This is my first post in my Make A Gap series so I thought I’d explain the first few until you know what to expect. Make A Gap are my travel stories and suggestions. I hope that, whether it’s a day, week, month, or year, they’ll encourage you to make a gap in your everyday life, step outside your home, and experience someone else’s.
“So what made you come to Curaçao?” she asked.
We were squeezed six adults and one child deep onto the benches of a communal table in an open food hall. Steam billowed from pots of boiling food all around us staying trapped inside thanks to the heat and humidity that stood guard just outside the open doorways.
The she I am referring to is a kind woman who was born in Curaçao, but now lives in Virginia in the Washington DC area. She was sitting with her husband who is from Curaçao, and small child. Her brother, who now also lives in the U.S. in the New York Hudson Valley sits across from her, next to me. They were back home for Christmas and we were all sitting in the place downtown where locals go to eat the foods they grew up with.
They waved us over when we were searching with our driver and tour guide for a place to sit, just after we ordered enough food that could feed both us and them. Like most food halls, all the large tables are communal. Something I loved in pre-pandemic days, but that I’m still working on being comfortable with again.
This was the second time we’d been asked this question. Each time it was accompanied by the explanation that this island wasn’t a common place for many people to travel, at least if not on a cruise. And there were no cruise ships docked that day, thankfully.
And each time we answered we were surprised by the local response.
You see, I’ve grown cautious about telling people our frequency of visiting all-inclusive resorts.
It’s because for a long time, as an expat, and one who considers herself well-traveled, I lived in the traveler’s space online. If you don’t know, it’s a space full of judgment. You are either doing it wrong or doing it right, and there is no middle ground. You either seek to be a local or you are a tourist.
But there is a middle ground. And I have stood right on it for most of my life. We explore alone and with tours. We hire private drivers, stay in Airbnbs, eat local food, and…we’ve visited all-inclusive resorts for the past 20 years.
So I wasn’t sure what to expect when we told locals that Sandals is what brought us here. After 12 trips to Jamaica, a couple to each St. Lucia, Antigua, and the Bahamas, and one to Barbados, we could not wait to explore a new island, and that island was Curaçao.
”That’s really great. Sandals is bringing a lot of people to Curaçao who may have not come otherwise.” We got this response not once, but twice, and to be honest, it shocked me, in a good way.
The perception of the benefit of the resort is what shocked me, not that they wanted us there. In my experience, in most of the places we travel people are happy to see you. People want to share their way of life and their food.
We spent the next 30 minutes or so talking to this group along with our driver about the food we ordered. About what they make at home versus buying out. About how the okra soup is slimy and they hated it as kids, but it’s so good, as an adult, you get over it. And about how all plates in Curaçao have to be served with plantains or they may not eat there.
Curaçao is a country, but it’s still within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It’s fascinating how it all operates, which was explained by our driver and private guide, Sulainy. These are a few things about the country that you may not know. I didn’t.
Nothing grows here. This one floored me. After seeing banana plantations, pineapples, and other produce grown around the Caribbean, I was so surprised. In fact, the failure of Valencia orange trees is what resulted in the liqueur (blue) curaçao. The green oranges are crushed and the peels are used. Everything is imported in Curaçao apparently because it’s too dry. I will say, I was surprised to see cacti among the tropical plants. It felt a lot like California. I did see a couple mango trees and a papaya growing while driving around, but commercially, all food comes from somewhere else. Often Venezuela, when the borders are open. That’s a long, interesting history as well if you want to read up on it.
You can catch a direct flight to and from Amsterdam. Because many people from Curaçao live in the Netherlands and many people in the Netherlands vacation in Curaçao, travel has been made pretty easy. We’ve talked about working both these locations into one trip now that we know about it.
There are four languages learned and spoken on the island. Papiamentu, Dutch, English, and Spanish. This kind of fun fact always reminds me that I could barely get a grasp of Portuguese when we lived in Brazil…and that would have just been language two for me. Sulainy told us that English has gone from something you should know (for business and education) to something the younger generations want to know the most (thanks to TikTok and Instagram). This presents the issue that the local languages could have less prominence at home as time goes on.
Food in Curaçao is some of the most unique we’ve come across in the Caribbean. Take the Tutu for example. It’s a sweet and savory mix of blackeyed peas, cornmeal, garlic, coconut milk, sugar, and spices. Dan was okay with a few bites. I could have eaten it as my meal, it was so good.
”What was your first thought when you walked in,” Sulainy asked us as we hopped back into her van to make the final stretch of drive back to the resort. I had the feeling she was hoping we may have been surprised or shocked at our dining experience. Or maybe she just wanted to make sure we enjoyed it. I had been the one who requested a local lunch as part of our tour, after all.
”My first thought was, YES, this is exactly what we wanted,” I said. Conversation a loud buzz in your ear as it combines with the clanging of ladles against pots and forks against plates with the sizzle of food hitting hot skillets in the background. Foods that need to be translated and explained to me because I’ve never encountered them before. A room so hot and humid, I had to fully focus my attention of deep breathing and calming my mid-life, anxious, heat-sensitive mind and body so I didn’t feel faint (or get grumpy). And the feeling as all that disappears when you fall into good conversation with strangers and savor bites of homemade food.
This is traveling for food culture for me. And why, after 20 years, I still haven’t lost the motivation to keep doing it.