With great diving and unique food, Curacao is no gamble

Curacao

By Lena Katz

With 10 contenders flying to Curacao in August to compete for a half-million dollar prize, this Netherlands Antilles island is a treasure-hunting hot spot in 2009. However, cash prizes aside, Curacao’s always been one of my favorite Caribbean vacation destinations, thanks its adorable beach hotels, reasonable prices and colorful culture. Although just a few lucky folk are going to get greenbacks out of their summer vacation experience, everyone who’s ever visited can tell you that Curacao has all kinds of treasure to offer.

Under the Sea…

Clear, warm water and diverse undersea topography and terrain make offshore Curacao an ever-popular Caribbean vacation destination for diving. In fact, I once saw a man free-dive down to a wrecked hull of some sort, crawl right inside of it and disappear — leaving all of us on the boat wringing our hands in panic till the wreck’s resident jellyfish family forced him out of the rustyvessel and back up to the surface. Such extreme diving antics aren’t at all necessary, since all of Curacao’s hotels are equipped to handle SCUBA needs. Some, like the Hilton and Lions Dive and Beach Resort, are completely centered around dive vacations. If you’re still beginning/intermediate, motor out to an airplane wrecked in the shallows, a colorful reef or a shipwreck festooned with sponges and seaweed. Deep dives, cave dives and challenging dives like the 70-foot “Tunnel of Doom” are also among the 81 total sites on Curacao’s list.

On the Plate

Picky eaters might have a problem in Curacao, because the answer to that classic question, “What’s for dinner?” could be just about anything. And no, it don’t all taste like chicken. Iguana stew, for example, is one local delicacy you would only try for novelty’s sake — a thousand tiny bones get in the way of any real flavor. And while grilled ostrich can be juicy-delicious, the tartare version is chilly and composed, sort of like a firm meat jello. However, kangaroo steaks are delightful, and the myriad little fried appetizer bits are as tasty as Amsterdam automat fare. The best meal of the week is invariably at Equus, a former stable turned Friday afternoon barbecue party.

Kura Hulanda

Art all Around You…

Curacao’s capital Willemstadt looks like a giant box of Jordan almonds from afar. Legend has it that this is because the first mayor owned a paint company, and made it a rule that all the citizens do their houses up in pink, blue, yellow and other cheery paintbox shades. Wise (and wealthy) as that mayor was, he probably never could have foreseen what a fellow enterprising Dutchman would do a few centuries later. In the slummiest part of inner-city Willemstadt, Dutch businessman/millionaire philanthropist Jacob Dekkerbought an entire quarter and turned it into a museum and historic hotel. It’s called the Kura Hulanda, and is one of Curacao’s gems.

The Slavery Museum, a history lesson that shocks at first and lingers for years, contains a world-class collection of artifacts. From indentured servitude to African wars to plantation horrors, the entire history of slavery is displayed in an up-close, low-tech setting. Over in the separate city block that houses the hotel, it feels almost still like plantation days, especially considering the four poster beds and And most picturesque is the mural that occupies a central wall in the Kura Hulanda compound. It depicts the down-and-out characters who lived here before the hotel was built. Many of them were rehabilitated after and worked on the premises — in fact, one formerly notorious character became the head of security, according to manager Leo Helms.

Marriott Curacao Resort

Ching-a-Ling
So you didn’t score one of the precious and highly sought-after places in the Curacao treasure hunt, and you won’t be departing the island with a $500K in cash. Bummer. But neither did most of us. Nonetheless, fortune hunters and lucky souls still have all kinds of opportunities to cash in, at any one of the pocket-sized casinos dotted around the island. Almost all the hotels have their own, and a few, like the Marriott Curacao Resort and the Renaissance Curacao Resort & Casino, even get real action. Maybe not the kind that will make you rich (or bankrupt you) in a single night, but hopefully enough to bankroll a second, spontaneous Caribbean vacation this summer.