A hole in one!

September 25, 2018 Maurice Leave a comment

I’ve been playing the Blue Bay Golf Course on Curacao quite regularly in the last seven or eight months and I’ve had some good rounds, and some not so good rounds. Yesterday, I played terribly, and Pam said, “Let’s go today, you’re bound to do better.”

And I did. I played very nicely. Drove the ball well, and was putting like a house on fire. When we had just finished 16 and were driving to the par 3 17th, Pam said, “Well you have to be pleased with your round.” I had just missed a birdie putt by about an inch. I was feeling pretty good about my game. It’s been a while since I’ve had such a nice round.

Came to 17 and it was running at 111.8 yards according to my range finder. It was funny because I had had another shot of 111 yards and hit a nice nine iron to within a couple feet. Sometimes the winds are swirly at 17 so I took a nine iron and an eight iron to the tee box. I hit my nine iron and it seemed a bit left, but it bounced once, then rolled into the cup!

And here is the movie to prove it!

Curacao

1st Curacao Invitational Golf Tournament

August 26, 2018 Maurice Leave a comment

On Saturday, I played with my partner, Katherine, in the 1st Curacao Invitational Golf Tournament. It featured all the usual golf prizes – closest to the hole, longest drive – plus two big hole in one prizes! A hole in one on the sixth hole could win you a car.

The second hole in one was a raffled chance at a million dollars! There were ten “entries” drawn for the opportunity to take a shot at the hole in one. And I got one of the entries. I told Katherine that if I sunk the shot, I’d retire. When she reminded me that I was already retired, I realized I could let some one else win it. How generous of me, eh?

The shot was from 170 yards out on the 18th hole, across some water. The “tee box” was in the middle of the fairway. My excuse for missing the hole (in fact the whole green!) was that the tee box wasn’t level. haha Only one of the ten actually hit the green. Several hit into the water. I can take some (minor) satisfaction that I didn’t hit into the water and could pick my ball up.

It was a fun tourney, but I have to admit I didn’t play very well. A case of the jitters I guess. The harder I tried, the worse I got. Ah well, there is always next time. The fellow in the blue shirt is the club pro, Oliver, who ran things very smoothly.

Kat is the lady who was our real estate agent here in Curacao. She’s a fellow Canuck, so we “had to represent” as she put it. It wasn’t hard to pick our cart out of the pack on the course!

Curacao

Just a quick post

July 28, 2018 Maurice Leave a comment

Pam has been taking lots of pictures on the golf course lately, mainly because I’ve been out playing every other day! There are just tons of birds around here, and she got a couple nice ones in the last couple of days. To the right is a southern lapwing. We see this bird quite a bit. Around the 17th hole there is a one with three little babies. Very cute.

The lora parrots are a brilliant green (the bird in the featured picture at the top of the message) and Blue Bay has a lot of them around. Pam calls them squawkers because they noisily call to each other. The movie at the end of the post has a nice little clip of these two in a playful mood.

I like this shot of a snowy egret giving himself a shake. He looks like he just got out of bed after a rough night!

The clip also has a bit of Bailey in it – she has made several doggie friends on the resort, and the whippet named Ollie has become her favorite playmate. When we get near the golf course, she is constantly looking for him. The second she does, she’s gone like a shot after him!

Curacao

Tall ships in the harbor

July 18, 2018 Maurice Leave a comment

Pam and I spent an afternoon touring several tall ships that have docked in Curacao for the first time. The ships are training ships from many countries, including Mexico, the United States, Brazil and Venezuela. They are quite large, usually having a capacity of over 200 sailors.

The American ship is called the Eagle, and was originally a German ship. It was acquired by the USA as part of war reparations at the end of the Second World War. The ship can take on 233 sailors and guests. Their home port is in Connecticut. It’s a training vessel for the US Coast Guard service.

The Eagle was a nice vessel to tour. They had lots of signs up, explaining how the ship got to America, how it handles (14 knots under engine, 17 knots under sail), why sail when modern fleets no longer sail, etc etc. The other ships we toured were nice too, but the Eagle made it so simple to understand the complexities of what the trainees are going through.

The Simon Bolivar is a tall ship from Venezuela. She has a similar design to the Eagle. A barque class of ship, she is a training vessel for the Venezuelan Navy. Her home port is La Guairia. It literally gleamed in the sunshine. She was cleaned to a glorious shine!

The sailors were all scrubbed and polished and took great pride in showing off their ships. The figurehead on the Simon Bolivar was kind of cool – almost a super hero type of statue, wrapped in the Venezuelan flag.

The Mexican entry is called the Cuauhtemoc, named for the leader of Tenochtitlan. She has sailed over 400,000 nautical miles, but looks as good as new. The sailors had her just a gleaming too. It’s a barque class ship, like the Simon Bolivar and the Eagle.

I particularly liked the figurehead on this boat. Very cool. This ship is very similar in design to the Simon Bolivar, and is considered a sister ship.

There were lots of people touring all the ships and lots of picture taking going on. Sailors were being asked to get into the shots and they seemed to enjoy all the attention. We’ve put a few more shots in the Curacao 2018 gallery, so you might want to have a look at them there.

Curacao

One year anniversary

July 9, 2018 Maurice Leave a comment

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of our move to Curacao. It’s been a busy year! Our first months here were taken up with renovations to the apartment, and getting our residency permits in order. Discovering how big the island was was a surprise. It seems very tiny on a map, but there are a lot of hidden gems we hadn’t been aware of, even after ten years of coming here!

There have been some other surprises for sure. Food is a lot cheaper than I figured. Some foods are much pricier, including certain fruits. Cherries are through the roof expensive. But a huge pineapple is cheap cheap cheap compared to Vancouver. Boneless skinless chicken breasts are under 3 dollars a pound. I miss the diversity of Canadian craft beer, but the beer that is available is cheaper than in Canada.

On the negative side, the drivers here are absolutely the worst you can imagine. Six percent of the vehicles here are right hand drive, accounting for 25 percent of the accidents. But fully 100 percent of the drivers of those vehicles are incompetent! About 80 percent of the population do not know how to use their signal lights. Even turning left they do not use their signals. If you thought people using their phones was a problem where you drive, then spend ten minutes on the road here in Curacao. Most people are talking, texting or watching videos on their phones while they drive.

And parking? Forget about it. The cars here are all quite small, with a vehicle called the Kia Picanto being a very popular model. It is a very tiny car. Most three year olds could park it between the lines with their eyes blindfolded. But not the drivers here on Curacao. Yesterday this woman parked so poorly, I said to her, “You must be ashamed of that parking job.” She looked at me like I was drunk.

The wildlife here is really amazing. Over 5000 different breeds of birds come through Curacao over the course of a year, and it’s amazing to see. From predators to song birds, we see them all.

It’s been a real treat to have nice warm weather all the time, but I do miss running through the rain forests of Vancouver.

Bailey has made a bunch of new friends too, one in particular, a whippet named Ollie. We normally see him in the evening, and she starts looking for him as soon as we near the 13th hole. It’s very cute.

Curacao

Guess I can stop now

May 1, 2018 Maurice Leave a comment

I have been playing quite a bit of golf here at the Blue Bay golf course. It’s quite a challenging course, with tremendous sea views, to soften the blow as you write down your score. The greens closer to the ocean are lightning quick, while the ones a little further inland are not as quick. With all the undulations, it’s an intense challenge.

The Trade Winds make each hole difficult. If you have the wind with you, your shot can really fly. If you’re going into the winds, a high shot can see your ball being held back by the wind. If the wind is sliding across the fairway, a slight hook becomes a 40 yard slide! It can even impact your putts.

The course has a sunset rate that begins at 4 pm. I’ve been able to finish the whole 18 most days before the sun sets. The sun sets around 7 pm, but I’m usually done by 6:15 or so. Depends on how many balls I have to search for; if I put them in the fairway, I’m done earlier!

But I’ve got a bit of brag post to make – the number 17 hole is a par 3, 120 yards. I usually put it on the green, using an 8 iron. But if the pin is on the right side, there is an eyebrow bunker right in front, and for some reason that intimidates me and I usually hit very poorly when the pin is there. Well, on Sunday (April 29) I was playing with Jeff, our next door neighbour and we came to 17, and the pin was behind the eyebrow bunker. I hit a nice 8 iron and Jeff said, well, that’s right at it. We got up to the green and my ball wasn’t there. It was however, in the cup! HOLE IN ONE! Fun stuff.

We went golfing a couple days later, and Pam said to me, now don’t be upset if you don’t get a hole in one today! haha

(Side note: there is a tournament this fall that they are already advertising, and there is a prize for getting a hole in one on the 17th. That prize is a million dollars!)

Curacao

Long time coming!

April 17, 2018 Maurice Leave a comment

Wow – I didn’t realize how long it has been since we’ve posted on the blog. I got a reminder from GoDaddy, our hosting service, that they automatically renewed our hosting and realized, oh right! We have a blog!

We’ve been doing not much of anything really. Just being retired. We’ve been in the ocean of course, and been out to restaurants, and had some fun evenings in one of the casinos here. But really, we’ve just been enjoying being in nice warm weather and not worrying about rain and snow and cold.

I’ve been doing a lot of golfing here on the Blue Bay golf course. It’s a challenging 18 hole course. The trade winds really make club selection so important. One hundred and twenty yards into the wind is a 6 iron, but 120 yards with the wind is an 9 iron. There are some great holes. This picture is approaching the green on the 14th hole.

We went out to Playa Piskado (or Playa Grande as it is sometimes called) with a nice couple we met from Delaware, and had a fun swim with the turtles. It’s always a great way to show off the ocean around Curacao. There were tons of turtles of course, but we saw a couple of Queen triggerfish! All the years we’ve come here, we’ve never seen a single queen triggerfish – we see them in Bonaire and Aruba a lot. So it was neat to finally see one here.