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Vacation.

No word quickens the pulse, inspires thoughts of cold beers and lounge-riffic days, and relaxes the muscles more than the word “vacation.”

And nothing depresses quite like the concept of “vacation over.”

Mrs. Hoffa and I just got back (a few days ago) from the beautiful, warm, sunny, freaking fantastic island nation of Curacao, just off the coast of Venezuela. We stayed at a “super-inclusive” resort - every drink, every meal, most activities, and most of all every beach and pool…all covered. We had a beautiful room overlooking the shore, and the weather? Unbeatable. 80s every day, 70s every night.

Curacao is a wee nation, originally landed on by the Spanish, who took a quick look around, and said “this place sucks.” And bailed. No natural resources to speak of, half the coast a rocky cliff with pounding surf, and sandy, claylike soil that was fairly unfriendly to plants.

The Dutch, however, during the days of the slave trade, needed a warm-water port to use to shuttle around rum, slaves and tobacco. So Curacao was sucked up by the Dutch East India Company, and became “Netherlands Antilles”. On the peaceful west side of the island, beautiful beaches, a natural harbor and tropical temperatures made a perfect place to build big ol’ houses, and a neat little town.

We sat on the beach, read books and drank Amstel. REAL Amstel, not Amstel Light. You ever seen regular Amstel? Me neither. Course, I’ve never been to Holland, and you may have, but anyway.

Us at the front bar with the big sign.

The town of Willemstad is a cute tourist trap, colorful and bright, plenty of knick knack shops and a fabulous open air market, the three sections of the city connected by floating bridges. Of course we were approached by a guy who wanted to sell us drugs, but we had bags full of liquor already.

Probably the coolest thing we did while in Curacao was take a go-kart tour of the island. I call them go-karts; they were billed as dune buggies. The brochure said “dune buggy”, the picture on the brochure was of a dune buggy, but when we got to the place (after being driven there in a plush carpeted Econoline van, no less) we found….go-karts. Cool go-karts, with beefed up suspension and license plates for driving on the road! We belted in and took off.

Did I mention these things had license plates? That’s right, we took them on the roads, alongside, buses, Coke trucks, and drivers who wanted to go a lot faster than 30 mph. Which, by the way is how fast we drove these things on the Curacao roads.

We saw an aloe plantation (where did you think your lotion, soap and shampoo came from?) an ostrich ranch, where we a) were informed that if we had time we could take ostrich rides, and b) saw the most outrageously deformed boar/pig/monster thing dragging itself around a barnyard.  I think they bred it all messed up so it couldn’t run away or something. Whatever, it was bogus.

Anyway, after that, it was all off-roadin’!  We bombed up and down savannah trails, along the west coast of the island, and stopped to climb up to a cool mountain cave that had once been underwater, but was now a maze of limestone passages. Off roadin’ some more, bombing around the east side of the island, and finally back to our hotel, covered in grime, and ready for a shower and some cold Amstel.

The less said about flying back the better - uncomfortable, couldn’t sleep, got sick, landed in the snow, etc. But we made it home safely, and can now safely say we’ve been to the Carribean! A fun adventure, and one worth taking.

Bon Bini!