Category Archives: Vacations

Dining in Curacao

May 26, 2009 Maurice Leave a comment

Sunday night we had dinner at the Sea Side Terrace. It came highly recommended by the Royal Aquarium staff, and we’d read nice reviews on line. Well, last night must have been an exception, because I’m not sure I’ve had worse service, worse food or a worse meal.

The owner raved about his rice and beans, that his fish was wonderful and fresh, his fish soup was home made and delicious. So I ordered the fish soup, fresh fish and rice and beans. Not sure how the soup was, since we never got it… The rice and beans had zero moisture in them, were cold, and were crispy – I’m not positive, but I don’t think that’s how it should be. The “fish” was three thin strips of something, coated in rubber, then deep fried til it was so overcooked that I couldn’t cut it with a knife and fork.

And the kicker – it only took 2 hours to get it! TERRIBLE!! DO NOT GO!

On a brighter note – Monday we ate at El Gauchos Steak house. When we were in Aruba last December, we ate the best meal we’ve ever had at El Gauchos. This restaurant has a complimentary shuttle, that picked us up at the hotel, drove us to the restaurant, then returned us to the hotel after dinner. Now that’s service!

The restaurant is situated on a hill, so you have an amazing view of parts of the city, and the island. The soccer stadium was lit up, with a game just finishing up as we sat down. It’s owned by a pair of Dutch brothers, but is not associated with the El Gauchos in Aruba.

The service was impeccable. Attentive, informative, friendly. The meal was delicious, starting with home made chicken soup. Now I thought I knew what chicken soup tasted like, but this was a unique creation with wonderful flavor and aroma. A nice all you can eat salad bar was also there. It was nice, but would have just preferred they bring a salad lol.

The steaks were served on large wooden chargers, and were quite simply, amazing. Easily as good as the El Gauchos in Aruba. I had mine with the roasted vegetables. They were very tasty!

For desert I had tiramisu, and Pam had some wonderful concotion called “Pyramides” — order it – you won’t be disappointed. Not that I was in anyway disappointed with the tiramisu. All in all – WONDERFUL. The view, the service, the food, and best of all the company!

Curacao, Vacations

Sunday – relaxing

May 24, 2009 Maurice 1 Comment

Pam needs a nap! lol So I thought I’d post a bit and show you what we’ve been up to. We started the day snorkeling, just around the condo today. We saw some nice fish, but the ocean is quite different here – on one side of the resort, there is a HUGE dropoff and the ocean quickly drops away to darkness. We’ve seen a number of barracuda already.

Pam got to see her first “spotted drum” as well. It’s not the greatest shot of it, but it’s a very pretty fish, with his long flowing dorsal fin, that almost waves like a scarf. I’m sure we’ll get a better picture of one of them.

We did not see any turtles or moray eels yet, but we’re told this area has a lot of them. There are certainly a lot of barracuda around, way more than we saw on Aruba. This area is very well populated, and I was surprised to see so many barracuda hanging around, literally amongst our feet as we entered at the condo’s main beach.

Willemstad is much bigger than Orangestad on Aruba. It’s a large city, really, not simply a town. It has some typical Caribbean architecture and the bright colors we saw on Aruba.

Like Orangestad, not much is open past 2 pm on Sunday. Should be fun to see how many people are around these sites we saw today, which were virtually deserted. No cruise ships in the harbor, either today.

Nice first day – we’re off to have a nice dinner – I think we’re going for fresh seafood on the beach. Who knows? We certainly don’t! We’re on vacation! We don’t have no steenking plans!

OH BTW – there is a web cam here that Peter reminded me about – The picture it shows ALMOST shows our actual unit! You can see a balcony, on the right of the picture, and we’re the NEXT unit to the right.

Click here for the webcam.

Curacao, Vacations

First looks at Curacao

May 24, 2009 Maurice 4 Comments

We have arrived in Curacao! I’m sitting on our deck, looking out over the ocean, having a cup of Timmy Horton’s coffee, typing this report.

We took a little 16 seat puddle jumper over to Curacao from Aruba – they said it would take 40 minutes, but it took about 25. Was a neat little trip – kinda reminded me of the puddle jumpers we took jumping the Greek Islands.

Curacao seems a lot bigger than Aruba. Willemstad seems quite large, compared to Aruba’s towns. We had a bit of an adventure finding the place – we didn’t really get lost, we just thought we were lost!

The condo is really nice – very large, 16 foot ceilings. A 400 sq ft deck out the bedroom has an outdoor dining room and 2 couches on it. It’s got good internet from out here too.

We’re going to go hop in the ocean in about 15 minutes. Hopefully, the water is clear and lots of fish are hanging about for us to capture on film!

Curacao, Vacations

Charlotte NC

May 23, 2009 Maurice 3 Comments

Well we’re in Charlotte, NC, and it’s 3:30 am Vancouver time. We are waiting for our connecting flight to Aruba. We have about a 3 hour layover here. It’s a very nice airport, with rocking chairs all over so you can sit and relax. There are electrical plugins, and they offer free wifi connections, too. So you can sit in the rocking chair, with your laptop plugged in, and surf the web while waiting for your flight.

Seattle’s airport charges $7.99 for 24 hrs worth of connectivity, the typical ATT ripoff “featured” in so many US airports.

We were having a bite to eat and a beer in the Seattle Taproom in the airport, when the waitress said, “you’re ordering a beer? I’ll have to see some ID.” I said, “ID? Really? How old do you have to be to drink in this town??” But I still had to pull out my ID and prove I was over 50 I guess. (Pam was going to have a coffee, but decided to order booze so she could feel young…)

We’re heading for breakfast now, then maybe a nap til the flight. The US Airways flight from Seattle to NC was uneventful. The flight was crowded, packed even. But all went well.

Aruba, Vacations

Our last full day in Aruba

December 16, 2008 Maurice 2 Comments

On Friday, our last full day in Aruba, we split up the pack. Pete rented a jeep and toured the island with a local woman he met while at our first condo.

Pam, Mike and I were happy to see calm, clear oceans, so we headed north to the lighthouse, and Arashi beach. We had jumped in here early in the first week. The water is clear and calm and we saw some things we’d never seen before!

Tops on the list, was an octopus! Was that cool! Mike spotted him as he moved from the sand to over a rock and changed color from sandy white to a mottled kind of color matching the rocks. He was as tough to see initially as the scorpion fish. If you look at the enlarged picture, you’ll see his eye, and toward the center/right you’ll see one of his tentacles turned over, exposing his “suction cups.”

Some other intriguing fish we saw were the Queen Angelfish, a brilliantly colored fish that is on the cover of our “fish book” for identifying species. We’d never seen one in the ocean, and she was certainly worth the wait!

Also appearing was a lobster, a huge school of Caribbean reef squid, another Queen triggerfish, a smaller barracuda, and of course the French Angelfish.

By early afternoon. we’d tired ourselves out, so we decided to pack in a bit of shopping. Pam and I had been shopping for pinky rings, but had found nothing we really liked. We stumbled upon a nice small shop, A Touch of Gold, run by a nice family. Pam regaled them with her Punjabi swearing, and we had buckets of laughs with them.

It’s funny – you go into a jewellery store, tell them you are looking for a pinky ring, wanting to spend in the $500 range, and suddenly $1500-2500 rings are appearing. Nice – thanks for listening. I tell these guys what I wanted, and they show me 3 rings all under 600 bucks. Guess what? They got the sale! Then Pam started with her tales of Punjabi cussing, and suddenly she’s layered in gold! hah If we ever come back to Aruba, you can bet they’ll get a return visit from us!

Pam wanted another night in a casino, so we went over to the Seafront Casino. Nearby was a nice little shopping mall, open late. There we had dinner at a restaurant recommended by Linda earlier in the week, the Waterfront Crabhouse. Dinner was terrific! I had the same dinner I ordered at the disastrous Petit Cafe. The fish was PERFECTLY cooked, the shrimp were stunningly prepared and scallops a thing of beauty. A wonderful singer performed for us a few short steps away. The full moon was gorgeous; the stars twinkled merrily in the sky; sadness was in the air, but it was really a perfect finish to a really marvellous vacation.

I want to thank Pete and Mike for coming with us and joining in the fun. We had some fun times, some great meals, saw terrific vistas, met some great people, saw some amazing fish – all in all, just a great time.

Thanks Aruba. We’ll see you again some day!

(I’m going to post one more page of Aruban pics – of just the birds we saw. Some really cool birds make Aruba home – as you’ll see! )

Aruba, Vacations

Thursday on De Palm Island again

December 15, 2008 Maurice Leave a comment

Today, we went back to De Palm Island, so Mike could see the blue parrotfish. For me though, the real highlight was seeing the Midnight Parrotfish; that has been the highlight of the fish experiences so far. It’s a magnificent looking creature. He’s the only one we’ve seen of his species. Poor guy has to be lonely!

There were also some trunkfish, of a size we had never seen before. After checking in our book, we found that they were the max size for this fish. They were SOOOOoooo cool. I’m totally fascinated by them. I must have about 300 pictures of them alone! hah

We also saw the absolute biggest French Angelfish we’ve seen down here. I didn’t even realize they grew that big! Most we’ve seen were half that size. When we were in the Caymans, we bought a photo of the french angel, but never saw one there. We saw some juveniles, but no adults. Down here in Aruba, we see them every time we’re in the ocean.

Pam finally got to see her Red Lipped Blennie – they’re a really skittish fish, and tough to get a picture of… as soon as you point the camera at them, they’re gone. I’ve got some great pictures of rocks trying to photograph them! hah

Pam and Pete were the brave ones of the crowd and did the Sea Trek helmet walking, where they had a helmet on their heads that had oxygen pumped into it as they descended 25 feet into the ocean. You have to stop every few feet to pop your ears because of the pressure changes on the way down but you don’t have to do it on the way up. The fish were the usual fish you get to see around these waters but Pam did get to touch a sea feather and see it pop back in it’s little hole. It was a pretty fun experience.

We had dinner at the Petit Cafe, overlooking Oranjestaad’s harbor. It was a nice setting. It’s so cool to eat outside at 8 pm, in the nice warm 80 degree weather. I tried a new drink called the Nutty Monkey – very good! An adult slurpy with banana and coconut booze.

Unfortunately the food was poor, the worst we’ve had. I had the “Treasures of the Sea” – lobster, shrimp, and mahi-mahi. I ask you, when was the last time you NEEDED a steak knife to cut a lobster tail? 4 small shrimp, badly overcooked, a small lobster tail – and i mean small – two bites – and a little piece of mahi-mahi, with a scoop of rice and KFC-style coleslaw – 36.50 US dollars – a total ripoff.

Ah well – at least the beer was cold.

Aruba, Vacations

Diving a wreck

December 14, 2008 Maurice Leave a comment

Today, Thursday, December 11, we woke up to a beautifully calm day, and the ocean was glassy smooth. So we headed north to a wreck that is easy to swim to from shore.

It was really quite something. Literally, MILLIONS of fish hang around the ship, inside and out.

The water depth is 6-8 feet so the viewing is fantastic. We saw tons of the usual suspects, plus some gorgeous French Angels. There was a huge trumpetfish. Man, what a big guy he was.

But the real treat was the trigger fish. I love that fish – had a really cool experience with one in the Caymans, but this was the first one I’ve seen here, I think. He was a great looking fish, but he didn’t like to be photographed. It’s not a bad pic of him, but wish I could have gotten a beauty of him!

We did see a barracuda, but it was a smaller one, only about 2 feet. We also saw a couple of cool scorpionfish. They look just like a rock, so it’s really tricky to see them in the water.

For dinner, we headed out to an Argentine steakhouse called the El Gaucho. We’d heard good things about this place, and it took us a while to find it. As we were about to give up, we stumbled upon it. It was busy, as we were told it would be. We had a small wait, but they are associated with a small club, Garufa’s, across the street, so you can go have a drink, listen to the entertainment, and they’ll buzz you when your table is ready. TRUST ME ON THIS ONE – skip Garufa’s! haha That night’s entertainment was karaoke, and I take back any nice things I’ve ever said about karaoke. My ears are still bleeding.

The meal, however, more than made up for it. It’s a beautiful restaurant inside. The tables are large, with leather/cow-hide seats. They serve you on wooden chargers. The waiter, a local Aruban, was funny, friendly and efficient. The food was unbelievably good. Our friend Jorge insisted that Argentine beef was better than Alberta beef, and guess what? He’s 100% correct! Easily the best steak I’ve ever had. Pete felt the same thing.

For desert, I had the tiramisu, and it was the best desert on the island. The meal was so fantastic I had to have a nice port and a Cuban cigar to finish it off in style. The port was really nice, but the threat of divorce stopped me from the cigar! haha