Girls' Day in Willemstad, Curacao

Claudia and Trish

 

At least once every couple of weeks, two or more of us cruiser women take the public bus from our summer anchorage in Spanish Waters, Curacao, and for 90 cents we ride the bus into Willemstad for Girls' Day.  The men enjoy it at least as much as we do, and have nicknamed it Womanless Wednesday, or Maedchenlos Mittwoch, depending on where you're from.  Claudia from SV Tika (German/Swiss) and I are founding femmes, and friends from the States and Canada also join us.  Here's what we do.

The first place we go from the bus station is the "new market",  a large and airy covered space filled with vendors of produce, fish and meats, handicrafts and jewelry, personal products, and all sorts of items of interest and curiosity.

From there,we wander through the colonial streets of Punda. Willemstad is divided by its wide, deep commercial channel into two sides, called Punda and Otrabanda. Punda was and is the upscale side of town. Three hundred year-old buildings now house businesses like Tommy Hilfiger, Guess, diamond and luxury jewelry and other high end shops, which cater to cruise ship passengers and other, mainly Dutch tourists with money to spend. 

 

I

I love the mix of colors and patterns.

 

Next  we walk on to the old fort, still housing government offices.



From there, the waterfront is only a few steps away, with quayside cafes and coffee houses where you can enjoy a capuccino and watch the people and boats go by.

The hundred-year old pontoon bridge. 

 

But we don't stop here.  We turn back toward the center of town to get something to eat.  Passing an art gallery, more "dushi" (meaning "sweet") local shops....

...and what would Girls' Day be without shoe shopping!

 

By now we are famished and ready for lunch. We head to the Plaza Bieu, the old market which has six kitchens inside, with cheap and cheerful local dishes favored by the people who work downtown. It's the best place to taste generous, inexpensive servings of local cuisine. If you leave hungry, you have only yourself to blame!

 

 (People who know me know I was an epidemiologist and food safety instructor and inspector for 32 years...the food is piping hot and prepared fresh while you watch,and the turnover is brisk. While conditions are rudimentary, it's a pretty safe place to eat!)

And here's what you get! Delicious beef stew, slow-cooked in a mildly seasoned tomato-based sauce, accompanied by rice and sweet fried plantains, and with a side of funchi, similar to a creamy polenta or cornmeal mush, and definitely a great comfort food!  Also available are goat stew (delicious), fried kingfish, grilled whole red snapper,whitefish filets, and chicken entrees, as well as Chinese food.  For dessert you can get a tasty pumpkin pancake, rather like carrot cake, with raisins and spice. Inexpensive, nutritious, and fast service too, which is unusual here in the Caribbean.  There's never a need to cook supper after a lunch like this.

 

Heading back to the bus station, we pass by the floating market, where we can pick up fresh and inexpensive seasonal produce from Venezuela before we head home.

 

     

 

 

 

 

With backpacks loaded, we head back to the bus stop and return to Fisherman's Harbor at Spanish Waters, there to find our men grinning because they also enjoyed their Womanless Wednesday as much as we did. 

 

                         

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue Curacao      -----     Netherlands Antilles   June thru August, 2012

 

How to begin about Curacao?  We sailed from Bonaire, an easy day’s sail with wind and 2kt current sweeping us along to Curacao where Di had to fly out after only two days. Originally we bypassed Spanish Waters and Willemstad to Piskadera bay, having checked out the website for Royal Marine. It looked like the Hilton and had slips available, with power and water too!  Well, after running aground in the first slip and banging on a sunken refrigerator all night in the second slip, and  with nothing present resembling the “glamor photos” on the website, we moved the boat down to Spanish Waters to anchor  amid the mainstream cruising community.

The island of Curacao is quite a bit larger than neighboring Bonaire, and became the center of activity for the Dutch East India Company in the late 17^th century. The Company, and subsequently the island grew wealthy on trading European merchandise and African slaves to the New World, and the elegant Dutch colonial architecture and massive forts reflect the prominence and prosperity of the island during that time.

 

  The landscape however, is much the same as Bonaire, with dry, thorny vegetation and forbidding rocky terrain, limiting agriculture mainly to aloe and small truck farms. 

 A minor agricultural product of Curacao is the bitter orange, descended from Valencia oranges introduced by the Spanish. While these small fruits are bitter and unpalatable eaten raw, when dried the rind becomes sweet and highly aromatic and is used to flavor the famous Blue Curacao orange liqueur. Most people know more about the liqueur than the island!

 Sinbad anchored in Spanish waters in mid-June, and Randy was captain of his own ship for two weeks. Di returned, and six days later Randy flew to Michigan for his first trip back, leaving Di as captain for two weeks more. While apart, we both made new friends, and completed projects.  We enjoyed our time apart as well as together.

Cruiser potluck

The highlight of our experience in Curacao has been the friendly cruising community which has formed here.  There are four areas in the anchorage; we are anchored in the outer corner closest to the fairway in Anchorage A , which is nearest to the dinghy dock and Norman’s Bar and Grill at Fisherman’s Harbour.  Norman’s is the center of cruiser social life, with happy hours on Tuesdays and Fridays, when there’s live local music and a friendly crowd of locals as well as sailors.  Cruisers whom we met in Bonaire-- German/Swiss Rolf and Claude on SV Tika, Earl and Sue from Florida on SV My Bonnie, Swiss friends Phillipe and Sandra on SV Ulani, and American/British friends Heather and Pip aboard SV Picaroon,and lately Americans Jackson and Rico from SV Apparition rejoined to become our core group of friends with whom we have weekly extracurricular activities of hiking, dominoes, potlucks and yoga sessions.

Hiking with cruiser friends

 

Rolf's birthday dinner

 

At the ostrich farm

 These have made our time in Spanish Harbor more fun. In addition, we’ve gone to different restaurants, visited the ostrich farm, and explored Willemstad with these lively and interesting people.  There are only about five American boats here; the rest are European, with Dutch, Germans, Austrians, with a handful of Spaniards, French, Belgians and a few Brits comprising the majority of the ~150 boats here.

 Thursday Dominos!

Services here make living at anchor as convenient as possible.  Inexpensive city buses run every 1 ½ hours or so along routes into Willemstad and on to the northern end of the island, and Vreugdenhil’s Supermarket sends a large passenger van daily to take cruisers grocery shopping, sometimes filling ~30 person van to capacity. 

On the bus to the grocery store

 Near the supermarket are two marine stores, the Laundromat, auto parts stores, pharmacy and medical offices.  Di even found a decent chiropractor when her back went badly awry.  And the bus returns us to Norman’s where cold beverages and our dinghies await at a secured dinghy dock.  Norman also provides a shelf for books which cruisers love to swap. The wind here in the earlier weeks was quite brisk, making sleeping and living more comfortable. As summer progresses, the wind has fallen off at night, and we wake sweating and uncomfortable sometimes.  Tropical Storm Ernesto was watched with interest by the cruisers, but in the end it passes well north of us, stunning the wind here and producing an eerily windlass, glassy sea for a day.  We took advantage of the calm seas and dinghied outside of the harbor to a nearby dive buoy , and enjoyed the first great snorkeling since Bonaire.  We are now watching Isaac, and there will be more and more as the summer progesses and the Caribbean warms up, fueling systems blowing over in waves from the coast of Africa.

On August 18, 2011, Sinbad left her home port of Tawas Bay, Michigan to begin her voyages of discovery , challenge and new experiences.  We have passed through our first year of living aboard the boat. It has been fun, rewarding, and full of interesting, surprising and beautiful new people and places.  We have grown and learned a lot.  But the cruising life is not without difficulties. As in everyone’s life there must be give and take, negotiation and compromise to maintain and nourish a relationship.  Living aboard a 42 foot boat, one cannot just get in the car and take a drive, go shopping, to the gym or otherwise take a break from one’s partner to de-escalate tensions. We must rely entirely on one another in the absence of nearby close friends for comfort, support, perspective, and to deal with aggravations and frustrations.  The "gender gap" is real.  There is the “endless summer” party lifestyle which is loads of fun, but  can be ruinous.   The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.  What will Sinbad’s second year be like?