Curaçao discovery guide

Curaçao is the Caribbean island that a hurricane has never hit on record. It has a World Heritage capital painted in Dutch colonial colours, a language of its own spoken at home by four people in five, and a north-west corner that is national park rather than resort.

The main travel issue

Real but small: a digital immigration card that must be filed before you fly, taxis without meters, and a cash-and-dollar economy switching to a new guilder. The advisories add petty theft, drug-trade violence away from the tourist areas, and coastal waters where rescue is not guaranteed.

The solution

Sleep in Pietermaai or Otrobanda rather than a resort strip, climb Christoffelberg before the 10 am cut-off, snorkel the west-coast bays on weekday mornings, and take the boat to Klein Curaçao once, early, with your own water.

January–February -- the dry season's height and the start of Carnival, which runs from January into March and, the Canadian advisory notes, raises the petty-crime count; the trade wind steady.

March–April -- Carnival's end, the driest weeks, the Christoffel climb best begun at 6 am; the sea calm on the leeward coast.

May–June -- warming, the hurricane season opening in June though the island sits outside the main track; fewer visitors.

July–August -- hot and windy, the reef at its warmest; tropical storms possible but a hurricane landfall unrecorded.

September–October -- the wettest and stillest weeks of a dry island, and the most likely for a tropical storm; the quietest hotels.

November–December -- the season's return with the end of the hurricane months in November, and the coolest evenings of the year.

If you travel slowly

Base in Willemstad's restored quarters -- Pietermaai or Scharloo -- and learn the city on foot: Punda and Otrobanda across the swinging Queen Emma bridge, the free ferries when it is open, Fort Amsterdam, the synagogue that is the oldest surviving in the Americas. Then hire a car for the west: the Christoffel park from 6 am, the cliff coast beyond it, and the small bays of the leeward shore.

If you want to see the essentials

The Handelskade waterfront and the four World Heritage quarters; the Christoffel park's climb and its Savonet plantation museum; the Hato caves, 240 metres of coral limestone with Arawak petroglyphs, ten minutes from the airport; and a day boat to Klein Curaçao's lighthouse, beach and reef.

If you seek local character

Papiamentu on the radio and in the market, the Catholic parishes of a 73 per cent Catholic island, the plantation houses, the memory of Tula's revolt of 1795 at the west-end plantations where it began, and the Sephardic and Ashkenazi history in the synagogue and the cemetery.

If you want to go beyond the obvious

The windward north coast, where the sea breaks into limestone blowholes; the salt flats and mangroves; the refinery's shadow over the Schottegat, which is the island's other, unresolved story; and Carnival, from January into March, which the advisories mention only for the pickpockets.

Curaçao is Dutch in law, Latin in sound and African in memory. The state is a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with foreign policy and defence handled from The Hague and Dutch as the sole language of administration and the courts; yet 78 per cent of the population speaks Papiamentu at home, a Portuguese-based creole built from the languages of the slave trade, Spanish is the second home language at 8.4 per cent and Dutch only third at 7.9, and English is official alongside both. The island is 73 per cent Catholic by the 2011 estimate, with the Sephardic community that arrived from Dutch Brazil in the 17th century still keeping the oldest synagogue in the Americas.

The history that shapes the present is the slave trade: the Dutch made the island its Caribbean hub after 1634, Tula led the revolt of 1795 and was executed on 3 October that year, abolition came in 1863 with 200 guilders paid to each owner per person freed, and Shell's refinery of 1914 was built at Asiento, where the enslaved had been traded. Autonomy in 1954, the workers' revolt of 1969 and country status in 2010 are the modern chapters, and the argument about the refinery and about what the Netherlands owes is not finished.

The manners are Caribbean-Dutch: unhurried, courteous, multilingual, and firm about the rules the advisories list -- ID always carried, no corals or shells taken, taxis agreed in advance.

Curaçao's nature is dry and fragile: cactus scrub, limestone terraces, coral reef, and a windward coast that is mostly empty. The Christoffel park protects 1,860 hectares of the north-west, 1,040 of them nature reserve, around the island's highest hill and three former plantations, and it is an Important Bird Area; the rules are the park's -- no dogs, the climb started by 10 am because of the heat, tickets sold only until 1.30 pm -- and the Canadian advisory's: it is strictly prohibited to leave the island with corals or conch shells.

The reef is the thing to be most careful with. Klein Curaçao's coral and underwater caves and the west-coast bays are why divers come; the advisories warn that coastal waters can be dangerous and that rescue services may not meet the standards visitors expect, so dive with licensed operators, stay sober in the water, and insure for it. Take your rubbish back from the islet: it has no inhabitants and no services.

Spend in the restored quarters of Willemstad and at the west-end plantations and parks rather than only on the resort beaches; the island's culture lives in town, and its poverty is not far from its waterfront.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Year-round relative cost index vs country average

Higher — the resort coast south-west of Willemstad; Carnival weeks

Average — Willemstad's historic quarters

Lower — the west end and the north coast, outside the park

The park's fees are its own; taxi rates are government-set but not published in a readable form; bus, cave and boat prices are not stated, and the relative bands are editorial judgment.