Day 21: Pokopoko

A friend once told me that the human mind needs 21 days to restore its batteries. Another one said that, if you do a thing 21 days in a row, it will become a habit. I am not sure if these things are scientifically proven or if they both just mixed something they overheard with a nice sounding number but I know that I am now traveling for 21 days.

Until this day a lot of cool things happened. I have been very lucky for ending up with people I could connect with and, even though there were days that sucked, it was a good decision to just leave for some time. I´m not sure if I reached my goal of emptying my head or if I actually filled it but I like the way it is now. Lets see how things will be when I am back home.

Jana used to joke around that I will turn into a hippie and after todays events a part of me wants to. A local family picked me up to go to the beach because if there´s one rule everyone in curaçao obeys to its: Sunday = Beachday! During the week the beaches are filled with white (or mostly red) dutch people but on sunday you see a lot of locals, bringing ghettoblasters, having barbecues and dancing.

So Jesse, his wife Kadesha and their son Jaden picked me up from the hostel. In the car I also met Andrea and Lea. They are from Hungary, currently live in Berlin and are mother and daughter. I put my stuff in the back of their pickup truck and squeezed into the front. This car clearly wash´t designed for 6 people but intensive body contact with strangers can be a good conversation starter so at least we had something to laugh about.

Since it was very windy there already were a lot of kite surfers on the beach when we arrived. I even ran into one guy from yesterdays party. We set up on a little hill, drank beer and rum and had brunch. It was too windy to swim but there were plenty of other things to do. On a hill behind us people set up a hippie market in an old container. They sold handcrafted jewelry, prints and soup. Inside the displaying area children were playing with dogs and climbing on everything. After some hours we drove to another nearby beach that was the most accurate interpretation of surfer culture I ever whitnessed. Some people built a shack our of drifting wood, painted it and put old vintage furniture in it. There were surfboards stuck in the ground with "Beach rules" on them who basically all said: "You better be smiling". 

Then there was a very long pier built from stillages and that ended with a platform. In the middle there was a swing. A group of young people with more tattoos than I could eve pay for drank beer, surfed and rode jet ski. I got the chance to learn how to drive it by acting brave and just asking if I could do it. Best decision ever and it turned out that I am natural. I just really wanted to know how fast this thing could go and ended up doing jumps. I need to get rich so I can buy one. That will be a major life goal from now on. 

Chris and his two children Dylan and Dasha joined us. We hopped on the pickup truck again- Lea, me and the children this time in the open back and drove off road to an illegal racing track where young show offs were entertaining the local crowd by doing drift stunts and racing with their motorcycles. I swear is was like a scene of Fast and Furious: Tokio drift. Also because most of the cars belonged to asians. A few drivers fell but as far as I know nobody got really hurt. You could buy snacks and beer and we had a lot of fun.

The last activity of the day was driving to mambo beach, a club on the seaside. We took the kids with us (because none on curaçao cares about age restrictions) and just danced. Jaden, who ia actually 5 years old, has some of the sickest dance moves I ever saw.

Back at the hostel Isolde was packing her things- she will leave tomorrow morning. She gave me a thousand hugs, told me to "not dress like this in Baltimore" and then left me her email address. Weird but in a very nice way. Two more days on Curacao for me. I should start looking for places to sleep during my last week.