Netherlands Antilles Travel Blogs

Things (once again) do not work out as planned
Jul 26, 2007 (1 photos)

At 07h40, I am at my computer. A knock on our door at 9h. I give the man his car back, when he says; why don't you keep it another day, free of charge, I do not need it. Ooooookeeeeyyyy. We have to bring it to his place (at the west site of the island ...

Here Curaçao
Jul 18, 2007 (5 photos)

For the first time in weeks we do not have to turn on an alarm clock. Anybody feels sorry for us? We wake up when we wake up have coffee in bed (and no, there are NO pictures) and poke our nose out and this is what we see:  Not bad. ...

Discovering Willemstad
Jul 20, 2007 (6 photos)

We get up when we get up, I make brunch and it is almost 11h when we leave. I do not have a beach day, so we decide to start in Willemstad, the capital of Curaçao. We leave in our fancy car:  An ancient Suzuki Samurai. No ABS or any of the ...

Hi, Curacao, or not
Jul 17, 2007

How are you today? We are GRAAAWL. Our luggage has to be out at 6h to leave at 7h. The bus in on time, would you believe and plays loud ... gospel all the way to the airport about 2 hours, with stops at every resort. It drove me nuts. In a mood like ...

Bonaire, am I impressed yet???
Jul 29, 2007 (12 photos)

... really think of a reason, nor do we ask. Tony asks whether we can transfer the amount to her bank account in the Netherlands. Yes, if we pay 14 Euro extra. Why???? Because that is the costs she pays. Noooooooooooo. Nobody pays costs to receive money. And ...

North and East of the Island
Jul 25, 2007 (6 photos)

I manage to sleep in till 9! Nice mails from nice people, also from my Springmuis: joepie! Starting to answer and even send a couple of mails to my colleagues, the internet crashes, for the first time here, I feel handicapped! It is a router problem ...

NOT happy holiday homes
Jul 31, 2007 (9 photos)

We get up early, chat a bit, drive to the diving shop to pick up our tanks and Tony takes me to the first diving site. Yes, I am still nervous. But: it is great! He finds everything! Morays, turtles, lots of trunk fish. He finds the way back in time (my ...

Cry baby, cry
Aug 4, 2007

We are at our diving site around 10. It does say difficult entry and exit but well, we can handle it. NOT!!! Coming out, the waves are tossing us back and forth, like balls in the ocean. At a certain point in time, when the water reaches your waist, ...

St Maartin in the Caribbean
Apr 14, 2005 (4 photos)

Flying into St. Maartin from Jamaica was a rather difficult task. First when we arrived at the airport we found that our first flight (to Kingston) had been cancelled and we would be bussed to a different airport. Then when we arrived in Kingston, deja vu ...

Where Dr T gets a new hairdo and new sloefkes
Jul 24, 2007 (8 photos)

... .000 Euro Rolex, in a nasty divorce. Hans with his (20 year younger) girlfriend, trying to have a baby, moved here from the Netherlands, less than a year ago. I can imagine: having contact with the guests, who all stay a week or two and then they are gone ...

I am the man
Jul 30, 2007 (7 photos)

We are at the orientation at 9.  A pretty Dutch girls gives a briefing. Nothing we do not know yet: do not take anything but pictures, do not leave anything but bubbles. We know that! Get your gear and do the orientation dive from the resort. But ...

My Hubby my Hero
Aug 1, 2007 (30 photos)

And puts our gear together (is he not PERFECT?) We go diving, the top 2 dives of my life. No, no because of the trunk fish, turtles, morays, ... but because of my Hubby. Cannot say more! Getting in and out of the sea is a struggle, here you see divers ...

No diving but ...
Aug 3, 2007 (1 photos)

... toilet! Is this the meal, which did it? Did what? Send me off to the toilet for hours!!! Looks pretty innocent to me! And Dr T had almost the same. This time it was me: the tourista. I bring Tony's coffee an hour later than usual and ...

Big news from Curaçao
Jul 22, 2007 (3 photos)

... excited and ALL sentimental! I cook a crappy dinner (unlike at noon: verse maatjes: and broodje gezond; after all, we are in the Netherlands) and go to bed early: the emotions! So, now you know: we are coming back, get prepared to party, play cards and ...

Not naked today or maybe
Jul 27, 2007 (6 photos)

When we walk outside, Mark from diving shop 'The Dive Bus' is waiting for us. A very nice guy, the owner, English and a doctor from origin. In the shop, we have a coffee at ease. It think we are waiting for other people but, no, just chatting. We get ...

Midnightswim
Jul 23, 2007 (15 photos)

... the three so-called ABC islands (for Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao) of the Lesser Antilles and belongs to the Netherlands Antilles, a self-governing part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Curaçao has a land area of 444 square kilometres, population 130,627 ...

Another shore dive
Jul 28, 2007 (3 photos)

Mark is on time and we leave for 2 more shore dives. It is again the 3 of us and we dive for more than 2 hours in total! Although we do not see anything out of the ordinary, it is great dives. The second one is my nr. 250!!!! Mark brought lunch, ...

Bonaire Baby!
Nov 20, 2004

A very early morning departure following a very late night made for very little sleep before leaving New York for Bonaire. Needless to say, we didn't see much of the flight to Bonaire. My friend Timothy and I stayed at the Deep Blue Inn Bed and Breakfast ...

GEBOEKT!!
Oct 13, 2008

Zo... eindelijk is het dan zo ver; naar Zuid-Amerika! Nadat mij een miljoen keer is gevraagd of ik dan al geboekt had, heb ik het dan uiteindelijk gedaan... Enkele reis Amsterdam - Isla Margarita Isla Margarita?? Yup, ondanks dat ik iedereen ...

Land Ho !
Apr 30, 2008 (25 photos)

After nearly three straight days at sea, we made our first port of call. We were the 2nd of four ships to arrive in St. Maartin. The other three ships were Royal Caribbean's "Explorer of the Sea's, on a nine night Eastern Caribbean cruise out of New ...

In the Caribbean, man!
Dec 9, 2006 (17 photos)

... , and is the smallest piece of land which is shared by two nations. The Netherlands are responsible for one half, Netherlands Antilles, and France for the other half, Guadaloupe. The rest of both the Netherlands Antilles and Guadaloupe are located rather ...

SXM
Jan 19, 2006 (3 photos)

We were there right after the hurricane season. Plane prices were right and we got low rate on the car. Since we had a nice time share at the Oyster bay we did not spent too much money. I can say It was a low cost vacation. Please enjoy the movie if you ...

Beginning the second Caribbean trip
Nov 18, 2003

We hit St Maarten, which became our base of operations again. It was during this time here i was fully introduced to the entire Ogier clan - Tahra, Paige, Guy, Greg & the Smiths: Sascha, Chris, Skyla, Rourke & Layla, of course, in their cruising ...

Aanvaring op St. Maarten!
Mar 30, 2008 (9 photos)

Aanvaring op St. Maarten   We hebben moeite om St. Eustatius, waar we het zo naar onze zin hebben gehad, te verlaten. Met een brok in de keel sleuren we het hekanker omhoog en bevrijden we ons van de mooring. Dan hijsen we de zeilen en maken we ...

Huisje bouwen?!
Mar 28, 2008 (16 photos)

Zullen we hier maar een huis bouwen?   Het is al lang donker als we arriveren op St. Eustatius, daarom zien we pas de volgende de kale, grijze rotswand boven ons opdoemen. We kijken wat teleurgesteld om ons heen: olietankers, een steiger met wat ...

Netjer crew in Nederland!
Jun 16, 2008 (9 photos)

Netjer crew in Nederland!   We staan een beetje onwennig op de supermoderne luchthaven van St. Maarten. Bijna twee jaar zijn we nu onderweg en nu staan we op het punt om in minder dan een dag dezelfde afstand af te leggen als we met behulp van de ...

Thoughts and Observations
Nov 5, 2005

The day started off as usual -we were getting so much used to being at sea, that the excitement about waking up and seeing nothing but ocean was turning into an everyday routine... Yeah right, we still get a kick out of meeting new people and making even ...

Duiken op Statia en slecht nieuws op Saba
Jun 6, 2008 (7 photos)

Duiken op Statia en slecht nieuws op Saba   Na al die weken op het drukke St. Maarten verlangen we terug naar de rust die heerst op Statia. We ervaren weer de rust die van het eiland uitgaat, maar de 10 dagen die we er dit keer doorbrengen zijn ...

Let the games begin!...
Nov 8, 2004

... proper begins so jumped at the chance of a stopover offered by KLM on their flights to and from Quito & Lima in the Netherlands Antilles off the coast of Venezuela. Seemed to be just about the only stopover available en route to South America from Europe ...

Sort of Solid Ground
Nov 6, 2005 (5 photos)

This was a day I had really longed for. I have never been anywhere near the Caribbean before, so I was really excited. And we were kind of desperate to set foot on solid ground again after all these days at sea! For the first (and only ) time on the ...