(Cruise Day #3) Cliff Diving in Curacao

We arrived in Curacao early on Tuesday morning. For the other ports, we had prearranged excursions through the ship, but we had decided to just wing it in Curacao. Alex decided to hang with us that day and so once we got off the ship we asked around for a good place that the boys could cliff dive. According to a little wrinkly old lady at the tourism desk, West Point was the place to go. Problem was, we were on the bottom of the island and West Point was at the very top. Luckily for us, it's a small island and it was less than an hour drive! We hailed down a taxi and talked him down from $60 one way to $80 for a round trip (not bad!).

Curacao landscape was beautiful. Everything was just a lush green with vibrant flowers popping out here and there. Rolling hills and mountains covered in palms. Our taxi driver, Bruno, drove like a bat outta hell.....at least we got there quickly! The guys dove at two spots, and at bot places once they did it, there were tons of other people that followed em! :)

(First jumper is Bill and then Alex is next)

This video is the second place the dove off of. Right as they jumped, a tour bus of German college students pulled up and joined them. There was this one girl that jumped and hit the water in a sitting position and it made the worst sound ever! Then when she got out, the backs of her thighs had a huge black and blue ring on them!! It looked sooo terrible! And of course a she was walking out of the water, all of her friends were sympathizing with her by erupting in laughter!

(Note: I also jumped off of a cliff, but it was really short and the video of it is really long....it's about five minutes of me standing at the edge hemming and hawing and freaking out. So I won't subject you to that.)

Curacao's streets were lined with these weird trees that had these plaques on them...sorta dangerous if you ask me....but whatever.

Sizing up the jump...

This was the beautiful beach that Sawyer and I hung out on while Bill and Alex were off doing boy stuff. We spent the afternoon making all sorts of different sand castles....dry ones, wet sloppy ones, some decorated with shells and rocks.

I went to go grab my video camera and when I got back, Sawyer had found two cigarettes and thought they were the perfect things to stick on the very top of the tower! Gross.

Eating a yummy PB & J. Before we had left Omaha, I had bought some small Ziplock containers and brought them along~that way I could stock up on fresh cut fruit and PB& J's from the breakfast buffet for the never ending appetite of a four year old.

The two of us, hard at work.

Every place we went, I couldn't get over just how GORGEOUS of a color the water was!

Bruno suggested a local place for lunch and we were really excited to have some traditional food! This little place was full of locals, little tiny yellow birds chirping loudly in the bushes right outside the windows and occasionally flying across the room and back again!

As it turns out, this was what's called a 'Walk in Restaurant' meaning, they have no set menu. So, the owner came and sat down, rattled off what the options were and we just picked a few!

Alex and I had fresh fish and shrimp (the shrimp were as small as thimbles), Sawyer had chicken and Bill decided to be daring and got goat and iguana! He said it was really good except the iguana had a lot of little tiny bones that you had to pick out.

Since there was no menu, we had no idea how much it was going to be. But hey, we thought it's a very local place, not at all fancy, it shouldn't expensive. $75.00 later......oh well!

This was our taxi driver, Bruno.

After getting back from West Point, we had a little bit of time before we had to be back on board so we decided to walk around a bit in town. We ended up in this really fun courtyard shopping area with live music!

What afternoon is complete without some ice cream? Sawyer had his favorite~chocolate. Bill and I shared pistachio and espresso chocolate chip......yummy!

You always have time to stop for a sample of Gouda cheese!

Chocolaty smiles....for some reason mine isn't as good as Sawyers :)

Yes, please let's walk through a mine field of water, just asking to get wet.....

We were at dinner that night and when offered dessert, Bill said he didn't care for any but he would like some chocolate sauce to put in his coffee. our server brought him a dessert plate of 'nothing' :)