Back on the beach....

  Willemstad, Netherlands Antilles Wednesday, August 31, 2016

We came here intending it to be our last stop. Jody had jokingly said before we left England in 2014 that it would be good to fly home via the Caribbean not really thinking it would happen. So here we find ourselves, with very little money and in a very expensive place. The first shock was the price of the taxi from the airport to our hotel - $30. And it's hardly any distance at all! So whilst we pondered how we could get around the charge Jody spied a woman on her own and approached her to ask her if she wanted to share the cost into the town of Willenstad.Unfortunately she wasn't waiting for a taxi as a friend was picking her up. We chatted for a bit anyway then she said her friend would be willing to drop us at our hotel for less than the cost of the taxi. Wow – nice gesture but we asked her to check with her friend first. A quick call and yes friend was happy to take us for $15. It’s a deal! Until the friend turned up in a tiny Hyundai and saw all our bags that is! We usually travel quite light but since the Olympics when we were given a full set of uniform including books, trainers, bags, trousers, shirts, jackets and caps etc, our luggage has swollen to bursting point. So we agreed $20 would be a fair price and off we went with two complete strangers, squashed into her tiny car. A great way to start our time here – and we were so grateful. Our hotel is one of only a very few in the region that has it’s own beach. It feels pretty man-made but it’s a beach none-the-less and we are very grateful for it. Even though we had been practically living on Copacabana beach for two and a half months this felt like a proper beach – with palm trees, no crowds, no roar of traffic and noisy motorbikes going past, just peace and quiet and a beautiful calm sea to swim in.Our room was nice – it was huge actually and we had a good powerful hot shower – not a 5 squirt effort we so often get. With two big beds – one for each of us, we were going to sleep well here too! Our hotel also advertises 4 restaurants and 5 bars none of which we could find. Except that they offer breakfast by the sea but no other meals. Beautiful setting but dreadful food. So to Denny’s it was every morning that we went. This popular in America fast-food outlet is the only 'open 24 hrs’ food outlet on the island and it is unfortunately attached to our hotel. It appears the hotel includes it in their list of restaurants on site and so we can get breakfast here instead. It’s so expensive though. Breakfast is about  £10 each – our normal entire daily food allowance – just for breakfast! On top of that a very popular jazz festival was on for our 3^rd & 4^th days here and the price of our room went sky high, forcing us to move to a hostel further inland for a couple of days.A very nice hostel it was too with a nice pool and jacuzzi. Our roomies were really nice too (Daniel from Miami and a very young lad from Holland (on his first ever holiday without his parents) but sleeping in bunk beds with two other lads in the room isn’t our idea of the sleepy holiday we had counted on so luckily for us our hotel put the prices back down after 2 days and we could move back into our old room there. Now back to that Jazz festival; the line-up was pretty impressive we have to say. On the Friday night was Level 42 (Bryan’s all time favourite Band ever), Tom Jones, Melody Gardot, Jamie Cullum, Chris Brown and a few other people well known in the jazz world. It had 3 stages with different people playing at the same time. And the tickets were extortionate! This was a great opportunity that had landed in our laps but the price…. At $195 each we seriously could not afford this. But the opportunity was too great. We got the tickets and said we would work out how to afford them later. So Friday night we walked into town and caught the free shuttle bus up to the venue and bought our tickets on the door. The first band to play was on the 'Sam Cooke’ stage called Cuban Affair. We didn’t really see them but we could hear them as we wandered about getting some food and some bottled water (it was still very hot even at  7:30 at night).Then came the toss up between Level 42 and Melody Gardot. For Bryan it was a no brainer but Jody really fancied seeing Melody Gardot who was playing on another stage. In the end she opted for Level 42. However they seemed intent on playing tracks we had never heard of and on top of that they were really jazzing it up. The effect was that we were a bit bored. Bryan was determined to stick with them as they were his musical heroes after all but Jody decided it was a good time to sneak off to see Melody Gardot and she squeezed out through the crowds to go to the other stage. But when she got to that stage, she found a black lady in her 60s looking the complete opposite of Melody Gardot but decided to sit and watch for a bit anyway. It turns out her name was Betty Wright and she was brilliant. She could tell a story too. She told the story (to her own music) about how her song  ‘I wanna sex you up’ has been hijacked and another band claiming credit for it. Well she left the crowd in no doubt as to whom wrote that song and everyone was on their feet dancing in the aisles and thoroughly entertained by her.Jody snuck back to see the end of Level 42 and was amazed to find most of the crowds had gone. Bryan was easy to find now and much closer to the stage. Level 42 finally got around to playing their big hits – seems as if they kept them all until the end. When they finally got going though they were really good and they didn’t lay on the jazz too much. Well Tom Jones was next. What can we say about Tom? Well his days of shaking his hips are well and truly behind him but he has still got it. At 75 years old he is still belting them out albeit a bit more slowly. We loved the way he slowed ‘Delilah’ right down and gave it a whole new bluesy feel – still great though. His whole set was much slower paced than normal but he gave the crowd what they wanted and a lot of gospel songs in-between. Total crowd pleaser!Jamie Cullum was next. Grown locally to us in Hullavington and with his own radio show on Radio 2 in the evenings, we were keen to see him and see what he could do live. Well he didn’t let us down either. A truly talented chap, he really surprised us. We know from his radio show that he really knows his stuff but he can really perform it too. We really enjoyed his set as although it was still jazz, he gave it a modern feel which made it easier to listen to. The final set of the night was Chris Brown. There had been lots of speculation about whether he would actually turn up as he had been arrested 2 nights previously for some skirmish or another but he turned up to an army of screaming girls waiting for him. The backing track started and he came onto the stage, the girls screamed louder as he strutted his stuff. OK so far. And then the singing started. Not by him – his backing track. Basically his backing track was more or less his CD and he just grunted into the microphone here and there to make the girls scream louder. What a let down. All the other acts tonight sang for the extortionate-fee paying crowds and yet the finale act couldn’t even be bothered! Well the crowd voted with their feet and people started leaving in droves (not the screaming girls though) us included. Shame on you Chris Brown – total rip-off!Good job we had already got our value for money from the other acts who care about giving their fans a real show – you could learn a lot from them Chris. Over-all we had a great night though and the final act was soon forgotten in the memories from the others. We simply could not come to Curacao without visiting the distillery that makes the famous blue liqueur. Just a short bus ride away we were keen to find out what makes it blue. Well the secret is still safe with them as they don’t tell you that other than ‘permitted food dyes’. It turns out all the curacao liqueurs taste the same (we know we tasted a few) they just make them different colours for different cocktails. We never knew that. All are a triple-sec made from the curacao orange. These orange trees were planted in groves by the Spanish when they first invaded the island but they didn’t grow so well in the Caribbean climate and were abandoned. Eventually they grew wild and became bitter. Along came the Dutch – ousted the Spanish and discovered that the abandoned trees grew perfect oranges for making into alcohol. Thank goodness for the Dutch eh? It seems as if they are expending their range now though as we got to taste some other liqueurs made there – chocolate, tamarind and rum & raisin. All good stuff but we shall stick to blue lagoons we think!One of the other curiosities of this island are the statues of the black mama or Chichi as it is known. A lady here has set up a foundation to help women here and these statues represent your Chichi – or your Big Sister. Everyone needs a Big Sister we are told and you can go to the workshop and paint your own if you can get there – it’s quite a long way out of town. Or you can buy one painted by the local ladies who sell them to earn some income. They are really great little things and a fabulous idea but at yet another extortionate price (£25 each for the smallest), we would not be contributing to the cause and had to make do with a couple of photos instead. It wasn’t long before our thoughts turned to leaving and we worked out that even adding in the cost of a flight, it was going to be cheaper to fly to The Dominican Republic and spend two weeks there all inclusive on a beach resort, than it would be to stay put here for two weeks eating Denny’s for breakfast every day. Actually we would save money by leaving. Which would kind of off-set the cost of the jazz festival tickets.So bye bye Curacao. We thought you were very nice – especially the pretty Dutch houses by the waterfront but we just cannot afford to stay here any longer and move on we must. So catching a very early flight just 6 days later we were out of there and all excited to see the next Caribbean Island. Now this is how we should have travelled all along – Caribbean Island hopping. Brilliant!