My vacation

By Margaret Daley

This is a slideshow of my vacation to Curacao this past week. I had a great time. The people were friendly and welcoming. I mostly sat on the beach or at the pool. I lived in my bathing suit most days except when we took a tour of the island. In the pictures of the capital Williamstad you can see the Dutch influence. This island is only 35 miles from Venezuela. It is arid and cacti are everywhere. I thought I was in Arizona there for a while. So it wasn't any surprise that it didn't rain on us while we were there.

The local language is Papiamentu (a mixture of many language from Dutch to Spanish to African to English), but a lot of the people speak Dutch, English and Spanish. I never had trouble communicating while I was there.

The trade winds blow almost all the time--our tour guide said 360 days out of the year. When the wind dies down, everything shuts down. School is called off. Businesses are closed. I was glad the wind was blowing or it would have been VERY hot.

The water is beautiful (I have several pictures of it) and the diving is great in this area--although all I did was snorkel.

The older man is my husband, Mike. The younger one was our tour guide (I have a picture of him at the blow hole on the north side of the island). He was so interesting with lots of information about Curacao. And he wasn't that bad to look at either.

The best thing I saw was the salt flats where flamingoes could be seen. They come to have their babies before going back to South America. I would have had a picture of some except they were too far away to really tell what they were with my camera. The one chance I had for a close up I couldn't get my camera out fast enough to take the picture. The flamingo flew away and it was beautiful to watch him fly (first time for me to see in real life).