Blue - and red, white, yellow and green - Curacao

What do you do when you try and grow oranges in a foreign land and the weird water turns them bitter and inedible?  Make alcohol of course - and that's how the liqueur that bears this small Caribbean island's name came to be.  They still make it here with the original still, but of course the liqueur is now possibly more famous than the island which is rather a shame.  This island's capital Willemstad is UNESCO heritage listed and rightly so - full of amazing old Dutch colonial buildings in various states of repair and a fascinating history.  Once the capital of the Netherlands Antilles it's now a self-governing arm of the Netherlands monarchy, with a governor and a Prime Minister.  



There have been so many conquerors of this island that the local (official) patois Papiamento is made up of Dutch, Spanish, English, Portuguese and French.  There are even houses from the British conquest that look like the little houses at Battery Point in Hobart - as they're from the same era.  Some of the Dutch colonial buildings are in the 'William and Mary' style popular in both UK and the USA in the late 17th century - think the American Embassy in Canberra or more importantly Harvard University's earliest buildings.  In the Caribbean????  They are brightly coloured when they were once all white as a governor deemed it compulsory to paint them in bright colours - that he owned a paint manufacturing business in the Netherlands may have influenced this direction - but it does add a certain um... colour to the streetscapes.

The people are equally mixed in race and they like to think of their home as safe and happy in their racial diversion - possibly initiated as the first place in the Americas to allow Jews to practice freely (in the 1600s).

It's only 20 kms from Venezuela and there's some blots on the landscape from huge refineries processing Venezuela's oil and that is the major industry here, with tourism next.  Royal Dutch Shell originally but now leased to the Venzuelan government.  There's also some enormous mansions dotted on the hills despite the fact there are actually no sandy beaches and the diving is fairly average - by Australian standards I guess.

Oh, there is absolutely no difference in taste between any of the five Curacao liqueur colours - it's just artificial.  And pronounced Cure a sow.  Dushi!  That means 'sweet'.