Curaçao

“No island in the sun is paradise on earth, however it might look from the concrete blocks, glass cubicles, or wood boxes we may live in.”

Anthony Bourdain

When I was eight, we moved from Surrey to a tiny Caribbean island I couldn’t pronounce.

Curaçao.

I hadn’t heard of it, couldn’t spell it, and wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to go. I cried in the days before we left. I was nervous. I didn’t want to leave my friends, my family, my school, the familiarity and comfort of our lives.

For the first few months on the island, I didn’t know what to think of it. I sulked and I smiled. I wasn’t completely happy, I wasn’t completely sad. I was homesick and felt unsettled, but I found friends.

But, over time, something changed. Something settled.

It happened slowly, then all at once.

I met the ocean. Then I began to love it. The feeling of living near it, the smells, the sounds, the pace of life around it. It was impossible to ignore — warm, glassy water that mirrored the sky, so clear you could see the fish from the cliffs.

A pivotal moment in my mind was when my dad and I started fishing together.

We’d load the pickup truck with rods and bait and drive ten minutes to our local beach, Daaibooi. There, on a rocky ledge overlooking the sea, we’d sit in the morning sun and cast our lines out. You could see everything beneath the surface. Parrotfish flashing turquoise and gold, schools of silver darts slicing through the water. The ever elusive blue fish that always got away, only making it more thrilling to chase.

Whatever we caught, we brought home. We’d gut it, scale it, and grill it on a barbecue we’d built from bricks in our back garden. Fire and fish. No fuss. Just salt, smoke, and the taste of something fresh. Those moments together, sun on our backs, dinner flapping in the bucket next to us, are etched in my memory.

That was the beginning, I think. The beginning of my love for the ocean. For cooking seafood. For simplicity. And, for Curaçao.

It’s funny how quickly life adapts to a new rhythm. Looking back, as soon as I was comfortable on the island, I was in love with it. With the coral reefs we explored on family dives. With the mango batidos, made with fresh fruit from the floating market in Willemstad. With the sound of tropical birds in the air, lyrical and strange and musical. With the food. With Caribbean food.

I believe that if there’s one thing that unlocks a country, it’s the food. Not the food you find on a hotel menu or a fast food restaurant. The food that belongs to the place. The things that can’t be faked. In Curaçao, it was kabritu stoba (goat stew), pastechi (like empanadas, but flakier), and fresh fish served whole. It was chicken with peanut sauce, pika, lobsters grilled straight over a flame. It was food born from struggle and ingenuity, the legacy of movement, migration, and survival.

I remember the first time I felt true elation from food. My dad had a friend who imported food and drink to the island. One day, a crate of lobsters turned up, caught that morning. We split them, grilled them on our barbecue, mixed the dark meat with garlic, butter, salt, pepper, and brushed it back on the white. I can still taste it. That was the moment I fell in love with food. Not just eating it, but feeling it. Understanding that it could move you. It has stayed with me to this day.

We didn’t waste. That was something else the years on the island taught me. When we raised chickens for eggs, we knew they would be slaughtered one day. If we caught a fish, we ate the whole thing. If a goat died on the roadside, or an iguana drowned in our pool, and it was fresh enough, we butchered it. It wasn’t grotesque. It was respectful. You use every part. Nothing wasted. Nothing taken for granted.

Even now, when I cook, I think of that. That responsibility. That reverence.

Curaçao is a strange and wonderful place. Rugged. Raw. Wild. Beautiful in a way that feels almost unfair. It sits just off the coast of Venezuela, shoulder to shoulder with Aruba and Bonaire. Like most Caribbean islands, it has a complicated past. Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English — everyone passed through at some point, leaving their flags, their languages, their architecture, and their trauma.

The island's economy has always mirrored the best and worst of the world. Pirates. Slavery. Sugar. Oil. Cocaine. Cruise ships. You can read the whole arc of global history in one port.

It was a hub for the transatlantic slave trade. It was a depot — not a destination — for human lives. The Dutch built Landhuises across the island to house the operations, and though many still stand, their histories are buried beneath coats of pastel paint. Later, Curaçao became a key node in Escobar’s cocaine network. Then came oil. Then came tourists.

As a child, I didn’t know any of this. Or at least, I didn’t see it. My parents sheltered us brilliantly. We lived on the rural side of the island, away from the cruise ships and beach bars. Looking back, I know there were moments where danger brushed against us — when friends disappeared because their parents were in law enforcement, when my dad distracted us in the car so we wouldn’t see the body on the roadside. But what I remember is paradise. What I felt was safety.

Willemstad, the capital, is bright and chaotic and impossible to forget. You cross the floating bridge into Punda and land straight into a wash of colour — yellows, blues, pinks — buildings stacked like a crayon box. The floating market along the harbour sold everything: bananas, papaya, fresh fish, sugar cane, avocados. You could smell dinner before you knew what it would be.

We used to wander through those markets as a family, batido in hand, debating whether we would eat at the indoor market or head to a restaurant. We pushed for McDonald’s or any other American chain whenever we had the chance, but that’s the mind of a child. Seeking comfort before curiosity.

Curaçao eventually taught me to be curious. To try things. Pay attention. Appreciate.

And then we left. Just as suddenly as we arrived.

I thought about the island a lot in my adult years. Brought it up often in my stories. With just my childhood memories and my assumption that everything had remained the same.

Fortunately, I went back.

For my thirtieth birthday, my wife surprised me by planning a trip. I returned to the island that I had always said had shaped me. I walked the same streets. Stood on the same cliffs. Swam in the same sea.

But this time, I saw it differently.

I saw it through my parents’ eyes — not just as an adventure, but as a choice. A chance at a different life. A better life. An escape from the grind and grey of England. A place to raise kids with salt on their skin and sun in their bones. I realised the courage it must have taken to leave everything behind. I saw the same beauty they saw, but now it had weight. Context. Meaning.

I loved the island again, but in a new way.

Now, I carry Curaçao in two forms. The first — childlike, innocent, full of mango juice and saltwater joy. The second — aware, grateful, reverent. Both are real. Both will always stay with me.

Some people remember Curaçao for its beaches or its bright blue liqueur. I remember it for lobster grilled over flame, for morning fishing trips with my dad, for family dive trips and swims with friends, for the soft lilt of Papiamentu drifting through the market. I remember the feeling of salt drying on my skin, the thrill of seeing a turtle in its natural habitat, the moment of gutting and eating a fish you caught with your own hands.

I was only there a few years. But it will never leave me.

That’s the kind of love Curaçao gives you. Not loud, but lasting. Not perfect, but real.

And if you ever get to go, I hope you see both sides. The postcard beaches and the dark history. The resorts and the ruins. The pain and the joy. I hope you eat something that makes you stop and feel something. I hope you feel the rhythm of the island. I hope you understand that this island — this beautiful, battered, brilliant island — has always been more than it seemed.

Because that’s what Curaçao is to me.

A place that played a big part in making me who I am.
A place where I feel comfortable. At home.
A place I met too young to understand, but old enough to never forget.

A place I carry with me, quietly and always.