Meat and the Harbor

It sounds like the title of a bad novel, but really just 2 parts of my last weekend of Karnaval vacation. 

Friday night I went with a group of people from work as well as their respective visitors (since I had none of my own) to a place called Equis.  It is only open on Friday nights and serves beef, chicken and booze (with a side of bread).  There is no silverware, but lots of napkins.  You run in to grab a table and order your skewers of meat: all beef, all chicken or half & half.  For the nine of us we got 3 beef, 2 half and half and 1 chicken.

 

The food was great and the company too.  I would definitely like a return visit before I leave here.

The harbor tour was a bonus for me since Judith invited me to join her and her parents.  The Curacao Maritime Museum does these tours when there are enough people.  They take the group out on one of the ferries around the harbor from the water side.  Even the refinery (Isla) looks neat from this view.  We saw the shipping and docks up close as well as ships and where they pump the oil.  A fun tour (even though it was mostly in Dutch) and a definite must see in Curacao.

Karnaval Korsou 2010

So despite being a bit under the weather, I woke at 8 am on a Sunday to pick up my friend Judith and meet my friend Jonathan and his parents (who are visiting) to head down to see the Grand Marche of Karnaval.  It happened to coincide with Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year this year.  This meant lots of people wearing red and a really cool Chinese dragon to end the parade.

We met up at 9:30 am to head down the Insel Air tent we arranged (paid for) to be at for the day.  We strategically decided to park along the shoulder of the ring road (major highway here) for easy get-away later in a spot that turned out to be a short walk downhill to our stand. This included seats, shade, food (breakfast, snack, lunch, another snack) and real toilets. It also included the lovely tshirt you see Jonathan and his parents (and all the others in the stands) sporting.

Being that this is Curacao we should have known we could arrive hours later than it opened and even hours later than we were told it would take to get the parade to us.  The parade did not arrive in front of us till around 4 pm, but the people watching was really good and the company too!  The parade had a lot of live music with the groups which was very cool (though still very loud).  The hats and costumes were all interesting and wonderful, but I am glad I was not the one having to wear them all day long. 

There turned out to be 34 different groups in the parade.  Some were smaller than others and by the end we needed some lights to see them.  The finale was a group celebrating Chinese New Year and started with a great dragon.  

I did not get pictures of the rest due to the fading light. We made a quick get-away at the end with a short walk back uphill and great parking and I dropped Judith off in short order.  It was nice to come home to silence, but it was a great day and an experience I am glad I had! If you want to see more photos: http://gallery.me.com/digeller#100110