Around Curacao

Miles from Home - 3037.4 miles
Firsts / Highlights - First days with a rental car. First independent shore dives.
Activity - SCUBA diving
People - Marco & Barbara (Austria)

This post if for August 21-22.

I broke down and rented a car for the first 2 days on my sabbatical. It was getting close to the point where I didn't want to rent one just to see if I could complete this entire adventure without a car, but I concluded that would be sacrificing part of my trip to Curacao just to make a point. To whom? I needed a car to see parts of the island on my day out of the water and to get to some good shore dives on the next day.

Curacao is an interesting place. It has no natural surface water, so the only source of fresh water is a very industrial-looking desalination plant along the waterfront. There is an even more industrial refinery on the interior. There seems to be a lot of angst among the locals over a deal where Shell Oil walked away from its environment remediation requirements by selling the refinery to the Curacao government for 1 Guilder. The deal was needed to preserve jobs, but apparently it caught everyone off guard when they learned that Venezuela would process the oil on the island, but require that any gasoline be re-imported at a very large markup. It's hard to tell how much of the story is supported by fact, but I don't sense a lot of warmth toward either Shell or Venezuela.

This is the industrial Curacao that you don't see in the brochures. It's interesting that this small island can have both a large oil refinery and a thriving diving / beach tourism-based economy. The two co-exist in close proximity, but are barely aware of the other.

The humidity is so high that I couldn't really take pictures as I drove around the island. As soon as I stepped out of the air-conditioned car, my camera (and sunglasses) fogged up. I could have driven around without air conditioning, but that just was not going to happen at 97 degrees and 80% humidity. A few images were worth waiting for the camera to warm up to the surrounding air temperature, but casual snapshots weren't practical.


Here is the image of Curacao that most people have if they have one at all. I arrived in Willemstad just as the sun was going down and the pontoon bridge was opening to allow an oil tanker to go through.


Suzy from the Dive Bus recommended that I go to a "Snack" for some local food, but I never worked up the nerve to shoulder my way through the locals and walk up to the barred windows to say, "So, what do you sell?".


After a day out of the water, I got together with Marco and Barbara from Austria for some shore diving on the west end of the island. They are both teachers living near Innsbruck - very close to where I was riding in Bormio earlier this summer. This was my first time diving without a dive master, but I felt like we did a good job of taking care of each other out in the big blue. We planned to do a night dive together the next night, but it had to be canceled due to strong currents.




Barbara was startled to see Neptune waiting for us in the depths.


Let's try a couple of movies. I don't know how well these will work. Give them a couple of minutes to start playing after you click on them. For people who receive e-mail notifications, you may need to go to the blog to view the videos (www.randyhowie.blogspot.com).

I believe these organisms are called Feather Duster Worms. Watch how quickly they retract when they sense that my swimming over disrupts the water current. I didn't touch anything around them. The only disruption I caused was the flow of water.



This one is of nothing in particular. I just turned the video on for a few seconds and captured what was going on in the reef. I started showing a soft coral flowing in the current, but when I panned away I saw a school of blue fish in the commuter lane. It is always busy down there.