WILLEMSTAD, CURACAO — Never having visited this part of the Caribbean before, our maiden voyage on the Carnival Freedom was fascinating, in part because of a tip from a fellow member of the cruise media. Nancy Schretter of the Family Travel Network suggested — no, insisted — that we visit Kura Hulanda Museum in the heart of Willemstad. She didn’t tell us much about it, only that it was dedicated to (her words) a history of slavery.
She only said we wouldn’t be disappointed.
The most interesting visual was in the courtyard, in the heart of the 15 buildings. When you look at it head-on, as we initially did, it appears to be a giant mask. Now, nobody will ever accuse us of being art critics, or even aficionados, but this piece first resembled a king-sized version of some of the artifacts we’d seen on our first half-hour of meandering 
through room after room of bowls and knives and skeletal remains and drums. Frankly, after a while, they were all starting to look the same. How many 1,000-year-old bowls can you look at with un-expert eyes?
Then we walked around the side of the “giant mask.” Do you see what we saw?
Africa.
Even as art neophytes, that commanded our attention. It triggered our interest. It was the face, if you will, of the rest of Kura Hulanda, which you could say is a history of the Colored-cum-Negro-cum-Black-cum-African American people except that it’s so much more than that. It’s global. It is, as our colleague said, a history of slavery. By the time we left, we were anxious to get our hands on a copy of the movie, Amistad.
Why Curacao? Why Willemstad?
Historians have educated us to the point that we know the slave trade came to North America through Caribbean countries or islands. Curacao was one of them, part of the Dutch Caribbean. The aptly-named Willemstad is the capital. Sixteen years ago, a Dutch entrepreneur, Jacob Gelt Dekker, was granted permission to turn a derelict part of the city 
into what it is today, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a chronology of the slave trade…warts and all, and there are plenty.
The 66-year-old Dekker is a self-made millionaire. Perhaps his greatest financial success was buying 200 rental cars from Budget for $20,000 and turning it into a business he sold 15 years later for $600 million. A philanthropist, a cancer survivor and a passionate “serial entrepreneur” he visits the museum from time to time, employees say. In 1998, two years after first setting foot in Willemstad, he raised $6 million to fund the construction and the acquisition of the largest collection of African art in the Caribbean. Visitors pay $10 to tour 16,000 square feet of the museum, dedicated to “acquire and exhibit collections related to the cultural identity of the people of Curacao, the Caribbean and the Atlantic Rim.”
Seeing it is sobering and educational. The bowls and knives and artifacts evolved into the stories of real people, and the conditions in which they lived, not just in Curacao but throughout the Caribbean. We spent two hours there and, had we chosen to read all there is to read, we could have spent three times as long.
In the end, Nancy Schretter was so right, and now we insist…
If you ever cruise to Curacao, go to Kura Hulanda. You won’t be disappointed.
Today at portsandbows.com: Regal Princess debut in Caribbean
Caribbean Princess
5 nights
January 17, 2015
Fort Lauderdale (return): Grand Cayman, Ocho Rios
Inside: $349
Cost per day: $69
www.princess.com