Curacao

Willemstad, Curacao —  Friday night verged on Saturday morning at a melting pot called the International Cafe. Tourists from the Netherlands nursed pints of Amstel along with fair skin turned scarlet by the Caribbean sun. Island residents, many of them descendants of African slaves, chatted in Papiamento, a local linguistic stew of Spanish, Creole, Dutch and Portuguese.

A young Venezuelan woman took the microphone on a patio-turned-karaoke stage. Her song of choice: “You’re Still the One,” popularized by Shania Twain, the Canadian-born chanteuse of American country-pop.

If this didn’t define global village, I thought, what did?

The mix of cultures is a drawing card for the island of Curacao, 35 miles north of Venezuela’s coast. The 130,000 residents of this speck of desert, about a third the size of Los Angeles, descend from more than 50 nationalities -- a mini-United Nations, but with less bickering.

Faced with a world seemingly mired in perpetual conflict, Curacao holds the promise of peace, of different cultures managing to get along.

In less noble terms, this former colony of the Netherlands remains to the Dutch what Hawaii is to Americans: a retreat for snoozing on sandy beaches, snorkeling in warm water and soaking up the ambience of an island that feels different yet familiar, exotic yet safe.

Though patches of blight exist, just as they do in most other

Caribbean locales, the crime rate is relatively low. (For comparison, consider Beverly Hills, which logs three times as many theft reports per capita as Curacao.) Language is no barrier; although Papiamento predominates, Dutch and English are widely understood. Even the drinking water -- 100% distilled seawater island-wide -- poses no threat.

These are comforts big and small. As a city dweller intrigued by the revitalization of urban centers, I was drawn to Willemstad, the capital, and to a neighborhood that had long been reduced to slums. Otrabanda, the district is called -- in Papiamento, “the other side.”

An enigmatic multimillionaire, a Dutch entrepreneur named Jakob Gelt Dekker, reportedly had purchased eight city blocks crammed with dilapidated historic buildings and was transforming them into the Kura Hulanda, a complex of luxury hotel rooms, fine restaurants and, most intriguing, what was aimed to be the Caribbean’s premier museum of cultural history.

Dekker vacationed in Curacao for the first time in 1997 and was taken by the island’s history and potential for tourism. He said he had spent $46 million of his own (plus an undisclosed amount funneled through a nonprofit foundation) to restore the Dutch architecture to its colonial glory. For Dekker, the Kura Hulanda presented a unique chance “to do so much in an old city and have total control -- to not have 200 government entities telling you what you can or can’t do.”

I flew to Willemstad in late spring with my partner, Todd, ready to see the results of Dekker’s work and to drink in a culture that’s as colorful as the orange-flavored liqueur for which the island is best known.

Oil remains the largest industry here, as a cruise along the seaside highways will suggest. Refineries processing crude petroleum from Venezuela are unfortunate blemishes on a largely undeveloped desert landscape.

Tourism, however, is emerging as a strong secondary industry. And like most tourists, Todd and I made our way first to the heart of Willemstad, where St. Anna Bay splits the city into Otrabanda and Punda.

Punda is home to Curacao’s most popular postcard picture: the Handelskade, a waterfront row of storefronts and restaurants painted mint green, bubble-gum pink, jawbreaker blue. That night at the karaoke bar, with tiny white lights strung across the Handelskade’s gabled roofs, the candy-colored confection outshone Otrabanda across the bay.

Come morning, however, Otrabanda’s new museum looked just as sweet. The Kura Hulanda’s warren of restored 18th and 19th century buildings glowed like spotlighted pastel splashes of paint on a cobblestone palette.

The cheery setting was striking, given the island’s history as a conquered land -- first by the Spanish, who arrived in 1499, then by the Dutch in 1634. The people of Curacao didn’t gain independence until 1954, when it became part of the Netherlands Antilles, an autonomous entity of the Dutch kingdom.

The Kura Hulanda Museum traces residents’ origins to the birthplace of Western civilization, displaying what Dekker says is one the largest private collections of Mesopotamian artifacts in the world. Pieces date back six millenniums. Formidable Akkadian and Elamite cudgels and mace heads compete for attention with thin-walled earthen decanters used for water and oil. One case held 2-inch-high bronze pins and pendants from 1000 to 700 BC. -- phoenix-, ox- and ram-shaped badges of honor worn by soldiers in ancient Lorestan and Phrygia.

The most compelling and detailed exhibits are on slavery, the history of which is tragically long on Curacao. Arawak Indians, peaceful hunters and fishers, were pressed into hard labor on European-run plantations in the late 1400s. By 1670, Curacao was the center of the Dutch slave trade, and tens of thousands of Africans were brought here under the direction of the Dutch West India Co.

Slaves who survived the hellish high seas on such ships as the Amistad, Gift of God, Liberty and others were allowed to rest on Curacao before some continued on to North America. Others were dispatched to Caribbean sugar plantations or to South America, where they were turned over to plantations in exchange for raw materials. Slavery was finally abolished in 1863, the same year Abraham Lincoln delivered the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Museum Kura Hulanda displays rusted wrist shackles and neck irons among slave-trade maps, haunting historical drawings and journal excerpts from those who traveled on the slave ships. Among the most compelling items was a grotesque wood statue about 3 feet tall, one hand clasping a spear-like weapon and the body riddled neck to toe with rusted metal. To rid their souls of anger and outrage, slaves made objects that represented their captors, then spiked the objects with nails. This statue had hundreds.

A re-created slave ship includes a wood-plank deck with nine steps descending into the dungeon-like cargo hold, where the air was heavy and cold. As museum-goers walked above deck, each step landed with a chilling thud.

Not everything in the museum is as compelling. Kura Hulanda officials boast that the museum was curated in only 10 months, and sometimes the drawbacks of that accomplishment are obvious. Parts of the museum seemed unfocused, disjointed or too ambitious. Some interpretive displays were only in Papiamento, a shame given the island’s celebration of multiculturalism. In other places, it’s unclear whether visitors are seeing original artifacts or replicas. Was that building really part of Maison des Esclaves, the infamous slave prison on Goree Island in Senegal, or is it a re-creation? (It’s a replica, a spokeswoman later told me.)

Lost in translation

Despite these flaws, the Kura Hulanda and the redevelopment it has spawned are impressive. The businesses surrounding the museum have spent about $100 million on improvements, Dekker said, turning a down-and-out neighborhood into the most pleasant part of Willemstad.

My favorite restaurant was Gouverneur de Rouville, an atmospheric spot adjacent to the Kura Hulanda. That’s where a charming Dutch waitress, somehow misconstruing my Japanese looks as European in origin, handed me a menu in Dutch. “Oh, ja, oops!” she said, before bringing an English version.

The menu proved equally amusing, with descriptions such as “satey of chicken (2) served with peanutbuttersauce.” The peanutbuttersauce was excellent, as was Todd’s “chickenfillet with ginger-soyasaus.”

At the Kura Hulanda Museum Restaurant, I ordered “turkeyham,” which turned out to be neither turkey nor ham but more like bologna. (When asked to define “turkeyham,” the Dutch waitress paused quizzically before answering, “It’s turkeyham. You know, the ham of the turkey.”)

Jaipur, the Kura Hulanda’s Indian restaurant, was more elegant, its tables graced with decorative hand-carved ivory panels. I feasted on predka chicken in savory sauce of tomato, green pepper and onion. Todd had delicious murgh Afghani, cubed chicken breast cooked in a tandoor. From the cool hand towels offered before the meal to the table visit from the chef, service was impeccable.

If money had been no object, we would have stayed at the Hotel Kura Hulanda. Some of the 80 rooms are in a stately two-story main mansion, others in villa-like buildings woven into the museum complex. A bellman let me peek inside one unoccupied “deluxe” room (about $350 at the time), which had golden, hand-woven bedspreads from India, hand-carved mahogany and teak furniture and a marble bathroom with a claw-footed tub fit for a king.

Our hotel was more like an Ikea showroom than a royal palace. Like much of Willemstad, the Floris Suite Hotel is a reinvention of itself. The former apartment complex was opened as a modern, stylish Dutch treat in 2001, with a glass-and-light-filled lobby, open-air restaurant and guest rooms decorated with Scandinavian panache.

The Floris was a nice alternative to Marriott and Hilton resorts nearby, all about 10 minutes west of Willemstad. It was quiet and calm, a place where I could take an early-morning walk around the gardens, dip in the pool and return to my room encountering nary a soul except for wild iridescent iguanas sunning themselves on the footpaths.

Curacao’s other natural wonders were just as enjoyable. Near the airport we toured Hato Caves, full of fanciful limestone formations and skittish (but harmless) fruit bats.

On a tip from a hotel clerk, we drove to Curacao’s northern tip and Big Kenepa, one of the island’s 39 beaches. A wide strip of sand is ringed with 30-foot cliffs where local boys dive like Superman into water that shimmers a Kryptonite green.

We were in one of those vacation-inspired grooves when a lunch of dubious nutritional merit seemed only natural. By the beach I met a short, stooped, weather-wrinkled candy vendor selling slabs of what looked like homemade peanut brittle. Her limited English and my well-intentioned but poor Papiamento kept us from comprehending each other. Finally she held up her index finger signaling “1,” so I handed her one Antillian guilder. She nodded, and we went our merry ways.

Not until an hour later did I realize that her going price was $1, or about 1.75 guilders. I returned to the candy stand, held up an American dollar in one hand and 1.75 guilders in the other, then placed my debt on her table with an apologetic “Danki.”

The woman broke into a huge grin, clasped my hands in hers, then insisted I take another piece of candy -- dessert, I suppose.

Focused exhibits

History, though, drew us back time and again to Willemstad. Among our favorites was the Maritime Museum, an airy, modern building whose nautical-themed interior cleverly evokes the ambience of a cruise ship deck. The place gets short shrift in guidebooks, which is a shame because its exhibits provide the most focused, detailed look at Curacao’s past. I wish it had been our first stop.

The Maritime Museum is in Scharloo, Willemstad’s historic Jewish quarter, where Sephardic farmers of Portuguese descent settled after emigrating from Amsterdam in 1651. They formed Congregation Mikve Israel Emanuel and built a synagogue across town in 1732, making it the oldest continuously used synagogue in the Western Hemisphere.

The four-story mustard-colored building and its walled courtyard and museum take up most of a city block in Punda. The interior floor is neither carpet nor wood but sand, representing the desert where Israelites camped during the journey from slavery to freedom. It’s also a tribute to persecuted Sephardic Jews who, before immigrating to Curacao, spread sand on the floor to muffle footsteps during secret services.

With so much history to explore, we ran out of time to hike Christoffel National Park, to tour the landhuizen (the old plantation estates), to explore the Seaquarium marine museum. But standing in the hemisphere’s oldest synagogue, not far from where I savored Indonesian cuisine, spoke bad Papiamento and watched a Venezuelan croon Shania Twain, I had seen enough to understand what Curacao is all about.

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White sand, turquoise water

GETTING THERE:

From LAX to Curacao, connecting service (change of planes) is available on American or Air Jamaica. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $890.

TELEPHONES:

To call the numbers below, dial 011 (international code), 599 (country code for the Netherlands Antilles), 9 (area code for Curacao) plus the local number.

WHERE TO STAY:

Floris Suite Hotel, Piscadera Bay, P.O. Box 6246; 462-6111, fax 462-6211, www.florissuitehotel.com. A stylish 71-room hotel with an inviting open-air lobby and outdoor restaurant. The decor is colorful and contemporary; guest rooms have a kitchenette and a private patio or balcony. Though others may prefer the grandeur of Marriott and Hilton resorts across the street, I liked the Floris’ low-key vibe, boutique styling and personal service. Small beach is a short walk away; Willemstad is a 10-minute drive. Doubles from $202 through mid-April; from $157 in the off-season.

Hotel Kura Hulanda, 8 Langestraat, Otrabanda, Willemstad; 434-7700, fax 434-7701, www.kurahulanda.com. The 80-room lodging component of the Kura Hulanda museum and restaurant complex. Luxuriously appointed accommodations set around courtyards. Published prices have dropped since my visit; they now start at $219 for a standard double, $319 for the room described in the story.

Howard Johnson Curacao Hotel, Brionplein Z/N, Otrabanda, Willemstad; 462-7800, fax 462-7803, www.hojo.com. A budget-minded choice that, despite its chain-motel affiliation, shouldn’t be dismissed. The building has been renovated top to bottom; guest rooms are simply furnished but surprisingly pleasant. Best features: a location near the Kura Hulanda and some rooms with prime bay views facing the postcard-perfect Handelskade promenade. Doubles from $90.

WHERE TO EAT:

Kura Hulanda Museum Restaurant (see listing above or go to www.kurahulanda.com for sample menus). We stopped for lunch at this convenient cafe serving salads and sandwiches. Tables are set in a nice outdoor courtyard with a giant mural of the Curacao countryside. Lunch entrees $5-$10.

Jaipur, the second of three full-service restaurants in the Kura Hulanda complex. Elegant setting, excellent Indian food, fantastic service. Entrees $18-$34.

Gouverneur de Rouville, 9F de Rouvilleweg, Otrabanda, Willemstad; 462-5999. Adjacent to Kura Hulanda. Eclectic menu that includes Indian- and Indonesian-influenced fare, quiche, seafood, steak. Pleasant courtyard; tables inside overlook the Handelskade. Entrees $6-$23.

TO LEARN MORE:

Curacao Tourist Board, 7951 S.W. 6th St., Suite 216, Plantation, FL 33324; (800) 328-7222 or (954) 370-5887. On the island: 19 Pietermaai, P.O. Box 3266, Willemstad; 434-8200, fax 461-2305, www.curacaotourism.com.

-- Craig Nakano