Way overtime, overbudget and over any attempt in predicting, controlling and scheduling boatwork Tranquility and I finally hit the water.
We dance with the natural change of the tides and the winds in a quasi stationary equilibrium tethered to the muddy bottom of the North River. Here we are merging again, as she is back doing what she was designed for and I reunite with the familiar feeling that I had not experienced since Hong Kong: The sensation of resting on the surface of water supported by the Archimede’s principle is engraved in my vestibular system as for the most part of the last 11 years I lived on floating objects.
Tranquility is not just my home, my mean of transportation and my survival pod, she is an extension of myself through which I explore the cosmos, and now that we are back in our element the senses are enhanced.
Since floating in the river dreaming activity surged together with levels of relaxation that I have not felt for months. Tranquility rig are the strings that capture atmospheric variations, the hull a sound box that amplifies the waves of the liquid environment. Her shell enhances my connection with the environment: enough to be dry and comfortable but inadequate to mask environmental changes around me.
The preparation to voyage has officially ended. As other times before I pushed the bar a little over my actual capacities, tried some weird experiments and dealt with the consequences. I take all this as a game. It is serious playing because financial risks and potential danger are part of it, but my inner child would not let me play safe or lower the bar. I like to keep learning so I push a bit over the comfort zone.
Andy, a very generous solo sailor and pizza tinkerer here at the boatyard, allowed me to use his dinghy to move back and forth to the shipyard for the last showers, laundry, errands and farewells. Rowing to get ashore is a degree of separation that helps detach from land life.
In few hours I will bring onboard the line that ties me to the muddy bottom, brave few shoals and turns for roughly three miles before I enter the St Marys river. There the outgoing tide and the favorable SW winds should push me effortless East through the inlet and out in the Atlantic Ocean en route to the Azores lying some 2700 nautical miles away.
From the Azores I will point to the island of Tenerife, where a special person has been waiting for too long for me to reunite in that wonderful place. This is the main aim of this voyage, the energy that kept me motivated to overcome the endogenous and exogenous variables I encountered, and for which I am extremely grateful.
There are however other reasons behind this voyage. One is that I am moving my home from America back to Europe. I spent more than a decade in the New World an exploration that put me in touch with new experiences.
I had the fortune to be welcomed wherever I went and be brought into homes regarded as a family member. The level of generosity I experienced is overwhelming and when I tried the exercise of bringing to mind all the people that helped me on this side of the world I felt overwhelmed and tears came up.
In the Americas I encountered the most friendly and generous people, people who never hesitated in making me feel welcomed and at home. For seven wonderful years I also had in Kate a generous, loving and brilliant companion and wife who shepherded me through this unknown continent. Adoptive parents and family, mentors, friends and comrades, they all allowed me to see life through their eyes and opened up their hearts to my presence.
I am not painting an idealized picture of my recent years. There has been incidents, suffering, discomfort and cultural shocks. Positive experiences though outweighed negative ones by far. This continent is still vast and rich and mysterious, full of magical energy, both good and bad, and I bathed in it.
Welcomed by the bald eagle, I am ushered to the door by the vulture. This magnificent bird, so ugly and clumsy on land and so graceful when it glides, is a rare sight in the Old World where I come from. In North and South America different species of vulture are instead very common. I grew accustomed to see them on the side of roads taking care of the business of life, dismembering corpses, removing harmful bacteria and diseases from the environment, and complying with the rules of transformation we all obey to.
I will leave part of my soul to the spirit of this bird for it to be digested into the ethereal connections of my legacy, so the last remaining ties will be severed.
After more than ten years it is time to move on. My rootlessness is taking over supported by the desire for more solo sailing, this uncommon human experience full of discomfort and awe. It will take few days of laziness and uneasiness for my vestibular system to incorporate the sudden changes of direction and acceleration experienced on a vessel that sails offshore and to fall into the routine of the watch system.
The southernmost outpost of Europe is waiting for me. It will be a long journey during which I will be removed from the usual flux of information that connects us all, suspended in the parallel reality of this planet without the chatter of society, to exercise my right and responsibility to awe in this incredibly beautiful universe.
Every Tuesday I connect with the kind and fun bunch of Rebel Writers. They meet face to face in a secret location in Hong Kong and write. I used to take part in those meetings face-to-face while I was living there. Now I can only connect from afar but I still enjoy to participate. In the end when you become a Rebel Writer, you will be one for the rest of your life.
So every Tuesday I get up on my boat check in with them and start my writing as well. This weekly appointment is what gets me writing no matter what, despite the fact that I am running against the clock to get in the water and get going. Having this sacred, personal moment of messing about with words has a healthy effect on my mind.
During last meeting we decided to video call for a little catch up. Also the daughter of one of the Rebels was present so I thought it was a good idea to give them a tour of my boat. I realized how messy my boat really was as soon as this idea left my brain, it converted in vibrating air captured by my microphone and was sent all the way to Hong Kong. All I could do was to justify myself adding that I am tearing apart close to 30% of the total internal space of the boat and that I was living in a construction site. Which of course is true and normal these days.
Despite the clarification I felt a rush of shame pervading my body and I tried pathetically to limit the visual of messiness through camerawork, with little success. Not even a square foot of the boat was tidy. I consider myself lucky I don’t suffer from the paralyzing, debilitating type of shame that would shut you down and make you stutter and say stupid things. I still held face and walked them through my messy yet very interesting boat.
The sensation of shame continued after the video call as my eyes were contemplating the explosion of boat parts and tools around me. I have been in this condition for a couple of months now, but even if I am used to my mess sometimes it exceeds my own tolerance.
The previous day I worked on my water tank in the v-berth, then rushed onto the boat to prepare the dough and toppings for our Monday pizza night at the boatyard, then worked a little more while the dough was raising, to again rush and pick everything up and carry it to the breezeway on the other end of the boatyard. When I came back it was dark already and with a full belly and first signs of a carb crash I went quickly to bed. The next morning I woke up to the mess of cooking and working and everything else.
In this particular phase of working there is no place onboard that stays the same. Things keep moving and shuffle around from one surface to the other. This happens even if the majority of my belonging are stuffed under the boat in the squatter camp, a sprawling of boat parts and materials that allows for great boatwork and creations and that also has a post-apocalyptic aesthetic, so appropriate during current times.
I am fortunate I got to be in a very private corner of the boatyard so my mess is hidden. Tranquility is parked stern to the edge of the property, against a fence with climbing vines and tall trees. My port windows face the North River and I can observe the marsh and boats at anchor from where I sit at my table. My only neighbor in a radius of 80ft (25 meters ) is Bill, who is a long time friend, solo sailor, inventor and “connazionale” (he is American and he also holds an Italian passport). He tolerates my mess and contributes with his own, although I have to say I am undefeated to this day.
For a coincidence of life I am right under the tree where four years ago Beta was spotted the last time before he decided to take a two week vacation from the boat. This tree dumps leaves, branches and staining berries onto my deck and used to block the sun from reaching my solar panel, but I still love it. It harbors a quantity of animals and insects that are my companions during my work days.
The boatyard is encased in maritime forest and it opens on a winding river that leads all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, separating Georgia from Florida. Its magical powers are beyond comprehension and the enchanted forest attracts a community of boaters that end up taking residence in the boatyard.
This special corner in this special county of this special state which is part of this special country is where I prepare my farewell. The Americas, North and South, have been particularly welcoming to me.
The people I met during my travels invited me in their lives with generosity and a sane curiosity for a man with a weird accent. They were able to make me feel important, even when I came empty handed. Here I met new fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, teachers and peers.
From all the encounters I learned that we have one blood if we are willing to meet eye to eye and heart to heart. I received way more than I gave, and per the rule of life, whatever is left in the account I will pay it forward, wherever I may roam.
It is hard to detach from people that were so friendly and generous to me. I made this vow to follow the tides of life, those bigger than myself forces that right now are pushing me away from this land. I am also sure that the people who love me would be disappointed if I retreated from this call.
I thought it would be easier to leave, just pack the boat and go. But I am not just crossing an ocean for the sake of adventure. I am realigning and dealing with with this surge of mess around me, this puke of threads, stories, connections I need to transform, purge, celebrate and disentangle from. I went deep into this territory, now I am climbing up from the hole I digged, carrying my treasure.
The Ocean is calling, and the Ocean always punish messy people. Even if my mind tolerates mess it comes a moment when clutter becomes a real obstacle, and that moment is when you are underway and your entire world starts moving up and down and back and forth and left and right. A messy boat underway is a recipe for disaster. Curbing my mess is my main job now.
As the tendrils of the spiral of chaos agitate in this magic forest things start to fall into place, messages are exchanged, clarity is achieved. The unnapetizing concoction made out of who I was and who I will be is brewing. As the agents of change are doing their metabolic work I try to keep things under check, put away stuff and tidy up. It looks like a Sysyphean effort, but there is no way around it and the reward is immense.
As Robert Frost put it, “the only certain freedom is in departure”.
Building the hard dodger for Tranquility is a project made possible by a chain of events that stretches several months in the past. A key element to this transformation was the dinghy, also knows as auxiliary boat or tender.
Tranquility in Fairhaven MA
Looking at this older picture of Tranquility you can notice that the plastic Walker Bay dinghy sat on top of the companionway, in a very secure spot, but making it impossible to protect the cockpit and companionway, and forcing the crew to duck considerably to get in and out. On small boats like the Columbia 29 the stowage of dinghies is not a trivial matter, as the auxiliary boat is an indispensable tool on any cruising vessel and the space on deck is limited.
The 8 feet long Walker Bay is a dependable and solid dinghy, and I grew accustomed to its carrying capacity and good rowing abilities. I was not ready to renounce such luxury. The solution to this problem appeared to be a nesting dinghy, an auxiliary boat that is comprised of two parts that can be nested one inside the other, reducing its length when stowed. It was basically impossible to find a nesting dinghy where I was on the Atlantic Coast of Panama. Building one became the only option.
I built that boat out of fiberglass and nida-core panels while in a secluded marina surrounded by jungle, a project that took a lot of time, money and energy, but that unlocked the possibility to both have a decent size dinghy (8 feet in length) and a future dodger. As I was building it from scratch I decided to make it also a sailing dinghy, putting together pieces that people almost spontaneously donated.
I have never shared the details of the building in this blog and I will not do it now. Those months spent in the Panamanian jungle coincide with a very difficult time for me.
As many key moments in one’s personal life those times are colored by often extremes emotional tones that progress on their own course. Kate and I were finding more and more difficult to work as a team in life and the dinghy project became for me both a refuge and a statement of identity.
What I will do instead is telling a story that came from that time. It does not describe technically the building process nor the chronology of the events, but it gives an idea of the motives and the discoveries that happened inside and around me while building a small boat.
THIS IS THE STORY OF ARCTIC TERN
Arctic Tern is a little boat.
She was born near Nombre de Dios in Panama, under a roof between two containers, surrounded by a 15 meter mast and assorted junk coming from boats in advance state of abandon.
Kind souls donated the elements that put together gave her wings: A fiberglass tube that a Spanish Explorer had no use for, a beautiful sail with the emblem of a horse offered by an Argentinian Sailing Teacher, a dagger board forged by a Polish Engineer in the sultry womb of a steel ship, a weird looking rudder from the nautical collection of an Australian Firefighter.
Giving birth to Arctic Tern was a lot of suffering and pain. It of course cost a lot of money to buy the materials, a lot of sweat in transporting them, and to put them together.
Arctic Tern was also the last nail in the coffin of a failing relationship. She gave her creator spiritual and physical wounds, broken hands and even a chemical burn in one eye from a drop of resin. Many tools broke and clothes were destroyed in the process.
But it was also fun. In those long weeks that stretched into months the creator was busy overcoming design and construction problems, in endless discussions with curious standbyers, crossing all the boundaries from feeling hopeless and stupid to be elated and proud.
When Arctic Tern was born she was ugly.
It is better said she was not symmetrical and she was on the heavy side, definitely sturdy.
“Ogni scarrafo’ è bello a mamma soia” say people from Naples. Every cockroach looks beautiful to its mom.
She was immediately loved. Not just by the creator who built her from stem-to-stern, but from the neighbors who saw the long process unfolding, both the enthusiasts and the naysayers.
It was a fool’s idea, with no logic whatsoever and it could not be stopped. The mothership Tranquility was ready to let go of Walker Bay, the reliable companion of many landing and explorations, and she welcomed the weird looking boat made of two halves.
The launch was a long awaited moment.
When Arctic Tern touched the water she started flying. She is very good at it.
The creator sat in her lap and he was very afraid of going out in anything blowing stronger than a mild breeze, doubting the abilities of his creature and his own’s as sailor.
Arctic Tern was born ready.
Her flat belly dances on the surface of the ocean. She almost takes off when her two wings start to act in harmony in a lively wind.
The big one opens catching the breath of the sky, the small one points down in the deep ocean gripping invisible streams.
The two wings balance each other and so the dance is possible.
The creator took Arctic Tern out for more and more dances, sitting in her lap while she was doing what boats do.
Through Arctic Tern the creator is learning to fly, and when he is with her out In the ocean, the real teachers come to see them.
Ospreys, terns, pelicans, the graceful gliding vultures. The masters of Air.
They look down to watch Arctic Tern and the creator progress.
They show them how to dance in the currents, how to float about.
They are always vigilant as they glide undisturbed.
The creator down below feels very nervous, scared of the big waves, afraid of breaking a bone or a wing of Artic Tern.
They see each other and a feeling of communion is established. They are the same even if they fly for different purposes.
They are all part of the Great Dance, a dance that follows different rhythms and that contains them all.
THE GREAT DANCE
The creator of Arctic Tern learned that in those very moments on the surface of the ocean by the rocky headland all the freedom lanes become one.
How simple it was just to be out there doing their part!
He understood that we share the dance with everybody even those who try to be small and invisible, and that everything, even his sturdy little vessel and not just himself, is temporary.
It doesn’t matter if you are on a tiny sailboat on the surface of the ocean, a petrel swooping on the crest of a wave or if you are a bluefin tuna just below it.
You are just doing your part, so why worry?
It was then that he felt bizarre thoughts invading his head, as if they were coming from the outside. He felt a question brewing.
What if the Mighty Tuna comes and swallows us all? The Slim Sardine asked in the Creator’s mind.
After few second of perplexity he welcomed this alien consciousness as a guest.
What Can you do about it? Not a whole lot, Slim Sardine. Yes, you can swim away from the Mighty Tuna mouth and look for shelter in tube-like swirling spirals, with family and friends, in your community of sardines.
But when the The Mighty Tuna is coming for you… What you can really do Slim Sardine is keep swimming, keep rowing, keep sailing.
You’re doing it good or doing it bad, but you’re doing it, as long as you won’t stop dancing.
Be a little patient and keep swimming. keep rowing, keep sailing.
It is as simple as that.
The same is true for me, thought the Creator. My hands will hurt, my eyes will be dry and red, my buttocks will be sore and sun and dry air will crack my lips and tangle my hair.
And when the storm comes I might drown. What can I do about it?
Keep swimming keep rowing, keep sailing.
The creator’s eyes turned wet by the upwelling of emotions. Salty jewels from the body poured back into the ocean.
The Heron taught him how to be patient, that good positioning and one precise strike is worth much more than a lot of fussing around. He heard the Heron’s thought merging with his own’s.
He felt this idea was beautiful and true, so he decided to address the Mighty Tuna itself…
Do you Mighty Tuna worry about the little sardines you’re swallowing whole? You follow your hunger Mighty Tuna.
But look behind your back, the Savage Shark may be coming soon for you. So what you can really do is to keep swimming, keep rowing, keep sailing.
After all, even if the shark may never find you, nothing’s going to change you are still going to disappear. Maybe you’re good. Maybe you swim fast because you are mighty. But if you’re in the wrong place then you get swallowed.
You may think you have to leave the dance floor because there are more important or more urgent things do. Serious business.
You are running and you are doing a good job, and maybe you are so good that the shark is going to miss you, and you’re not going to bite the hook. You know better than that. You’re faster than the spear. You’re the best. Nothing can touch you.
You are just fooling yourself Mighty Tuna, you’re going to end up digested by something. Microbes, bacterias, mushrooms, something is going to chew you to bits.
And even when you are the Savage Shark you are not safe. Maybe you will bite a hook on a fishing line. Maybe it’s the Killer Whale. Maybe it’s a disease, or some plastic in your guts. It doesn’t matter.
Swimming, rowing, sailing… you skim the surface and participate in the Big Dance.
Everybody’s dancing. Birds in the sky, people holding cocktails, monkeys in the jungle.
So again Mighty Tuna, Savage Shark or Slim Sardine. It doesn’t matter what you do or what you think.
Keep swimming.
Keep rowing.
Keep sailing, and keep dancing.
Escaping death just for one day wont’ grant you a special treatment. Just do what you want. Somebody is going to swallow you and there are no medicines, Science can’t stop that.
Nothing can cure you from the disease, because there is no disease.
There’s enough beauty in a single note of the music and in each single step of the Great Dance to keep you raptured forever. Every day is a gift, and for every bad day you can be happy that you don’t have to live it again.
Keep swimming, and stretch your wings
Keep rowing, and learn
Keep sailing and dance with me.
The music keeps playing. You want change. Everybody is still dancing and you can decide to do whatever you like because this is not going to affect the dance, it keeps going with or without you
You can be in the dance or out of the dance.
It doesn’t matter what you do, all you have left is to keep swimming, keep (G)rowing, keep sailing.
The Slim Sardine, the Mighty Tuna and the Savage Shark said goodbye to Arctic Tern and the creator and swayed back into the Great Dance.
The creator realized he just lectured a bunch of fishes and a heron, who could care less about the lecture as she was catching dinner. For some reason it didn’t feel as strange as it sounds.
The creator eased the line that controlled Arctic Tern’s air wing to catch the following breeze while he raised the water wing. He felt the acceleration radiating through her solid belly as they bounced on the surface of the ocean.
He understood that the logics he told himself and others behind that building endeavor were nothing but wishy washy rationales encircling a deeper motivation. He acted and then needed to justify his actions.
He was doing his thing, taking part in the Great Dance.
Mountain wilderness has always fascinated me, long before the ocean did. The Alps are just at a stone’s throw from my hometown in Italy, and most of my growing up memories are related to walking in the woods, swim in mountain lakes and climb rocky peaks.
When it was time to figure out where to travel for our New Year’s Holidays it wasn’t difficult to pick the mountains. Kate and I needed a change of scenario from Coastal Georgia and the Blue Ridge Mountains north of Atlanta were the closest available option. Relatively close, I have to say, as it takes almost 7 hours driving to get there from Brunswick.
Even if life is sweet in the marshes of Glynn I felt the need to look at a different landscape. It takes some courage to find the time and the determination to do it, to subtract it to social life, work and money and general everyday schedule that ends up trapping our lives. It so much rewarding to be able to leave and go, and see what you haven’t seen before, and I am so lucky to share this attitude with Kate. We can say that we took our souls on a date.
With the burden/blessing of a multiple course feast we had for New Year’s Eve and tired by the consequently cooking and clean-up we jumped on the car the very first day of 2015 and started the journey. We killed two birds with one stone (I am practicing stone’s related idioms) visiting Kate’s siblings in Atlanta. It was nice to spend holiday time with family. Atlanta is so close yet so far there are not many opportunities to do it in the course of the year, when the Schedule reign.
After the Atlanta stop we drove up the mountains to a cabin in Chattahochee National forest. The forecast for the weekend was heavy and non/stop rain. Leaden sky, misty and grey, a true Appalachian atmosphere. We had to make a change in our plan, from hiking to sight seeing, using our car to explore the scenic roads of the Blue Ridge mountains.
Nestled in the Georgia Mountains, Unicoi is a state park that surrounds the 53-acre Unicoi Lake on Smith Creek. Kate dragged me to see the Lodge, which is a fancy building that serves conference groups, families and individuals with guest rooms, meeting space, restaurant and catering. We had no business there but to get a bit of free wi-fi to continue our planning of the visits. Nonetheless the staff was very welcoming and allowed us to walk around freely and to visit the building. They also gave us a straight forward advice: if we are interested in booking a room during low season we should just bypass the reservation area of the website and call the lodge: when the season is low they are always willing to meet your budget for a room in the lodge. Forewarned is forearmed.
HELEN, GA A FAKE ALPINE TOWN
Economic development strategies are to be judged by their effectiveness and the one that transformed Helen, GA into a touristic destination was a very successful one, even though bizarre. Once a logging town, Helen suffered a severe economic depression until a group of businessmen decided to invest and create a replica of a Bavarian village in the Alps in the 70s. Even national franchises as Huddle House and Wendy had to surrender to the style imposed by the zoning authority. Today Helen is a popular destination, with many restaurant and shopping areas.
We were unimpressed by Helen (as you see no pictures were taken), which is a bit disgusting for the kitsch style and the obvious inauthentic architecture. We had to take at least a stroll through the city and dine out. Thanks to Kate who is always able to extract local knowledge from store employees, we found the best restaurant in town, which obviously is not Bavarian and it doesn’t even have a Bavarian-style building. Bigg Daddy’s proved to be an authentic non-german restaurant and we still remember with pleasure the Jumbo Wings with lemon pepper hot sauce!
The twin waterfalls lie in the hearth of the Chattahoochee National Forest and can be reached after a short and pleasant walk from the parking lot, the ideal condition for our rainy day. So when we hit the road to our NW route to McCaysville we made our first stop at the falls, where we had a wet little hike, some moment of meditation in the mist and a curious encounter with a pine-needle/spaghetti worm.
Visiting the Walasi-Yi Interpretive Center at Neels Gap was like a pilgrimage for us, as the site is an important crossing of the Appalachian Trail. In 2012 Kate and I took a summer trip to Maine and we visited Baxter State Park and Mount Katadhyn, the northern end of the AT. We were fascinated to learn about the AT and dreamed that one day we could hike it.
Walasi-Yi is a Cherokee word for “big frog” and it’s the original name of this area at Neels Gap. The native american people used to have a village very close to the actual position of the building, but they had to leave through the infamous “Trail of Tears”, the removal of the Cherokee Indians and other native tribes from their life long home in 1838. According to eyewitness John G. Burnett, “… many of these helpless people did not have blankets and many of them had been driven from home barefoot. […] The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire.”
A recount of the “Trail of Tears”
The actual stone building was built in 1934. Through the years it served as restaurant and dance hall, and today it houses a Hostel and an Outfitter shop right on the Appalachian Trail, which passes through the building, marking the only covered portion of the trail’s 2100 plus miles.
HANK B.
Our itinerary was designed around a specific appointment. We wanted to go and visit Hank, a man we met exactly one year ago in Cumberland Island. He was very interested int Tranquility, sitting at the dock by the ferry and we started to chat. After few words, we were all sat in the cockpit eating nuts an talking about sailing, and life afloat. He offered to trade his mountain cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains for our boat. We felt very tempted but we sticked with Tranquility. When we decided to go up in the Blue Ridge Mountains we called him, to see if he was still around, and he invited us to meet him in McCaysville, where he lives.
Hank took us on a tour of the area, first crossing the border to Tennessee, where we visited the abandoned copper mines in Ducktown. The scars of the mining is still evident, but trees are starting to grow back and repopulating the area. For Kate this was the sign of a profound legacy with her Pennsylvania ancestors who used to work in a mine town.
The second point of interest that Hank showed us was the system of dams on the Ocoee River. TVA manages the dams to produce electricity and to control the river flow for recreational purpose. The whitewater course on the Ocoee River was created for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, and it is dependent by the water control system of the dams. In Spring, when they open the water, a group of kayakers and whitewater rafters gather to run the first wave down the river. Sounds like great fun!
Weather improved the following day so before driving back to the lowcountry we stopped in a gorge-ous place. Tallullah Gorge is a set of waterfalls that flows in a steep little canyon. The interpretative center give tons of informations about the history and the nature of the Appalachian Region, and the trails around the waterfalls are easy and accessible.
Walking around the gorge on a finally sunny day gave us the opportunity to discuss some of the plans we have for 2015. After a static 2014, where we consolidated our situation after leaving New England in a hurry, we expect to start travelling again. There are plans to point Tranquility’s bow on a northern route later in Spring/Summer, to explore the great crusing grounds of New England. There is also a plan for a family meeting in Italy next August, in the beautiful scenario of the Alps. Quod erat demonstrandum, I live on the Ocean but I belong to the Mountains.
To escape from the uncessant work of a boat refitting I decided to visit the National Park of Curaçao. In a cloudy saturday morning I took the road that leaves the city of Willemstad and the pollution of oil refineries heading Westpunkt, the extreme west of the island. By the way I stopped to buy some fruit in a common house of locals guided by the signal “Fruta Barata” (cheap fruit). Just before reaching the point where the island disappear into the sea you meet the sharp pyramidal edge of Christoffel Mountain. It is 375m high and completely covered by vegetations up to the rocky top.
I entered the Park reception with the tiny Suzuky Samurai I rented from Pedro, the carpenter of the Marina and I paid 19,5 guilders (about 12 $) for the entrance plus the car ticket. The park is divided in two sides. The one that goes up to north is the marine side, a wide area with the rocky cliffs of Boka Grandi, a big lagoon where you can see Flamingos and Eagles, a small cave with some indian paintings and some other routes in the nature. Going south you approach the mountain and the area of disused plantations and mines. I went directly to the mountain as I was a little late. You can visit the entire park with the car through a small stripe of tarmoil that infiltrate the cactus and the small trees.
The first stop was not exciting, an ancient plantation not used anymore. I saw fully coloured birds and a huge iguana that ran away immediately. After this stop I decided to go directly to the hiking route that takes you to the top. From the parking they say it’s one hour to go up and the same to get back. I did it in 40 mins, close to noon but protected by the shade of the cloudy sky. It was really hard even if short and the heat is not a help. I’m not in a good physical condition due to the continuos work on the boat that is definetely not an aerobic activity and I suffered the climb that starts sweet but becomes very steep close to the peak, with some easy climbing passages on the rock. From the top you have a complete view of the island, from Westpunkt to Willemstad but the sky was not so clear and so the visibility. But at least I was not getting burned by the violent sun of noon and I enjoyed the bunch of grape I bought in the morning. Once I got back to the car I decided to visit the marine side, I didn’t know why but I was in a hurry.
The vegetation of the marine side changes with the influence of the wind that blows NE and bring salty air. The trees almost disappear and cactuses predonimate the landscape. Compared to the busy Willemstad this corner of the island is really savage and quite, perfect for meditation and relax.
The marine side has also few caves once inhabited by indians. The caves have paintings on their walls and when I entered I felt like it was a home and I have to escape from fierce animals (I’m not sure if here in Curaçao they even had one in the whole history, probably not).
I enjoyed the journey, it’s defintely not a unique and impressive natural environment, but I always like natural sites with few people where breath fresh air and the noises all come from the wind, small birds singing or waterfalls. I love the western part of Curacao!
