Bon dia!
In a world with continuous changing COVID restrictions, our trip to Curaçao felt like a welcome getaway from everyday life. I still feel very privileged we got to do this. Of course living on a tropical island for a month is wonderful, but it’s also always somewhat of a challenge and adventure to find your way and setup daily routines. In the end we’re expected to deliver the same amount of work as we would’ve delivered at home.
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For our stay we booked an AirBnB with car rental included. Our colleague (and director of SIM Caribbean) Wesley, who lives in Curaçao helped us pick a good location and provided us with some do’s and don’ts. Having a car is pretty much mandatory. Bicycles and scooters are rarely seen and thus not much anticipated on in traffic. Using a car is your best pick and besides some poorly maintained roads and the blinding high-beam headlights of other cars very doable.
A fun fact: in Curaçao you’ll hear a lot of cars honking to each other. It’s a custom to greet and thank one another, for example when way is given on an intersection.
The time difference with The Netherlands was 6 hours in the first week, when time changed to wintertime it was 5 hours. Curaçao is 5/6 hours behind on The Netherlands, so we always began early in the morning (around 7:00 to 7:30AM). This made us overlap with our team colleagues for like half of the day.
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Wesley invited us to come have a Friday night drink at a local snèk, which is sort of an outside bar. We visited Bugs Bunny snèk, they serve the coldest Amstel Brights on the island with delicious fried chicken wings. I couldn’t imagine a better way to end the work week!
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In our spare time we explored the island; the colourful Otrabanda and Punda, an abundance of beautiful beaches and amazing snorkling along the coast. One other main highlight I would everyone recommend to do is climbing the Christoffelberg. From the parkinglot at the foot of the mountain it takes a fit person around 45-60 minutes to climb up. The hike is fantastic and the view on the top very rewarding!
If you manage to start early (start the hike around 6:15/6:30AM) you might find yourself alone at the top which I imagine would’ve been magical!
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