Curacao - erm… why Curacao? Feeding Iguanas.

Yes, why Curacao?

Let's say it was an offer (money-wise...) we couldn't refuse.
We had already been thinking of going away for a week or so, just before the start of the summer holidays.
A week away from work, pref. in a nice hot climate, if possible with a sea where we could go snorkeling.

Curacao wasn't first on our wish list. To be honest, it wasn't on our list at all.
It caught our interest when a close friend complained Curacao was a boring sh*thole. Hm! That could be interesting!
We also realised Curacao has been part of the Dutch Kingdom for a couple of centuries, and although we know quite a lot about 'the East' (Indonesia) we know practically nothing about 'the West'.
This was clearly a lack in our general knowledge, so we could nicely catch up this week.

And, a major plus, Curacao is in a climate we hadn't set foot in before: the 'arid' Tropics, or, in the official Köppen-Geiger terms: a tropical savanna climate (Aw) (and for my Flying Cousin: CAVOK, ie for non-flying folks: Ceiling And Visibility OK. It was).

So we left for Curacao, after a week of near tropical temperatures in Holland. Normally we go to - not greener, but warmer pastures in our winter, so this was unusual as well: we didn't have to strip and leave our winter clothes at Schiphol but walked from our car into the plane and stepped out again in a wonderfully hot Curacao some 10 hours later.

Off to the sparsely populated West point of the island, appropiately named 'Westpunt' in Dutch.
Where we were ushered in the most amazing apartment ever: on a cliff, overlooking a tiny, sandy bay, with a large balcony that offered stunning views over the bay and the ocean.

We were ready to enjoy our holiday.

But first there was work to do, as we realised next day when we sat on our balcony at 6:30 am.
Iguanas started to climb onto our balcony.
At first they were a tiny bit frightening - you can imagine - but when they started to tentatively nib at our toes it was obvious they were absolutely amiable but only wanted to be fed. By us.
We offered them small wedges of water melon.
They loved it.

We found out that these iguanas are veggies, and live on fruit and leaves.
They've been with us the whole week.
We only had to walk onto the balcony in the morning with a plate of chopped up fruits (all sorts of melons, apples, bananas, they loved the honeydew melons most), call them and they hurried over to us, eating from our hands. Up to five at a time.

After our first morning we said to each other that had our holiday ended now it would have been a huge success, thanks to these rather prehistoric but all in all very charming animals.
But we've seen more, so read on!