Guus Bosman

This week there is a series of baseball games in Puerto Rico.

Baseball is a very popular sport here and somebody pointed me to tonight's game between Puerto Rico and the Netherlands. Apparently this is the first time the Netherlands are joining the World Baseball Classic tournament. I was working in the bar of the hotel tonight and the game was on.

In the mean time, it seems like United has lost my bag (it took them more than 24 hours to get a phone call from the airport) and I bought some clothes here. Travelling back tomorrow, I wonder if the plane will be on time.

Saturday evening we went to a concert of an amazing Bulgarian women's choir: The Great Voices of Bulgaria, or Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares in French.

The event was in The Church of the Epiphany, a church in downtown D.C. We arrived early because we weren't able to get tickets online. There was a line inside but luckily there were still some tickets available and we quickly got inside the beautiful Anglican church. We joined Stratsi and Lozana in one of the front rows and had a good view of the stage.

The show was really beautiful and the music amazing. The choir members, 25 women and 1 man, were all dressed in traditional Bulgarian costumes. I had heard the choir before on CD recordings, but hearing them acoustic was even better. They didn't use any microphones, and no musical instruments. The choir brought the show with a lot of humour, and it was a real pleasure to listen and watch.

The evening was organized by the Smithsonian, as part of a serie of French cultural events. Except for the name there is nothing French about the choir so it was a bit strange that the Smithsonian Resident Associates choose it as their kick-off event.

After a long, warm day in the mountains we celebrated Sasha's birthday on the beach!

We went for our first snorkeling trip ever in the Caribbean, and it was magnificient.

Only a few meters from the coast there was so much life, so much beauty under water, it was incredible. Especially near the rocks in the bay there were thousands of colorful fishes, corals and plants. The beauty started from about 1 meter depth -- very near the shore, and even where the water wasn't very deep there was some much life under water.

We got our snorkels at the Blue Bay diving shop, and spent many, many hours in the water.

My favorite place was just outside the bay, where the real deep sea started; the deep sea had a beautiful, deep glow and an even large variety of life.

On Monday, the third day of our stay, we made a trip to the other side of the island, to "Westpunt". I thought that Westpunt was something like a small village, so when we asked for a bus to that village in the hotel that caused some confusion: there is no village, it's just the name of the west-side of the island.

We wanted to visit the national park on the island, the Christoffel park, named after the highest mountain on the island, Christoffelberg.

At 9.30 am there was a bus from our hotel, a small mini-van, and we were the only passengers. Although the park was not the official destination the driver dropped us of at the entrance of the park. It was warm and sunny, so we had brought water, some snacks and a very good sunblock -- which we would need badly later that day.

There were a number of trails to walk in the park, and we decided to climb the Christoffelberg itself. It was a beautiful hike, but we had underestimated the effort a little bit, and it turned out to be a four hour trip under the warm Curacao sun. It was good we brought our supplies, especially the sunblock.

We made some nice pictures of our hike.

We were back around 3.15 pm, and our van came to pick us up. We were glad to be back in the civilized world and I'm proud to say that I have climbed the second-highest mountain in the Kingdom of the Netherlands (the highest being the mountain on Saba).