We started our cruise with two days at sea. There’s not a lot to write about. The food is good. The entertainment is excellent. There’s plenty do do. But even so, after a couple of days, it’s time to visit an Island. Our first port of call is Curacao. The island is famous for having all white buildings until a governor claimed it was too bright and gave him a headache. He had the people repaint their houses and buildings to any color they wanted, as long as it wasn’t white. Later on, it became known that the governor was part owner of the island’s only paint store. But the tradition stuck. Colonial buildings were built with coral rock. The island decided to preserve these buildings, but it takes a lot of work. The buildings suffer from “wall sickness” caused by the salt in the coral rock. Buildings have to be painted every year and re-plastered every 3 years.We took a ride in a semi-submarine: a boat with under-water windows. We saw plenty of sponges, coral, and fish. Sargent Major fish have the same number of stripes as a US Army Sargent Major. Fire coral protects itself in an unusual way. If you touch it, you will feel a very painful burning sensation. The white sand beaches in this area are made by zebra fish. They are quite small and eat small plants that grow on the coral. When they eat, they get a small amount of calcium from the coral. They excrete this as white sand. If you come to lay on a white sand beach, you are laying on zebra fish poop! If we heard our guide right, each fish makes over a ton of sand a year. We also visited a Curacao liquor plant and met a bird that was wasting away again in margaritaville.