Island smackdown

By Ty Sawyer

updated 2:53 p.m. ET June 13, 2007

Sometimes there’s an advantage to failing. And I’d failed spectacularly. I’d been coming to Curaçao for years. Thought I knew it well. I’d been down every dirt road I could find. Especially those with gates or “no trespassing” signs (in Dutch, does that count?). I’d eaten in places I probably couldn’t find again, met one-of-a-kind people who’d become part of my story stockpile, and ventured as far off this island’s beaten path as I could get. And I’d dived it from tip to tip.

Then along came Jody.

I can remember telling my friend Jody about my favorite restaurant in the Caribbean, which just happened to be in Curaçao, a place called Equus, only open on Fridays, usually filled with locals and always packed. She hadn’t heard of it. Didn’t believe me. She didn’t believe me because she’d been to Curaçao about 45 times, once dated a local man, and had felt the embrace and experience of Curaçao as only a local could. So we did what stubborn friends do. We argued.

And made extravagant claims. Well, at least my claims were extravagant. We both professed to know more about Curaçao than the other. Fighting words. So we decided to meet on the field of battle and put our boasts to the test.

Curaçao is a strange, wonderful, beguiling and intriguing island. Although it’s part of the Netherlands Antilles, you’ll hear more than 40 languages spoken on the island, and its food, fealty, unique undersea riches and culture are an amalgam resulting from more than 400 years of the touch of man. So it’s a complicated and interesting corner of the globe. And that’s before you get wet and take a gander beneath the surface.

The gauntlet
To be fair, Jody doesn’t dive, so our challenge is topside, and we decide that I’ll meet up with her between dives, so before I venture underwater, we climb. We’re headed to the 1,239-foot summit of Mount Christoffel to get the lay of the land (and hopefully come across a guru sitting cross-legged at the peak who can help me out in this challenge). As surprising as it might be, I’d never taken the two and a half hours it normally takes to climb Mount Christoffel, because of its height and the restrictions on altitude and diving. But to offset my initial landscape deficiency, I am determined to beat Jody to the top so I can gloat in my minor successes.

Christoffel isn’t much different today than when the first humans came upon the island. The trail takes us past meadows of aloe, orchids and agave, massive stands of cactus, wahbi bushes with their daggerlike thorns, and dozens of species of trees. We see blue iguanas and bright yellow and black trupials, and there are plenty of hummingbirds buzzing about. Clearly no lawyers have ever taken this hike. There’s not a guardrail in sight and definitely no wheelchair access, especially near the summit. After clambering and trail-negotiating up, around and through boulders, we make it to the top. I get there well ahead of Jody, but she wins round one.

Ty Sawyer A view of the quiet bay at the sleepy village of Westpunt.

“It’s my 13th summit,” she informs me as she sits to admire the view as if it’s the first time she’s seen it. 

The view causes us to pause. It’s breathtaking. From this high point, Jody points out several landmarks, laying down the gauntlet.

“Have you ever hiked through Sheta Boka Park?” she points off toward the sea-lashed windward coast. Even from the summit of Christoffel, we watch as waves smash into the coast and explode toward the sky along this remote and rugged coastline.

“Of course. I especially like Boka Pistol. When the waves hit, it sounds like a shot going off.” So far so good, I think and fire back, “Have you ever been to Suplado Crater?”

“You can see it from here,” she says. “Have you ever had a lomito burrito at Hot Peppers?”

For a moment I look over the horizon at landhuisen (old plantation homes) and the town of Westpunt, then toward the calm waters of Boca Santa Cruz on the leeward side. Giant wind generators, taking advantage of the near-constant trade winds, rise in the distance, and farther down along the horizon, the busy port of Willemstad and the populated eastern end of the island bristle with commerce. I look for anything that might take the attention off lomito burrito until I can figure out what that might be.

“Uh, maybe …”

She rattles off a dozen more sites and to-dos — the Maritime Museum tour of the Shottegat ship-repair harbor, Pop’s for pumpkin pancakes and Christmas Eve at the Landhuis Brakkeput Mei Mei — and each time she points out a landmark, it’s accompanied by a “have you been there?” I mostly say “sure,” even though I stretch the truth a couple of times and suddenly feel inspired to dive, almost desperately.

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