Iguanas, corals, sun: as wheelchair user on Curacao

“If you can breathe on land, you can breathe underwater.”

Instructor Hans Plej also goes diving with people with disabilities.

Hans lets his words work and enjoys the element of surprise. The diving instructor, who was born on Curacao and returned to the island 9 years ago after 26 years in the Netherlands, sits with us in the pirate’s nest in the shade of a palapa, the typical Caribbean sun canopies made of palm leaves, and tells his story. A few years ago he had the idea to accompany people with disabilities to dives – the freedom that the sea offers makes people forget their everyday life for a moment, the beauty of the underwater world with the crystal clear azure water, the coral reefs and the colourful shoals of fish captivates the observer. First he founded the Animal Encounter in the Curacao Sea Aquarium Park. Situated on a lagoon with many natural pools, the Animal Encounter, where water rats can snorkel in one of the pools and meet many species of fish including rays, is just one of them.

Then Hans founded his diving school. There are no obstacles for him – apart from emphysema there is no reason not to go diving, he says. Depending on the type and degree of his client’s disability, he takes other divers with him to assist him. Whether ALS, paraplegia, multiple sclerosis: he has already taken them all into the water – and safely back ashore. Hans is completely relaxed, but also surprisingly honest: he does not find Curacao so wheelchair accessible. Sure, there are many tourist facilities that are now accessible to people with disabilities. Nevertheless, there are still too many authorities and shops where wheelchair users in particular are left behind. As the idealist that he is, he works against this every day. His dives with handicapped people are more time-consuming to prepare, the expenses for additional staff are higher. But he enjoys this work and compensates for the losses by the daily business with divers who are not disabled. One has the impression that he is attracted by the challenge of adjusting to completely different people and requirements every day.

The Curacao Sea Aquarium Park

Only two kilometres as the crow flies from his diving school in Jan Thiel is the Curacao Sea Aquarium Park in the capital Willemstad. It was built more than 10 years ago and since then it attracts hundreds of visitors daily to the Caribbean underwater world. The Curacao Dolphin Therapy Centre was also established there – one reason why the entire park is remarkably wheelchair accessible and the staff is also used to dealing with people with disabilities as a matter of course.

Especially children are treated in the dolphin therapy center with a team of therapists from different fields, the dolphins act supportively as part of the therapy. And also the Hotel Dolphin Suites, located directly at the park, is completely wheelchair accessible. It was built to offer dolphin therapy patients and their families a comfortable and close accommodation.

Relaxing in a beach wheelchair

Through years of lobbying with the tourist board and persistence, the hotel manager, Alette Borger, has built up a large network of service providers who are there for people with disabilities. Not only are all areas of the Sea Aquarium Park accessible, but if required, the hotel can also arrange a nursing service, organize excursions with wheelchair buses or arrange rental cars with wheelchair ramps.

These services are important: the Sea Aquarium Park is located a short distance from the city centre of Punda. There are no local shopping facilities for everyday needs, but there are daily shuttle buses to two supermarkets. If guests cannot change, an ordering and delivery service is also offered. Breakfast, half board and even full board are available as an option – at one of the three restaurants in the immediate vicinity of the hotel, directly on the hotel beach.

Here, for example in the beach bar Hemingway, tourists experience Curacao with all their senses: The smell of Caribbean barbecue on the beach, the roaring sea, the melodic singing of the birds, the soft sand between the toes, the live music of reggae bands. In the future, an annex with more rooms, but also more service facilities will extend the hotel. Nevertheless, it should not become too big to preserve the family character of the hotel, at whose open-air reception guests are welcomed with a friendly “Bon Bini“. In the local language Papiamento, a wild mix of African, Portuguese, Dutch and English influences, this is the traditional welcome with which visitors are welcomed everywhere.

People and their country

The friendliness is remarkable anyway. Friendly faces everywhere. Here you can feel that visitors are really welcome. In any case, the island lives almost exclusively from the tourists who flock here from all over the world, but especially from the Netherlands, Germany, England and also South America, or who come to the Willemstad cruise terminal for a day on a Caribbean cruise. There is hardly any industry here, apart from the refineries, whose penetrating smell can sometimes be unpleasant, depending on the wind direction, when approaching the gigantic Wilhelminen Bridge.

And the wind is surprisingly strong. No sooner have you left the red-hot Willemstad Airport, the Hato Airport, and overcome the first shock of the unexpectedly powerful and humid heat after a ten-hour flight at what feels like 18 degrees, than you are greeted on the airport forecourt by a strong, gusty and equally hot wind. The bars and restaurants have prepared themselves for this and secure everything that can be blown away accordingly. Loose napkins are nowhere to be found here.

One of the peculiarities of the island is that the bartenders are constantly carrying bags of new ice cube packs out of the cold stores, which are needed here in such masses that practically no restaurant or bar manages to produce them themselves. Also this circumstance might be a reason that here, the boardwalks are often paved and thus, also wheelchair users can get to many beach bars: The sacks are mostly rolled up in large quantities on trolleys or handcarts.

But barrier-free surprises are not only to be found on the beach. Even in the Rif Fort, a fort converted into a shopping centre on the other side of the harbour entrance in Otrobanda (which in Papiamento means “the other side”), after a little searching there is an elevator with the help of which all visitors can climb the walls of the former fort and enjoy a wonderful view over Willemstad and the Caribbean.

Infinity pools, cliffs and wheelchair accessible beaches

Nevertheless, Hans should be right. The fact that the landscape in the interior of the country, part steppe, part desert, is not everywhere accessible by wheelchair – a gift. The fact that wooden footbridges suddenly appear in sometimes unexpected places, such as the national park, shows that the theme is already present in itself. However, the implementation is still rather inconsistent, which is possibly also due to the typical Caribbean inner peace of most of the inhabitants.

Two of the parks, the Christoffel National Park mentioned above and also the “Shete Boka” park directly above, are at least accessible by car, and at St. Willibrordus you can watch flamingos at a bay – directly from the parked car. One or two beaches are also wheelchair accessible, with some of Curacao’s most famous beaches being located in bays below cliffs and thus only accessible by stairs.

On the other hand, you can also relax in the infinity pool of the Koraal Bar, which is accessible by wheelchair. And also in Jan Thiel, very close to Hans’ diving school, a footbridge leads across the sand – directly to the Infinity Pool, where crabs go foraging on the edge as soon as they feel unobserved. If you turn around, they run back on the cliffs between the sea and the pool and wait for the next opportunity to shovel the plankton into themselves.

Culinary and friendly Curacao

Reggae man Michael with his guitar

Speaking of shoveling in: Curacao has its own fascinating cuisine, which is strongly influenced by Creole. The countless food trucks that stand at the roadside and come to life everywhere at dusk provide inexpensive food – Caribbean twilight starts early and is incredibly fast, by the way, but the sunsets here are all the more intense. Authentic Caribbean cuisine can also be found at Plasa Bieu, the old market in Willemstad. This hall is full of cookshops where locals prepare delicious meals in front of the guests – especially chicken and rice. Both are available here in different variations: The honey chicken is particularly popular with Germans, explains John Tweed to us with a wink, asked for a recommendation.

He is clearly one of the originals of this island, has already been part of novels, and is noticeably one with his shop. He loves the island as much as everyone we have met. Michael, who sits with his guitar at the harbour entrance in front of his stall and serenades the passers-by, was also long gone. But in his heart he felt how it pulled him back. For many years now he has been sitting there at this place and it is impossible to imagine life without him. There was even an interview in a German newspaper once, he explains, gets up and rummages through the guitar bag on which he is sitting afterwards. He finds a number of newspapers, many of them already outdated – all with reports about him. But he can’t find the copy he’s looking for, so he sits down again and prefers to sing another song about Germany, about “his colleague” Gentleman, about Bastian Schweinsteiger.

Every excursion became an experience. Through nature, through the people, through the island. Through surprises: a modern wheelchair toilet on the Aloe Vera farm, in the middle of nowhere. Well passable and drivable paths in Serena’s Art Factory, the place where Berlin resident Serena Janet Israel, who got stuck on Curacao during a circumnavigation of the world to Malaysia, produces the chichis. Chichis are figures of women with distinct curves, very individual and colourfully painted by women from the island. In Papiemento, Chichi means “eldest daughter of the family” and is a nickname for the big sister, who traditionally takes on a lot of responsibility within the family. Swimming with dolphins, which is also made possible for people with disabilities at the dolphin therapy centre, is just as much a highlight as the romantic sunset boat trip on the Pelican Express.

By the way, the biodiversity of Curacao is impressive: countless exotic animals cavort here. From iguanas, which are on the move on the island en masse, to pelicans and giant butterflies, to rare fish species such as Mahi-Mahi, Curacao offers an impressive fauna. Mosquitoes and mosquitoes, on the other hand, are rarely seen here, mostly during the short rainy season.

We gradually say goodbye to the island and feel deep gratitude that we were allowed to experience this little paradise for a while and hope to return here again one day. While we pack, Hans is standing at the reception. He picks up one of the beach wheelchairs from Dolphin Suites to go diving with a wheelchair user at the tugboat in the wonderful underwater world.

This post is also available in: German