CuraçaoNature and Wildlife Tours in Curaçao

Two thousand hectares of dry forest and old plantation land in the north-west, with Sint Christoffelberg standing 372 metres in the middle of it. The summit climb takes about two hours return and finishes with a hands-and-feet scramble on loose rock. The park stops letting anyone start after ten in the morning, which sounds strict until you have felt the rock at noon.

Most visitors never climb it. Two rough driving routes loop through the park instead, one north toward the coast among iguanas, one over the mountain side with a descent the park warns you about. On foot, the plantation trail out to Boka Grandi runs about ninety minutes through old estate ground to the shore.

Shete boka means seven inlets in Papiamentu, and the park protects a run of them on the windward coast where the Atlantic arrives with nothing to slow it down. At Boka Tabla steps take you down into a cavern under the cliff, where you sit on a ledge and watch the swell explode against the back wall. On the biggest days the park closes the cave for safety, which is worth checking before you drive out.

Boka Pistol is the blowhole, and the crack it makes when the sea forces up through the rock is where the name comes from. Several of the bays are protected turtle nesting sites. There is no swimming anywhere in the park.

The flamingos stand in the old salt pans on the south-west coast, around Jan Kok and Sint Willibrordus, and they are genuinely wild, with no fence and no feeding time. Early morning and late afternoon are when they feed and when the light is worth the trip. Keep your distance and stay in the car or on the road, because they will lift and move if approached.

The island's birdlife runs well beyond them: troupials, bananaquits that will land on your breakfast, parakeets in the kunuku, ospreys over the water, and barn owls nesting in the Christoffel cliffs.

Hato Caves near the airport runs guided tours through limestone chambers with stalactites, underground pools and a resident colony of fruit bats. The tour is short, the stairs are real, and the temperature drop at the entrance is the best part of a hot afternoon.

Above ground, Den Paradera is a herb garden built around traditional Curaçaoan plant medicine, which is a quieter and more interesting hour than it sounds. The Aloe plantation on the east side covers the crop that has been grown here commercially for over a century.

The Curaçao Marine Park protects the leeward reef, managed by CARMABI, the research institute that has worked on this coast since the 1950s. The reef runs almost continuously along the sheltered side of the island, which is why shore diving and snorkelling here need no boat.

Timing matters more than season. Everything worth seeing on land happens early: the deer move at dawn, the flamingos feed before the heat, the mountain closes at ten. November through April is the more comfortable stretch weather-wise. Turtle nesting on the north coast runs roughly May to December, and coral spawning falls in September and October.