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Kids gone wild
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Give Me Meat
That night I meet up with Monica, Nolo and Christian at a true locals-only restaurant. Well, it’s not really a restaurant – it’s more of a horse stable. With a big grill. And a bar. And lots and lots of meat. On top of it all, it’s only open on Fridays, and good luck getting a table if you arrive after 5:30 p.m. The chef’s not even a chef – he’s a graphic designer during the other six days of the week.
The place is called Equus (the equines will probably peek out of their stalls during your meal), and there are only two items on the menu: a skewer of I-don’t-want-to-quit-eating Argentinean beef and the likewise sumptuous chicken. You get a basket of bread and a garlic dipping sauce, and that’s it. After the first bite, you pretty much lose the desire to ever eat anything else for the rest of your life.
This has become one of my favorite places to eat in the Caribbean. The mere memory of eating at Equus makes me hungry. You’ll have to get to know a local to find the place, but it’s worth the effort of discovering your way to this hidden culinary gem.
Kids Gone Wild
The next afternoon, full of Argentinian beef and Kura Hulanda laissez-faire, I pick up my wife (Cindy) and kids (Ethan, 7, and Gillian, 4) at the airport and head off to the Royal Resorts condominiums next to the Curacao Seaquarium and Ocean Encounters, the gathering place for Kids Sea Camp. About 15 minutes after checking in, my kids pretty much disappear.
About three days into Kids Sea Camp Gillian sits next to me on the beach and proclaims Curacao her favorite place in the world. Then she runs off with her new friends to build sand houses for hermit crabs. Those are almost the first words she says to me during those three days.
She and my son, Ethan, have been absorbed by this phenomenon called Kids Sea Camp. The two of them had talked about Sea Camp every single night at dinner for about a month before we came, and I feared that their expectations might exceed the reality of this family dive adventure. It didn’t happen. They stay either I the water or immersed in the world of water from sunrise to bedtime. If they weren’t full-blown water rats before this trip, they’ve established their water cred during this ocean-centric family week.
Ethan goes crazy for SASY (a modified tank and BC that kids use to “dive” on the surface) and follows me around the Seaquarium lagoon like a bona fide diver, flashing me the OK sign every time I look up to see how he’s doing. The lagoon has a Plexiglas wall with holes in it for feeding big green sea turtles and equally large nurse sharks that like the same kind of free handouts. Ethan bounces back and forth between the two until it’s time to surface.
Seizing my chance to see the other end of the Sea Camp spectrum, I join the newly minted preteen divers on a reef dive with one of the aquarium’s sea lions and on their open-ocean dolphin-encounter dive. Although it’s odd to see sea lions in Curacao, the Seaquarium houses the SOS (Sea lions in Open Seas) program, which lets divers and snorkelers get close to these incessantly curious mammals. Pioneered by Chris Porter, this program’s ultimate goal is to train sea lions to aid in search-and-recovery missions. In the meantime, however, playing with visitors and hanging with divers in the open seas is a full-time job for these adorable creatures.
Throughout the week, we parents get to indulge in what is perhaps the best-kept secret in the Caribbean: the undersea world of Curacao. Cindy and I get to explore some of the Caribbean’s best wrecks – including the Superior Producer and a host of sunken tugboats – and a lineup of lush, healthy reefs with some of the biggest orange elephant ear, purple stovepipe and brown tube sponges you’ll see anywhere in the world. The sheer number of freaky little things that come out at night is incredible. Because Curacao is an arid island, the viz tends to stay north of 100 feet. Over the course of the week we fill our logbooks with dives at Director’s Bay, Blauwbaii, the Tugboat at Caracasbaii, Sandy’s Plateau, Car Pile, Saba, Fuikbaii and the house reef of the Seaquarium.
As a parent, only one disconcerting thing happens all week. During the beach bonfire night, there’s a live band. And whose young daughter is the first to get on stage and groove to the beat? Yep, mine: Gillian. Boy, am I in trouble when she gets older.
About this time, I’m struck by a profound moment of clarity. My days as a man of leisure and poetic ease have officially come to a screeching halt. But at least my family can keep coming to Curacao every year, where I can share one of my favorite corners of the Caribbean with them. By the time my kids become teenagers we’ll have the sea in common (if nothing else), and when I need solace – and I will – I’ll just sneak off to Kura Hulanda and have a few treasured moments of Old-World ease.
As the official publication of the PADI Diving Society, Sport Diver is the magazine divers turn to each month to find out what’s going on in their world. Sport Diver is the ultimate source for up to date information on dive culture, equipment, travel, training and PADI Diving Society activities.
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