Yes, we had a Dushi time during our 2 weeks in Curacao. Dushi is kind of a catch all “good” word that people us for a variety of uses similar to “Aloha” in Hawaii or “Lekker” in South Africa. People used “Dushi” describing good food, weather or a fantastic beach, as well as meaning lovely. I heard it used as a greeting and also after Thank you. We also heard “Lekker” a lot here. I thought it was an Afrikaner word from South Africa but it turns out it is also Dutch. Curacao is filled with Dutch tourists and they seem to use “Lekker” after they drink or eat anything. Curacao has a lot of languages so it was a bit confusing but because so many people speak multiple languages, communication was not a problem. The primary language here (and in Aruba) is Papiamento which is sounds to me a lot like Portuguese. Dutch is also everywhere not only with the locals but because of the huge Dutch tourism numbers. But, Spanish and English also seemed to be everywhere as well so we usually were able to understand each other in one of those. We stayed for 13 nights in the Ritz Village Hotel which was mostly visitors from the Netherlands and they always started talking to me in Dutch. It is understandable because I am half Dutch… but my Dutch language knowledge is non-existent beyond “lekker”. The hotel was a renovated ice cream factory that had a couple of pools including one with a fake sand beach. We were close to town but the beaches required a bus ride so we spent a lot of time hanging out at our pools.
Our hotel was in Willemstad which was a beautiful colorful Dutch colonial town with tons of buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries still standing. Many are not renovated yet but the ones that have been complete look amazing and it feels like you are in Europe sometimes. Cruise ships visited on most days and the town was filled with North Americans wandering around the jewelry and souvenir shops. At night, the lively town emptied out and we were able to enjoy wandering around the streets peacefully and finding some local food. I kept taking pictures of the scenic buildings… both the restored and unrestored.
The town of Willemstad is cut in half by a waterway that goes to the industrial port. In the late 1800’s they connected the 2 sides of the town (Punda and Otrobanda) with a swinging bridge that is still working today. It is the floating “Queen Emma Bridge”, also known as the “swinging old lady” that is powered by a couple of outboard motors. The entire bridge moves each time a boat needs to get through and it happens every hour or so. At night it is all lit up and looks pretty cool.
The beaches (and the weather) is what draws a lot of people to Curacao. Really turquoise water and soft white sands in a lot of places make for some awesome pictures. The first beach (Playa Grande) we took the bus to, had a fishing dock where they gut the day’s catch. Some entrepreneurs will take the non needed fish parts and feed them to the turtles. These guys have trained the turtles to come to the pier for fish by banging on the pier with a stick. They then charged tourists $5 to feed the turtles the fish scraps. I’m not sure the ethics behind this (I didn’t pay), but it was cool to see the turtles.
We visited several other beaches and many were beautiful. We even paid to rent sun chairs and it was lot more reasonable than Aruba. Only $10 per day for 2 chairs under an umbrella…. but the beer was crazy expensive here. They had small 7 ounce beer bottles everywhere that were $6 on the beach and restaurants and $3 in the stores. Someone told us that the Amstel brewery shut down a few years ago so everything needs to be imported, even the “local” beers in 7 ounce bottles. But we loved the white sand with clear waters and did some fantastic snorkeling in several locations.
Overall, we had a very relaxing time in Willemstad and Curacao. We were able to make several meals in our very small hotel kitchenette which was a nice change. Many days we just took walks around town until it got too hot and we ended up in one of the hotel pools until it was time for dinner. Not a bad retirement plan… Our next stop is one to cross a big one off our bucket lists- The Galapagos Islands!
