Curacao is a Dutch treat in the Caribbean

Section: TRAVEL Page: B17

Last time I went on vacation, my travel agent put me in a dump of a hotel in Acapulco. This time, when I wanted to go to Curacao, I had her book me on the same flight she and her husband were taking as far as Aruba. This worked out better than I expected, when she got me a free upgrade to first class so we could sit together. The pleasant surprises continued after touchdown on Curacao, an island whose official motto, Bon Bini, means “welcome.” Curacao (the natives pronounce it KYOO-ra-sow, which rhymes with “pow”) walks the line between tourist-oriented Aruba and the quiet of Bonaire, with which it makes up the ABC islands of the Netherlands West Antilles. It’s a small island (180 square miles) located in the Caribbean 35 miles north of Venezuela, but it’s an island coming to life. Most of the major hotels in Curacao are undergoing or have just completed major renovations. New beaches are being created, and new attractions, like Seaquarium, are drawing visitors. “Curacao,” says Joel Alan, a New Yorker whose family is from the island, “combines the technology and convenience of the First World with the charm and warmth of the Third World.”

“Curacao is finally becoming more tourist conscious,” says local businessman Larry Salas, proprietor of one of the largest bookstores on the island. “We used to cater to low-budget Venezuelan tourists, but their currency went down about 80 percent when oil prices dropped. We realized the market we should turn to was Americans and Canadians.”

Though Curacao’s official language is Dutch, almost everyone speaks English fluently, and Spanish as well. But for daily use, Papiamento, a pastiche of all of the above with a simple grammar, is used by all.

February in Curacao is Carnival time. The island is reputed to have the fifth-largest Carnival celebration in the world, behind such better-known locales as New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro.

While the drinking, dancing, and parades that make frolicsome Carnival fare are found here in abundance, there are other unique parts of the celebration that make Carnival in Curacao worth a look.

Carnival season begins officially the day after New Year’s with an Inauguration Ball, initiating what Salas calls “seven weeks of nonstop partying, dancing and drinking.” During the first week in January, there is a nighttime march through the streets of the capital of Willemstad. The march, called Zongo, features bands playing on trucks driving through the streets.

In late January, the Association of Musicians of Curacao sponsors a tumba contest. The tumba (pronounced TOOM-ba) is the official dance of Carnival. It has a lively beat, with lots of horns and plenty of audience participation, and with a chorus that’s easy to sing along to. The lyrics are in Papiamento.

The tumba contest, held in a stadium packed to capacity, attracts 30 bands and artists to each of three nights of preselection. The 10 best songs go to a final night of competition. The winning song is played on all the floats during the Carnival parade, and seemingly everywhere else for the week or two beforehand. The finalists’ songs are taped the night of the competition, and a cassette is sold for anyone who can’t seem to soak up enough tumba music from the general atmosphere, or for tourists who want to take a little of the island’s heat home with them.

With the tumba chosen, it becomes time to select the Queen of Carnival and two male cohorts. This year, the contest was held at the Princess Beach Hotel. Eight finalists dressed in Carmen Miranda-like costume dance together to tumba music, while their supporters cheer, blow whistles and parade around with signs with their names and pictures on them. Each contestant gives a short speech to the audience and the judges in Papiamento. The winner will sit on the main Carnival float in the parade.

At the same time, two young men are selected to be “Prins i Pancho.” The prince of Carnival and his sidekick perform a little comedy routine for the judges. The winning pair get the key to the city from the mayor of Willemstad, and lead the Carnival parade into town.

If you arrive on the island when Carnival is past, not to worry. Curacao’s other attractions make it worth visiting any time of year. Curacao boasts a climate with a year-round average temperature of 82 degrees, and trade winds to keep you cool. The climate is dry, with the exception of a month from late December into January, and the landscape is replete with cactus and other colorful desert vegetation.

The beaches near Willemstad, the capital, and at most of the hotels are man-made, but you’d hardly know the difference. Offshore, colorful fish swim above sharp coral growths. Pelicans dive-bomb into the water 10 yards from shore to come up with a quick meal. Snorkeling and windsurfing are the popular seaside recreational activities.

The newest beach on the island was created this year next to the Seaquarium, and for two weeks the process became a spectacular attraction for tourists and residents. A dredging ship scooped sand from offshore at Boca Tabla, a sea-cut inlet that is one of the most interesting natural features in the northwest part of the island. Four times a day, every day for two weeks, the ship sailed around the island to where the beach was to be made. From well offshore, great pumps ejected a plume of sand high in the air to land above the water line. Local laborers then distributed it to cover the ground where only dirt and weeds were previously found. The dredging ship and its sandy spume drew crowds daily.

Willemstad offers tourists a thriving shopping center in a district called Punda. Besides T-shirts and tourist fare, buyers can take home jewelry, silverware, crystal, china and Dutch porcelain figurines. Store hours are 8 a.m. to 12 noon and 2 to 6 p.m every day but Sunday. When a cruise ship is in port, many stores will stay open during lunch hours or on Sundays.

Willemstad is home to the oldest continually-used synagogue in the Western Hemisphere, and an airy contrast it is to the confined spaces of the Old World. The floors of Temple Mikve Israel-Emanuel are covered with sand. No one knows for sure how the custom was started, but there are three possible explanations. Some say it serves as a reminder of the Jews’ 40 years of wandering in the desert in biblical times. Others say it symbolizes God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the grains of sand. Still others maintain the sand is there because the founders of the temple were Maranos, the Jews persecuted in Spain during the Inquisition, where sand was used to muffle sound to avoid attracting the attention of the Inquisitors.

Without leaving the city, visitors can tour the Amstel Brewery, home of the beer said to be the only beer in the world made from distilled sea water. Willemstad is also the home of the Curacao Liqueur Distillery, where the potent potable made from bitter oranges is produced. Other sights include the Queen Emma pontoon bridge, erected in 1888, which swings out of place to let tankers and cruise ships into Willemstad’s capacious harbor. The harbor’s highly industrial port facilities and oil refinery, Curacao’s largest industry, are a sharp contrast to the narrow streets and Dutch architecture of the town. A gas flame burns day and night atop a tower above the refinery.

Curacaoans are warm and friendly, though not noted for their promptness. Checking into my hotel, for instance, took me an hour and a half, spent mostly in waiting for the management to find me the room I’d reserved.

While most of the hotels are concentrated near the port and city of Willemstad, the rest of the island offers some exotic scenery. A rental car or a packaged bus tour out of the city is well worth the expense. Besides the beautiful landscape and white sand beaches next to bays of turquoise blue water, there’s colorful tropical desert vegetation and brightly colored birds. You needn’t worry about getting lost far from civilization, either. A full circuit of the island covers less than 100 miles; so, though you’re clearly out in the countryside, you’re never too far from home.

The residents are rightly proud of their island, and eager to have tourists visit. “Tell people to come,” said Larry Salas when told I was writing a travel piece. “And,” he said, smiling, “mention my name.”