Our story from Curacao-Easter 2009

We were well rested on the morning we arrived into Curacao! What a beautiful sight that awaited us! It's Easter morning, and before the we could set up for the Easter bunny's presentation, the boys were up. Grandpa Bruce had smuggled Easter treats onto the ship, so I tried to distract Tommy with a search in the bathroom (it's as small as a tight closet!) while John frantically stuffed the HAL bags we received from the ship. At one point, Tommy called out, "Dad, don't scare off the Easter Bunny! He's a good guy!"
When he finally "found" his stuff, he looked at it, then said, "Oh, this is just the stuff Grandpa told me he was going to feed to the dolphins." He had spied the goods at SeaTac airport and that was Grandpa's cover story. Such was the Easter Bunny festivities this time around. We tried...
As we wandered down for breakfast and coffee, we could see that people were already off loading, eager to get on with their own adventures. It was HOT-HOT, the kind I have so rarely experienced, so with the boys we were in no hurry to hit the beach. We also weren't too sure of ourselves on this island, with no definite plans for the day. Again, it is very expensive to travel out to the farthest, and yet most beautiful and desolate beaches of this island, and with Cooper being so little, we didn't want to take a chance with taxi travel and hours in a hot ride. Making our way off the ship, we quickly decided to take a short taxi ride to Kon Tiki, now named La Cabana Beach. There were no seat belts in this taxi van, so the boys, specifically Cooper, enjoyed the adventure of sitting like a big boy in the back seat of this van. After an enjoyable ride through the streets of Williamsted, Curacao, we arrived. There we paid three dollars to enter the beach. Then we were free to wander what is actually three beaches...Mambo Beach, La Cabana Beach and Lion's Dive...each broken up only by restaurants that flowed out onto the beach. We selected a couple of lounge chairs down the way a bit, then took a look around. When you look around, you don't expect to see topless-ness...at least I don't. Then when your eyes do see something that looks unfamiliar, you look again...and sure enough, those are uncovered, uh, well, uncovered...well, apparently you don't have to wear a top on La Cabana Beach. It made changing Cooper easier, as I wasn't concerned about his bare butt when all around were bare boobs!
You really needed to stay in the water to have any hope of keeping cool. The sun was scorching at mid day, and out of the water it was almost unbearable. I say "almost", as I had to remind myself that only a few days before I was complaining about rainy snow on my early morning run. I could NOT complain, however hot I was. This turned out to be an issue for us, though we didn't see it coming until much later. Cooper fell asleep on top of me on the lounge chair. I moved him to his own chair, under a palm tree. We shared this palm tree shade with others on the other side, so there was nothing unusual about this. It was pretty sweet to see your baby fast asleep in the shade of a palm....until, minutes later, a very large, very green, very heavy coconut drops down but an inch from this baby's precious little head. People were shocked, stunned, and quickly moved away from under this palm. John was pretty shaken by this, as we could only imagine what would have happened had this heavy thing hit Coop smack on his head. (To those keeping count...pink eye and falling coconuts!) Cooper woke up after being moved from under the tree, but it was so hot by now we decided to call it an afternoon and trek back to the ship. While packing up and getting ready to leave, I could see that Tommy was only half-heartedly getting dressed and drying off. I tracked his eyes, which were watching a group of young ladies a bit away from us. Of course, 2 out of the 5 were topless, and I could only imagine what Tommy was thinking about this, and it was almost if he was trying to figure this all out. In my head, I was begging him not to say anything. He didn't, and continued getting dressed. I chuckle about it now, thinking that if we ever return to this beach on another trip, it will certainly be something to take into account.
Straight off the beach into the Zuiderdam pools! Then quickly to the afternoon Easter Egg hunt in the ship's huge theater. Quite a treat to be hunting for Easter eggs in a theater! At some point we even managed to eat that day, too! Hamburgers fries eaten out by the pools was standard for us. Nothing beat their hamburger and fries! Pizza came in second, not to be outdone by the ice cream at nearly every meal! Tonight I had a special treat in that Lil watched Cooper so that I could join the others out for dinner by the pool. What a treat that was, too. Cooper seemed to be fussy that night, so we were a bit concerned. Even more so when at 2 am he woke up crying and fussing. He was on fire, and quickly we took his temp. He was running a 102 fever! What do you do at 2 am, on a ship, heading for the Panama Canal? Do you call up Bruce? You can't look up anything online like you would at home....for such symptoms for heat exhaustion, heat stroke, things that come to mind after an exhausting day in the hot, hot sun. We gave him a dose of Tylenol, then one of Ibuprofen, stripped him to his diaper, then waited, and waited. Once the fever finally started to sleep we too fell back to sleep, hoping for the best for morning.