Curacao

When I was in the Navy, we went on deployment to Curacao. Nice, huh? Here are some of the things I remembered about this deployment...

Drinking lots of alcohol. The hotel we stayed at was the same hotel that the crew from KLM airlines stayed in. KLM was the primary airline so there were always lots of crewmen there. The bartenders would cater to them and we were left standing there for quite a while to get served except for one bartender. He always served us and we became good friends with him. I asked him one particular sunny day to make me a drink. He asked me what kind of drink I wanted. I didn't know but saw a tall skinny green bottle named Pisang Adoe and asked him what kind of liquor is that. He told me it was banana liquor and I told him to make me a drink with that in it. The drink he made me was the best tasting mixed drink I have ever had in my entire life! I let all my friends taste it and they went up and asked him to make the same drink for them. He ended up calling it the Steel Jaws drink. Steel Jaws was our call sign.

The other bartender I remember was Dino. He was a bartender at some hole in the ground. I don't remember how we found this bar but it soon became a favorite. Dino was originally from Netherlands. Curacao is owned by the Dutch. He had a great way to keep us there longer then we intended. If there were three or four of us there and we need to leave, he would give a free drink to the person who already finished their drink and waiting for the rest of us to finish. Well since that person got a free drink, we now had to wait until he was finished so we would order another round. He was pretty sneaky like that. He offered me a job. I told him that I had always wanted to be a bartender and he said when I get out of the Navy, to come here and he would give me a job, lol. Sorry, but I'm not that much of a risk taker. The night before we were leaving to go back to Puerto Rico, we went to Dino's bar. This was a very bad idea, lol. Every one drank way too much and me and another guy got left behind. Instead of calling for a cab, Dino said he would drive us back to the hotel after he cleaned up. I feared for my life driving home with Dino. I was in the front seat with him and was very surprised we made it to the hotel alive. He put on some Techno music and started driving really fast on the wrong side of the road. When a car came in the opposite direction, he would just move over like it wasn't a big deal, lol. When we got back to the hotel, I found my roommate sleeping on a bench in the hallway. When I tried to wake her up (she had been drinking also) she said to just leave her there. She didn't have her key and couldn't get inside the room. Me and the guy that was still at the bar with me had to carry her inside. We all fell asleep and I don't know what time it was but I know it was after 3am. We did not wake up when the alarm went off in the morning. We woke up when someone knocked on our door. I shot up like a rocket...it was 7:30am and we had to be downstairs with all our bags at 8am. Neither of us had even packed yet. I never packed so fast in my entire life. I did not get a shower but I did brush my teeth. I don't think it did much good though I could smell the alcohol oozing from my body, lol. Ahh, those were the days, lol.

Ok, enough drinking stories. Curacao was beautiful and I really enjoyed being there. Snorkeling was great and it was the first time I came face to face with a barracuda. I was having problems with my mask leaking and I was trying to fix it. My friends swam ahead and I saw them up ahead above the water and not moving. Once I got closer, this fish with lots of teeth appeared right in front of my face, I came up and asked what kind of fish it was and when my friend said a barracuda, I swam away and turned around and the barracuda was right there in front of my face again. I was freaking out. I didn't know much about barracudas but in my mind, they were in the same category as sharks. Finally, my friend charged him and when he did, I just swam to the shore and didn't look back until I got there. We were really far away from the beach too. I was so tired when I finally got there.

Ok, one more alcohol related story...the island is named Curacao, Hello! We went on a tour where we got to taste several different flavors of Curacao. I bet you didn't know there were other kinds besides the Blue, did you? Well, I fell in love with the Chocolate Curacao and bought two bottles to take home with me. I had a lot of good Hot Chocolate that winter, lol.

One thing about Curacao is the size of this island is very small. You could drive around the entire island in about an hour. One day we rented a jeep and went all over the island. This was the same day I met the barracuda. We also visited some caves/caverns. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I don't have any pictures because they wouldn't let you use a flash and if you didn't use a flash, the picture wouldn't turn out. This is before digital cameras by the way.

I have so many more memories of this deployment but I'm tired of writing so I'll save it for another day. Oh, and if your wondering why the navy would be on deployment to Curacao...my squadron was involved with drug ops. Curacao is off the coast of Venezuela and the airplanes that I worked on were Radar planes. They would fly high altitudes and track drug boats or other unmarked planes and give the coordinates to the chaser boat or plane.