (Howard Johnson Curacao). The directions ended with “you will see the hotel on your left.” Yep, we SAW the hotel, but couldn’t figure out how to get to it!!!! It was so strange. We made several loops around the place, trying to figure out how to get there. During one of those loops, we saw a party bus! Loud music, crazy lights, people in the bus dancing! Hehehe! My favorite part though was seeing 4 kids on skateboards holding on to the back of the bus, letting it pull them along. Hilarious!!! We finally drove through the bus station, which took us directly to the hotel parking lot. Who would have guessed??? We checked in our hotel and then walked around downtown for awhile. It was so pretty there! The buildings are so colorful and there was a bridge called Emma Brug connecting both sides of the downtown area. Emma Brug is the world’s largest floating pedestrian bridge. It even had an archway of lights going over it that kept changing colors. Very pretty!

We got up early Sunday morning to begin our adventures! We eventually made it to the Sea Aquarium. (The roads are soooo confusing there! The streets are not labeled well and the maps were not much help!) The Sea Aquarium looked really neat. We went because we were interested in the animal encounter, where you get to scuba dive and feed the rays and sharks!!! You don’t even have to be scuba certified to do this because it’s only in 11 feet of water. So Vicki got to try out scuba diving!!!! We were excited that she decided to do it. She was a little nervous about it, but was glad she tried it! It was a very neat experience!!!! There was a HUGE fish named Herby swimming around with us. The rays were all over us…seriously swimming up against us, gliding over our heads, it was crazy! They feel so soft and smooth! Neat creatures! Then we got to feed sharks!!!! Don’t worry – they were on the other side of a big glass wall. The wall had a hole cut in it so you could stick a fish through the hole. The nurse sharks suck the fish out of your hand. The real sharks bite the fish and take off swimming with the fish in their mouth!!! It was a very cool experience!

We also watched the sea lion show and the dolphin show. They had several exhibits of fish, turtles, pink flamingos, etc. The Sea Aquarium is a really fun place!

When we left there, we headed to the Ostrich Farm! We took a ton of wrong turns on the way and had to ask directions twice! But we eventually found it! We missed the 3:00 tour by 15 minutes though. The 4:00 tour (the last one of the day) was booked by a group of kids on a field trip. So no tour for us! We were disappointed but at least we got to look around. There were a ton of ostriches there!!! Then we went to the little bar/restaurant area. We each ordered a drink and I ordered an ostrich omelet to go. A friend from AUC recommended the ostrich omelet. She said it was delicious and that we had to try it! It looked so funny that I had to take a picture of it! It was actually pretty good! Even the meat wasn’t bad. (Coming from someone who usually only eats chicken and turkey…that’s saying a lot.) Vicki loved the meat! She said it was delicious!!! She commented several times how good it was and how she was so surprised how much she liked it! :-) The ostrich egg was really good. Not a ton different from normal eggs, but you could definitely tell a difference. Fun new food experience!

That evening we explored the downtown area some more. This area was all walking distance from our hotel. All the little shops were already closed, but we window shopped some and enjoyed the scenery. Their bright colorful buildings are so fun to look at! We went to McDonalds for dinner and I was super excited at their “weird” foods! (Foreign McDonalds seem to always have some local specialty foods.) I got a curry chicken wrap and a Banana Fria to drink! The curry chicken wrap was delicious! Fria drinks quickly became my new favorite drinks!!! The banana one was really good! I went up to the counter afterwards to ask if they had refills. I totally expected her to say no. Instead, she made a funny face, walked away from me, went to the manager, and asked him what to do. He made a face too, but said yes. So she gave me a refill! It was pretty funny!!! We are quite sure they don’t usually give refills. They probably know that Americans expect refills though, so he just gave in…funny! (I totally enjoyed my second banana fria!)

Monday morning, we got up super early again! We drove back to the area of the Sea Aquarium because the Dolphin Academy was right beside it! We had reservations for an open water dolphin dive! That means scuba diving with dolphins in the ocean on a reef! That’s right…the dolphins were not inside a fenced off area. Their dolphins are trained to go out into the ocean and swim on the reef with the divers. It was really neat! We were able to pet them and sometimes they would swim right up to our faces. We were told to hold out our hands if they swam up to us face to face and that sometimes they would put their faces in our hands and we could rub under their heads. They were really fun to watch and play with in the water!!! We had 3 dolphins…a mommy dolphin, a daddy dolphin, and the baby dolphin! The baby was only a year old and hardly ever left mom’s side. So cute! We enjoyed seeing the reef too. The dive site was called Shipwreck Point. (I’m not sure why…there’s no shipwreck there!) Anyway, it was very pretty and we even saw a seahorse!!!! We were really excited about that too. Even Phillip had never seen a seahorse while diving!

Vicki went back to the Sea Aquarium while we did that dive. We met up with her afterwards and watched another dolphin show! Then we went to the dolphin therapy office, which is also in the Sea Aquarium. I had scheduled a tour of their dolphin therapy! I really enjoyed the tour and hearing how their program works! I was actually surprised at how similar it is to the program in Key Largo. It was great to see and hear about their program! I would LOVE to work there!!!! Dream on, Laura, dream on…

We ate a quick lunch at the Sea Aquarium and then headed out to search for the Curacao liqueur factory. It took awhile to find too, but not too long at least! We were expecting a tour. Turns out, there is no tour. They just tell you to walk around and look at everything and then help yourself to samples. Ha!!! They had samples of each kind already poured into little individual cups and you could take as many as you wanted! It was pretty funny! So maybe you’ve heard of Blue Curacao? We never pronounced it right, but we have definitely heard of it before. I think the blue kind may be the only one that’s in the US. Or at least that’s all we knew of. Well, they actually make blue, red, orange, yellow, and clear! But the funny thing is, they are ALL orange flavored! They just put food coloring in to make the different colors! How funny is that? They do have 3 other flavors that they say are “artificial flavors.” They have coffee, chocolate, and rum-raison. The chocolate was pretty good! If I liked coffee, I think the coffee one would have been good too! This place was totally random! No one was working until we went in. And they stopped working before we even left! It was hilarious!

We went back to the hotel area next and walked to the nearby shops. Our hotel had coupons for free beach bags at Del Sol, so we each got one! They’re like the ones we used to get free at our Del Sol. (I think maybe they stopped doing that because people like us got too many…oops!!!) Then we went swimming at our hotel pool, showered, and walked across Emma Brug (the bridge) to eat dinner at Iguana Café! It was a cute little area outside, by the water. Phillip and I got fried tilapia and Vicki got pork chops. The tilapia was delicious!!! We each got to try another weird drink too! Phillip had a Polar Beer! I had Kolita, another flavor of Fria. It tasted like strawberries. Yum! We went to the Carnaval Casino, lost a couple bucks each, and then went back to the hotel to pack. We were all worn out so went to bed early. We got 10 hours of sleep!!!!

We got up early again Tuesday morning, finished packing, and headed to the airport! We had to fill up the gas tank on the way. We were not smart enough to figure out how to do that! You had to push buttons to choose to do it by money amount or by amount of gas you wanted. We didn’t know what to push, we just knew we needed a full tank. The “funny money” (guilders) didn’t help matters either…we were just totally confused. A worker was nice and came over and did it for us. I tipped him a US dollar and he looked pretty excited about it! How sad is it that 3 adults could not figure out how to pump gas????? (Pretty funny though!)

Our flight went fine and we speed walked through the airport to get to the front of the customs line. We got through quick and Willow was waiting outside the airport doors! Vicki and I waited for luggage. Willow took Phillip to school (he was 8 minutes late for class, but that’s pretty good considering that our plane had just landed a few minutes earlier!!!! We knew that was risky, but it was the only way that we could possibly squeeze in our Curacao trip. The dolphin dive only happens on Monday and Friday mornings, which made it difficult for us to schedule!!!) Anyway, we were glad he was barely late. After Willow dropped him off, she came back to get Vicki and me! She still had to wait like 20 more minutes for us! The luggage was soooo slow!!!! We were very grateful that she was willing to make 2 trips for us!

We are now slowly getting back into the swing of things. Phillip has afternoon classes right now instead of morning classes. That is quite a switch! He is still getting up early though and going to school to study, so he can keep a normal routine. Hope you enjoyed the pictures…we took a ton!!! We are so glad we managed to go to Curacao! It was truly a once in a lifetime experience! The island is beautiful, so totally different from any of the other islands we’ve been to. The colorful buildings are amazing, the huge bridge was a bit scary but really neat, the dolphin dive was incredible, and the sting ray/shark feeding was awesome. It was a great vacation!!!!