Since November 2009, I’ve taken a “November Getaway” trip with some of my girlfriends. Teresa and Jen have been consistent members of the getaway crowd and other fun friends have joined here and there. Curacao was a last minute decision as we were looking at where can we easily get to that will be warm, on a beach and has a Hilton to take advantage of Teresa’s Executive Status. After looking a bit, we all decided on Curacao and really had no idea what we were to do there, but it was on the beach, a small island and we were off. The November Getaway started in Barbados in 2009, then Miami in 2010, then Belize in 2011 and now Curacao in 2012…just in time for the US Election results!
First night in Curacao
View of resort from our private beach
Loved the infinity pool
Our other private beach
Brenna and I were enjoying one of the pools
One of our favorite iguanas
Another friend coming up to lay out on the beach with us
Local beer (well it’s made in Venezuela) but this Polar is considered the local beer
Williemsted Floating Bridge
Downtown Willemstad
All the boats docked after sailing from Venezuela for morning floating market
Floating market
View of downtown Willemsted
One of the beautiful sunsets from our hotel
Scuba Diving – Curacao is known to have amazing diving. As none of my friends were divers, I just took one morning to go off and dive and it was extremely beautiful. The waters were overloaded with lion fish. While they are pretty and slow swimmers, they are quite harmful with both poison and they way they kill other marine life. I learned there are weekly lion fish spear gun trips organized by the government to help reduce the population and protect other marine life they are killing. After the spear gun trip, they are cooked up on the BBQ…but we never had a chance to find them and try.
Lion fish – scuba divers go out once a week to hunt this over populated fish as they are causing more problems at the reefs
The coral was beautiful and so untouched (and undamaged). Loved it!
Amazing underwater coral gardens
Spotted eel
No idea what these fish were, but they were quite entertaining as they darted around water
Willemstead street artwork
There is supposed to be a space shuttle landing strip added to Curacao and we kept joking this was build so you could see it from the sky…
Day Trip To Klein Curacao – Or Little Curacao
We headed off on an all day adventure to a little white sand beach on Klein Curacao. The beaches were amazing, a little snorkeling yielded 6 beautiful turtles. We even brought our little wooden cats out to play in the water as they were our Curacao pets for the week.
Our catamaran we sailed to Klein Curacao
The kitties were guarding our beers while we enjoyed the water
Beers, beaches and our kitty mascots
Another cute turtle
Saw over 6 turtles while snorkeling at Klein Curacao
Enjoying a little snorkeling at Klein Curacao
Day Trip Driving – We rented a car, drove around the island and came across a flamingo lake
Lots of flamingos
View from another beach we drove to for lunch
Enjoying last sunset from hotel balcony
Out with Teresa for last night out
the downtown all lit up at night
We were in Curacao for the 2012 Election night so we asked for special blue Curacao shots after Obama was announced the winner
Such cute license plates
Saying goodbye to Curacao
Curacao’s Flag
Logistics:
Hotel – We stayed at the Hilton in Curacao which was right on the beach with a private beach. It was just wrapping up construction when we were there, so we had an old room and then moved into a brand new room mid week. How often to you get to experience the old and new hotel in the same week? The remodel was looking nice and location was pretty (but isolated)
www.Hilton.com/Curacao
Hallways and old color
Old hallway colors for hotel first half of week
New Remodeled hotel floor and room
Hotel staff was putting final new touch to our room when we moved in. What a welcome!
Brand new hallway a few days later