In the dark about Curacao

Many know little about eclipse isle

Author: By Christina Tree, Globe Correspondent

Date: SUNDAY, January 25, 1998

Page: M9

Section: Travel

Neighboring Aruba, an island less than half the size of Curacao but with three times as many hotel rooms, is far better known to Americans, who represent almost 70 percent of its visitors. By contrast, less than 20 percent of Curacao's visitors are American, mostly cruise-ship passengers who spend fewer than eight hours on the island. Even the tourist handouts are in Dutch, the language of most of the tourists who are not German or Latin.

The very fact that I hadn't heard much about Curacao lately piqued my curiosity. Thirty years ago, I had been impressed by the beauty of its 18th-century Dutch architecture style, its bizarre landscape (tree-sized cacti and high, abrupt hills) and the many beaches that notch its south coast.

Returning last month, I was amazed by how little the island had changed: virtually no high-rise hotels, just a few low-slung resorts, hundreds of rental apartments (geared to European visitors who tend to come for a month or more), and the real surprise: exceptionally accessible and varied marine life.

Admittedly I'm not a diver (I flunked a resort course by puncturing an eardrum), just a humble snorkeler, and Curacao is a snorkeler's dream.

For starters, The Curacao Sea Aquarium displays some 400 species of marine life in seawater-fed tanks. A wide variety of fish also congregates in an adjoining underwater area around a 1906 shipwreck. Visitors can explore with snorkels or scuba tanks (no experience necessary), also view the area from an underwater observatory, feed sharks (both at a central tank and through a hole in an underwater wall), or take a fully certified diving course.

At any number of Curacao beaches, you can also simply wade into the water, pull on your mask, stick your head under the water, and see many more fish than most places in the Caribbean.

My first attempt, at Playa Lagun, one of many small public beaches spaced along the south coast, was a revelation. Turquoise, clear water below the cliffs on either side of the cove teemed with reef fish: long skinny trumpet fish, purple and pink parrot fish, yellow-striped sergeant majors, deeply colored angel fish and more.

``The island is ringed by reefs, and you have the same coral formations, the same species for which Bonaire is famous,'' the manager of Habitat, a striking, dive-geared resort told us. Habitat, he explained, had begun on neighboring Bonaire (a world-famous diving mecca) 18 years ago and opened here three years ago to take advantage of the less trafficked waters.

For Curcacao, tourism has always been just part of its mix. Thanks to its sheltered, deep-water port, it's been the business center of this corner of the Caribbean since the 1640s. For more than a century, it was the slave-trading depot for the Dutch West India Co., which transported some 500,000 Africans to slavery on Caribbean and South American plantations.

After the horrendous voyage, Africans were detained in island camps to recoup for several months before being sold. Relatively few, however, ultimately remained on Curacao, which averages fewer than 22 inches of rainfall a year, not enough to support sugar and coffee plantations.

Still, the island was divided into plantations, and many colonial-era tile-roofed, limestone-walled plantation houses survive, some as restaurants or museums, some as something more haunting.

Landhuis (land house) Jan Kok, for instance, is technically open only on Sundays (11 a.m.-7 p.m.), when Dutch pancakes are served in a room that was once the owner's wine cellar, doubling as the torture chamber in which, it's said, he punished, even killed, the slaves who worked his salt flats.

``This place is haunted and I'm one of the ghosts,'' current owner Jeanette Lieto cheerfully tells visitors. Today Lieto lives alone in Landhuis Jan Kok with its massive 17th- and 18th-century mahogany furnishings and its splendid view across the valley to the salt pans where flamingos now gather.

Islanders are familiar with the story of how thieves once entered the house one moonlit night and were looting the liquor closet when one looked up to see a large, black presence in a blue diaphanous gown. ``Ghost,'' they screamed and ran. No one believes that the figure was Lieto in her nightgown.

The Hato Caves conjure up a different side of life for those Africans brought so unwillingly to the island. The caves are an extensive labyrinth of limestone caverns with interesting stalactite and stalagmite formations and an underground waterfall. Most striking, however, are the numerous blackened patches in the roof of the cave, created by torches over the many decades in which they echoed to the drums of voodoo ceremonies.

For three centuries the island's ethnic mix was simple: the black majority (nominally Catholic), the small Dutch aristocracy (Protestant), and a smaller Sephardic Jewish merchant elite who had come from Portugal via Holland. Together they created a language, Papiamentu, a blend of European and African words that's still what most people speak in Curacao, Bonaire, and Aruba.

In Curacao, the current ethnic mix is, however, far more diverse than the neighboring islands, thanks to the oil refinery constructed here by Royal Dutch Shell beginning in 1915. It attracted thousands of Venezuelans, Surinamese, Chinese, Lebanese, Syrians, and other immigrants as workers to build and to maintain it. The refinery continued to boom through World War II, supplying virtually all the fuel for allied planes, but since the '60s it has been largely automated. For more than a decade, it has been owned by the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA (the oil fields are in Venezuela).

The island's economy continues to center around Santa Anna Bay, the large, completely sheltered, deep-water harbor guarded by hilltop Fort Nassau (now a pleasant restaurant) and accessed through a narrow canal-like channel that itself forms the center of Willemstad.

With streets lined in 17th- and 18th-century, step-roofed, Dutch-style buildings painted bright tropical colors, Willemstad is easily one of the most picturesque towns in the Caribbean. It's a great walk-around place, from the lineup of wooden boats that sails over every morning from Venezuela to sell fruits and vegetables, to the many shops selling linens, perfumes, Swiss watches, and the usual Caribbean wares. There are also several interesting museums and, best of all, the oldest synagogue in continuous use (since 1732) in the Western Hemisphere. Its interior resembles an 18th-century New England meetinghouse, but the floor is sand. The adjacent museum tells the story of the Jewish community here, beginning in 1651.

No wonder cruise ship passengers rarely get beyond Willemstad, and, because Santa Anna Bay is also usually filled with oil tankers and container ships and because it borders the refinery and a huge drydock, it's no wonder they figure this isn't the kind of place to come for a longer stay.

Curacao is actually a 38-mile-long, skinny island with almost all development centered on Willemstad near the southern end. Stretching more than 20 miles due north along the leeward shore is the beach-notched coast that I find so appealing.

With its red soil, cacti, and mesquite, the landscape is frequently compared to the Arizona desert, but it's greener around 1,200-foot-high Mount Cristoffel, the centerpiece for a 3,500-acre nature park. Offering horseback riding as well as hiking, the park boasts some 500 varieties of plants and 150 bird species.

Curacao as a whole is rich in birdlife: Large frigate birds and herons hover over coves and beaches, and the melodious trupial (a large yellow-breasted oriole) seems to be everywhere. Wild green and yellow parakeets are also fairly common.

The island's other nature park requires snorkel or scuba gear: the Curacao Underwater Park stretches from the Sea Aquarium and the Princess Beach Hotel, on up the coast past ``The Tugboat,'' my favorite dive site.

Many of the most enticing beaches and dive sites are, however, around Westpunt, a tiny fishing village near the northwestern tip of the island. I was particularly taken with Playa Kalki, a narrow strand hidden below cliffs. Here visibility averages 100 feet, and 3 minutes from the shore you are hovering over mushroom-shaped star coral formations as well as a wide array of reef fish.

Since my last visit to Curacao, beaches have been well marked and the roads to them paved. In addition to the standard ``Official Island Guide,'' in which it describes a dozen or so beaches, Curacao Tourism Development publishes an ``Official Island Dive Guide,'' detailing 40 dive sites, most accessible from shore and others via the excursion boats from the island's resorts and dive centers.

The island's standout resort is the Sonesta, a low-slung and lemon yellow structure designed to resemble a traditional landhuis. With a casino and open lobby at its center, the complex is strung along the beach on Piscadera Bay. The older, larger Princess also remains an obvious choice, and in Willemstad the Plaza Hotel Curacao, sited right at the entrance of the narrow shipping channel, offers the island's only (12-story) high-rise tower as well as its original port-holed wing and a pool.

Roughly 1,000 apartments are also listed with Curacao Tourism Development. These range from beachside condos to unusual hideaways like The Art and Nature Inn, a dozen or so individually designed and hand-painted units clustered in lush vegetation.

February is carnival season in Curacao, and rooms are generally scarce,the even in years without a solar eclipse. The Curacao Tourism Development Board, however, said visitors can always be accommodated.

When we visited several weeks ago, Lieto assured us that she would be opening the island's first campground at Jan Kok in time for the eclipse.