Curaçao

We’ve done this business of sailing from one country to the next a dozen times. Entry requirements and procedures vary widely: some countries will want only the captain with the crew’s passports, others want to see every crew in person. Some will happily accept pets—no questions asked—others will make it so complicated with requirements impossible to fulfill that you’d think twice before bringing Garfield. Some charge a cruising permit, some don’t. Some want to see your clearance papers from the previous port, some couldn’t care less. By far the easiest ones are the French islands: you fill in a form in a computer terminal that’s hosted at a souvenir shop, and voilà, you’re done. The more complicated ones require you to stop at three places: customs, immigration and ports authority, but even with the more complicated ones we never had a problem… until Curaçao.

The problem actually brew in Bonaire. When we arrived in Bonaire it was three of us, so our inbound clearance form lists three people. Paula joined us there, and when we all went to immigration before leaving, they just put a departure stamp in the inbound form to convert it into the outbound document. No one noticed the discrepancy: we handed four passports, but the form listed three people. Curaçao is among the countries that want to see your exit papers from the previous country. I was already concerned that the timestamps would make it fairly obvious that we made an unauthorized stop in Klein Curaçao, because it doesn’t take you two days to sail from Bonaire, and there aren’t any other places to stop in between. I was prepared to say that my kids wanted to have the experience of sailing overnight under a full moon, or some such. Instead, what the officer saw was that our exit papers listed three people leaving Bonaire, and four of us trying to enter Curaçao. We became instant suspects of human trafficking! Paula’s passport had the proper exit stamp, but no amount of explaining made the officer bulge. “It’s not that I don’t believe you”, she said, “but I just can’t let you in.”

It was a bit Kafkaesque. We were already anchored in Curaçao. We took a taxi across a quarter of the island to the capital. We walked to customs and then across the bridge and through the entire town to immigration. You don’t get much more “in” than that, yet she wasn’t allowing us “in”. Having the extra passenger fly to Bonaire to sort things out wasn’t an option either: she wasn’t letting any of us, not even the boat, stay in Curaçao. She said our only option was to sail back to Bonaire. I was making plans to sabotage my own boat to disable it, because there was no way I was putting my boat and family through the ordeal of sailing straight against those strong trade winds only to resolve a bureaucratic detail.

She had us waiting for one hour. Then she said she was trying to contact authorities in Bonaire. It was Sunday. Not just any Sunday, but Sunday December 23rd. Late in the evening. I had no hopes, yet she came back a long while later to say that all is good, and welcome to Curaçao. Did she really talk to somebody in Bonaire? And if so, what did they say? “Oh, Paula, yeah, she’s alright”, perhaps?

We were still not done, though, since we needed anchoring permits from Ports Authority. So, the next day we went there to fill in more forms, this time with the strangest questions we’ve ever been officially asked. They wanted to know what anchorages we were going to be in, and exactly which dates in each (we’re cruisers… we have no idea where we’re going to be the day after tomorrow, let alone a month from now!). They wanted to know how much diesel, water and food we had. We asked for clarifications, which only made things worse: it wasn’t how much we had, but how much we were going to have when leaving the country. The agent seemed sympathetic: “what happens is that you cruisers do things differently”. Clearly! The icing on the cake was on the last page, which was blank except for the prompt “draw a picture of your boat”.

So, yeah, our initial impression of Curaçao wasn’t very positive. The contrast between the crystal-clear waters of Bonaire and the murky waters of our anchorage didn’t help. When Kathy “volunteered” to dive in order to check if the anchor was well set, she simply couldn’t find the anchor. I had to apply reverse with the engines in order to get the chain taught above the sea bottom, so that she could visually follow the chain to the anchor, and even then it wasn’t easy.

And then, the fireworks. Oh my gosh, the fireworks! What is it with Curaçaoans and fireworks? Yes, it was the end of the year, but a constant barrage every night for weeks, at any time and from every corner, was a bit too much. For new year’s eve it was Armageddon: an almost 360-degree spectacle from our boat that started hours before midnight and continued well into the new year.

Curaçao is geographically very similar to Bonaire, but it has more than 5 times the population density. That shows in way too many cars and too many Burger Kings.

We spent six weeks in the island. It took a little while, but ultimately Curaçao grew on us. We just had to overcome the shock of leaving Bonaire.

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Spanish Water

Historic Willemstad

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Rest of the island