The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

The second C in Curacao is a soft C and if I were able to with this font I would put the little tail on the C to indicate that it is a softened C. The name of the island is therefore pronounced roughly "kyur-a-sao". I'm telling you this even though you probably know that because the day before when we were in Aruba Kathy and I overheard a conversation that went like this:

"I think we're supposed to go on that excursion tomorrow in St. Maarten."
"No, not tomorrow. We're going to Caraco tomorrow."

And she pronounced it just like that, "Car-a-co". It was funny and Kathy and I made fun of that lady for the rest of the cruise.

Anyhow, when we got to Curacao, this was the view from our balcony.


Here's another shot from our balcony to the right of that bridge

We docked at about 7am, so I don't think the sun was quite up yet whn Kathy took these pictures. That's why they're a little hazy.

We got off the boat and took some pictures by some rocks there




Anyway, as mentioned we decided we wanted to go snorkeling again in Curacao, so we did that first in the morning. They picked us up and rode us in a boat to a little bay. Here's me riding the boat out there.


We coincidentally were on the same excursion as our table mates, Chad and Teresa, so we hung out with them on the way out. The ride out was against the current and I feel like the hurricane that was farther north made the sea a lot choppier on this day than the day before. When we got there, there were a few people feeling not so good, including Kathy and Chad. Once we got into the little bay, though, the cliffs stopped the current and the the boat stopped moving, so everyone was good again. We snorkeled and here's some pictures of me doing that. There's only me because Kathy got back to the boat first and took these photos.



The snorkeling in this cove was really cool again. There were some huge fish there and they threw food off the boat to get them near. Also there was a sunken tugboat in the cove which was not as cool as the 415 foot boat in Aruba, but was still cool. Also while there we say several octopi swimming around and some scuba divers. Then we went back to the boat. The ride back was much smoother going with the current. Showers and then we walked the streets of Willemstad, Curacao.


A couple of sights from the streets or Willemstad were a band playing in the street and this big ass doll.


There were all these little shops that sold souvenirs of native art and such and these dolls were among them


We stopped for lunch at this outdoor cafe where there were these two guys playing reggae music. They were really good and the whole 45 minutes or so we were there was really pleasant because we were out of the heat and eating and listening to those guys play the music. Here's the menu of the place we ate at. Apparently in Curacao they don't sell ice cream by the scoop.


We walked some more and took a ferry across the inlet back to the ship. Here are a couple pictures looking back toward the town.




Incidentally, both Aruba and Curacao are about 30 miles from the South American mainland, right above both Colombia and Venezuela. My visits to those two islands therefore officially mark the farthest South I have ever been. Both of them have history as Dutch colonies, and Curacao is still a Dutch colony. Most of the people there, though, seem to speak mainly Spanish. There's also a creole language the natives speak called Pagiamento that's apparently a mix of Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and something else, maybe English. That creole language sounds a lot like Spanish to me. The official language in Curacao is Dutch, but everyone speaks English, Spanish, and Dutch.

Anyhow, we walked back to the ship and pulled out of port at about 5:30pm. Here's a picture of the guys untying the ship from the pier.