In all honesty, we had never really thought about visiting Curaçao until we had planned a trip to Aruba. However, we’re glad we did because it became one of our favorite islands in the Caribbean!
♬♪ Ooh, I wanna take you down to Kokomo
We’ll get there fast and then we’ll take it slow
That’s where we wanna go, Way down in Kokomo ♬♪
-Kokomo, The Beach Boys
Day 1
Our very first day involved a 4 1/2 hour flight from Houston to Aruba, a 4-hour layover, and then a 30-minute flight on a small, 20-seater prop plane over to Curaçao.
We left at 10AM and arrived at our AirBNB near Mambo Beach in Curaçao at around 9PM. It was a long day, and we were a nervous wreck flying in such a tiny plane with our kiddos, but we made it!
Note: we highly recommend the AirBNB we stayed at. It is located in an extremely convenient location (5 minute drive, or 15-20 minute walk to Mambo Beach), communication with the host was great, and the artwork in and around the apartment was beautiful.
Day 2
The following day, we woke up bright and early for a day trip to Klein Curaçao via Mermaid Boat Trips.
Travel tip: if you get seasick, go ahead and take that Dramamine, apply those motion sick patches, and pack a vomit bag (just in case). This day trip is worth it even if you get seasick, but it is important to note the trip out to the island is pretty choppy since you’re going against the waves into open ocean. The boat ride is 1 1/2 hours each direction and it gets pretty choppy about 45 minutes to an hour in. About half of the people that were on the top deck of the boat had to go to the bottom deck due to nausea, and our oldest and another little girl sitting across from us did get sick. I know this makes it seem miserable, but I promise it isn’t and it really is worth the trip. We loved visiting Klein Curaçao.
Once we arrived at the island, we ate breakfast and then found some beach chairs to put our things. We did so many relaxing and fun things during our 6 hours on the island including snorkeling, jumping off the boat, playing in the sand, playing with the hundreds of hermit crabs infesting the island, napping, reading, eating, and drinking.
Right before lunch, I (Kristen) also spent about an hour walking the island to check out the abandoned light house and the various shipwrecks on the other side of the island. If you decide to venture around the island, I highly recommend sandals/shoes. I learned the hard way and my feet were hurting from walking on the loose gravel and rocks by the end of the walk.
Note: If we had it to do all over again, we would have delayed the day trip to Klein Curaçao by a day or two. Since we had a long travel day the day before and had to wake up early the following morning, we weren’t feeling the best due to residual travel anxiety and lingering exhaustion. Although we loved this day trip, we feel like we would have gotten even more out of it if we had delayed it.
After we returned to our AirBNB in Curaçao, we quickly showered and then drove the 5 minutes to Mambo Beach Blvd for dinner. We decided on The Green House Restaurant for the kids and Origami Sushi Bar for us adults; both restaurants located directly beside each other. I highly recommend getting the Curaçao Roll if you visit Origami Sushi Bar. It’s made with stuffed salmon, cream cheese, green onion, with banana topping in sauce of eel and dynamite sauce and it was easily one of the best sushi rolls I’ve ever had.
Day 3
The following morning, we ventured out to Morning Vibes for breakfast. The food was delicious, but if you decide to visit, I recommend getting there early. By the time we got there, they ran out of waffle mix, Sprite, and utensils. Since it is a food truck, there is also no seating aside from a single table to the right of the truck. We ended up eating our breakfast in the parking lot of a grocery store.
After breakfast, we drove about 30 minutes to Shete Boka National Park. The park had several different lookout points, geological features like a cave and a blowhole, and cute, small, uninhabited beaches. We highly recommend visiting if you’re in the area.
After spending several hours at the national park, we worked up an appetite and drove 5 minutes to Jaanchie’s Restaurant. Although TripAdvisor doesn’t have the highest reviews for the restaurant, we recommend it. It is a family-owned restaurant that serves Curaçaoan dishes. It’s a unique restaurant in that you aren’t given a menu when you sit down. Mr. Jaanchie himself comes to your table, walks you through the menu, and provides recommendations. He provided a special, unique touch that made our dinner experience that much more memorable. We tried both the iguana and goat stew. Both were delicious; just be weary the iguana has a lot of really small bones you need to eat around.
While at Jaanchies, we decided to hit up Playa Grandi right before we wrapped up the day. We had heard Playa Grandi was a great place to see sea turtles. We spoke with one of the servers at Jaanchies and they recommended we go between 10 AM and 2 PM when the sea turtles are most active. This is due to local fisherman discarding their fish scraps in the area. Although this was the recommended time, we got to the beach around 5 PM and it did not disappoint. We still saw between 5 to 10 sea turtles, all close to shore. It was one of our favorite experiences of the entire trip.
After we swam with the sea turtles for about an hour, we set ourselves up on the beach, let the girls build sandcastles, and watched the beautiful sunset over the ocean.
Day 4
The next day, we drove over to the capital, Willemstad. We stopped at La Boheme for brunch, and it turned out the be the perfect little outdoor brunch spot in the heart of the city. The girls enjoyed smoothies and pancakes, while Austen and I had some delicious sandwiches.
After we ate, we just walked around the city. We walked across the Queen Emma Bridge, visited the Brionplein Playground, and went on a hunt to find different artwork down Breedestraat Street.
To cool off, we stopped at Champs Ice Cream and Plein Cafe for drinks. It was a nice spot to people watch, eat delicious ice cream and appetizers, and drink a cold beverage before wrapping up our day in Willemstad.
That afternoon, we went to Curaçao Sea Aquarium. There, you can swim with dolphins (we didn’t participate since we swam with dolphins in Mexico the year prior), go down into a submarine to look at fish, and look down into a tank with nurse and lemon sharks. Although this is a relatively small aquarium, it did give us a nice change of pace to other things we had experienced in Curaçao up to that point.
Later that evening, we went back to Mambo Beach, snorkeled, played in the sand for a little while, and then went to Pizza Mare at Mambo Beach Blvd. It was a perfect way to wrap up day.
Day 5
On our last day in Curaçao, we hit up Denny’s for breakfast. Haha, no, seriously. What turned into a joke during one of our international trips has now turned into one of our staples. If we see a Denny’s when we’re traveling, we’re going to go.
After breakfast, we drove over to the Curaçao Ostrich Farm. Although we were a little hesitant about this experience, because let’s face it, emus and ostrich are scary, visiting the farm ended up being one of the highlights of our trip to the island. A tour guide drives your tour in a school bus throughout the farm where you learn more about each of the ostrich and emu on site. Towards the end of the tour, you get to feed the ostrich, as well as stand on a real ostrich egg! After the tour, the girls had the time of their life at the on-site playground. We highly recommend a visit!
After the Ostrich Farm, we drove about 30 minutes to Hato Caves. These caves are really interesting in that they’re above ground. That means these caves get really warm so there are fans throughout the cave to keep visitors from overheating. The visit to these caves was the first time the girls got to see a cave in person. They loved seeing stalactites and stalagmites up close and personal.
What’s a day in Curaçao without a trip to the beach? Since we were less than 15 minutes away from Kokomo Beach and we just had to visit. The girls had been singing the Beach Boys song, Kokomo all week so it was only natural to drive straight to one of the beaches named after the song.
However, if we had to do it all over again, we probably would have skipped this beach. There was very little beach for the number of tourists in the area. Although there was a great beach bar, the food and drinks were overpriced, and it cost $8 to rent a single beach chair which were far and few between. The girls could have cared less. They got to play in the sand, meet new friends, swim with the fishies, and jump off a platform in the middle of the water.
Overall opinion of Curaçao
We loved Curaçao! Although we started our trip with some residual travel anxiety (hello, 20-seater prop plane!), we found the island to be beautiful, the food to be delicious, the people to be kind, and the artwork to be absolutely breathtaking.
We traveled to Curaçao between Christmas and New Years. We anticipated the island to be swarming with tourists, but it wasn’t as bad as we thought. Some highlights of the trip were our girls seeing a cave for the first time, spending the day at Klein Curaçao with our oldest becoming one with all of the hermit crabs, swimming with sea turtles and tropical fish, and trying a new food: iguana!
We hope to make our way back to this beautiful island again in the future and hope you get to experience the beauty of this island too!
Oliver Family Adventures 
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