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Coverage / Curacao

Curacao

Caribbean

The largest of the Dutch Caribbean ABC islands, Curacao pairs a UNESCO-listed capital with some of the best and most accessible diving in the Caribbean. Willemstad's pastel Dutch waterfront and the floating Queen Emma pontoon bridge front a deep harbour that was a hub of the transatlantic slave trade, a history told without flinching at the Kura Hulanda Museum. Offshore, a shallow fringing reef and famous wrecks such as the Tugboat and the Superior Producer make shore and boat diving a daily habit, while the windward east coast at St. Joris Bay is the island's kitesurfing ground and each September Willemstad hosts a Caribbean edition of the North Sea Jazz Festival.

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What you can do in Curacao

Kitesurfing

Sint Joris BaaiJan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug DecSt. Joris Bay is Curacao's kitesurfing home, and one of the most consistent flat-water spots in the Caribbean. The bay sits on the wild, windward north-east coast, a wide shallow lagoon closed off from the open Atlantic by a reef, so while the wind is strong the water stays flat and, over much of the bay, only waist to chest deep. The trade winds here average 17 to 22 knots and blow on roughly 300 days a year, which is about as reliable as the sport gets, and the cross-shore direction and shallow, sandy lagoon make it forgiving for beginners learning water starts while still giving freeriders and freestylers a huge flat playground. It is a wind-and-water spot rather than a beach-club scene, backed by scrubland and an ostrich farm well away from the Willemstad hotels, so it stays uncrowded. Several small owner-run schools work the bay, taking riders from a first lesson through to independent riding and kite foiling, with gear rental and transport for those bringing their own kit. Warm water, dependable wind and protected flats put St. Joris among the best places anywhere to learn to kite or to log long, easy sessions.

Museums & Galleries

Willemstadyear-roundThe Kura Hulanda Museum is one of the most serious reckonings with slavery anywhere in the Caribbean, and it sits on the ground where that history happened. Willemstad's deep, sheltered harbour made Curacao a main transshipment point of the Dutch transatlantic slave trade, where enslaved Africans who survived the Middle Passage were held and sold on to plantations across the Americas. The museum occupies a restored 19th-century merchant's house and former slave quarters in the Otrobanda district, part of the wider Kura Hulanda complex, and its galleries move through the origins of the trade, the horror of the Atlantic crossing, resistance and abolition, without softening any of it. A reconstruction of a slave-ship hold is the emotional centre. Around that history it holds a large and important collection of West African art and artefacts, from Benin bronzes to Nigerian sculpture, plus material on Mesopotamia and the wider African diaspora, set among courtyards and a sculpture garden. It takes several hours to work through, and it does what the pretty pastel waterfront a few streets away does not, which is explain how Willemstad's wealth was actually made.

Music & Culture Festivals

Curacao North Sea Jazz FestivalWillemstadSepThe Curacao North Sea Jazz Festival is the biggest music event in the Dutch Caribbean and the tropical cousin of the famous Rotterdam original. Held each year over three nights in early September at the World Trade Center in Piscadera Bay, just outside Willemstad, it has run since 2010 and books a marquee international line-up that stretches the word jazz to its limit: soul, funk, salsa, Latin, R&B and pop headliners share the bill with jazz names, and several stages run in parallel so the crowd drifts between them through the night. Past editions have drawn the kind of acts that would headline a European arena, and the festival has become a fixture that fills the island's hotels and pulls visitors from across the region and the Dutch mainland. The setting helps: warm September nights, an open-air and covered venue by the water, and a compact, walkable capital a few minutes away for the days between shows. For a traveller who wants a world-class concert weekend wrapped inside a Caribbean island break, with reef diving and old-town wandering on either side of it, this is the reason to time a visit to early September.

Scuba Diving

Willemstadyear-roundCuracao is one of the great diving islands of the Caribbean, and the sheltered coast around Willemstad is where most of it happens. A fringing reef runs close to shore all along the leeward south side, dropping from a shallow shelf into a wall in warm, clear, current-light water, so a huge amount of the island can be dived straight off the beach, which is why Curacao is famous for shore diving. The signature sites cluster near the capital. The Tugboat lies in five metres of a protected cove at Caracas Bay, so encrusted in tube sponge and coral that snorkellers enjoy it too, while the Superior Producer, a cargo ship that sank in 1977, sits upright at 30 metres just outside the harbour and is rated one of the Caribbean's best wreck dives. Add Mushroom Forest's coral heads, the Blue Room cavern and dozens of reef walls, and there is enough for a fortnight. Two well-established operators near Willemstad, a large PADI 5-Star boat outfit and a smaller shore-diving specialist, cover everything from a first Discover Scuba dive to guided wreck and night dives, in water that stays warm and calm year round.

Witness / Attend

Seu Harvest ParadeWillemstadMar AprSeu is Curacao's harvest festival, and its Easter Monday parade is one of the oldest and most joyful expressions of the island's Afro-Curacaoan culture. The tradition goes back to the era of slavery, when the successful gathering of the sorghum and maize crops was marked with thanksgiving, music and dance, a rare release from the hardship of plantation life. Revived and reshaped as a public cultural celebration in the 1970s, it now brings more than three thousand people onto the streets of Willemstad in a slow, swaying procession. Groups march in traditional dress, the women in bright checked dresses and headscarves, carrying baskets and farm tools, moving to the rhythm of the wiri scraper, the tambu drum and the chapi hoe struck like a bell, in the distinctive stepping dance that imitates the work of sowing and reaping. The route winds through the Otrobanda district, and the whole thing is a living link to the island's agricultural past and to the music and language, Papiamentu, that grew out of it. It is a community celebration rather than a show for tourists, and visitors are welcome to line the route or fall in behind the groups and follow the parade through the old town.

Best months at a glance

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Kitesurfing
Museums
Music Festivals
Scuba Diving
Witness / Attend

Upcoming events in Curacao