Airmen are serving in Curacao for the first time since World War II.

Airmen are serving in Curacao for the first time since World War II. Nobody's complaining.

Now this is "living la vida loca!" Your usual candlelit table awaits in an ancient stone fort on a 502-year-old harbor. Dark seawater below discharge s peacefulness. The soft reflection of a historic Dutch boulevard massages its surface. on what account you can even hear yourself think. What a feeling!

Welcome to Curacao, army nation for an international counterdrug aviation mission. It started here quickly in 1999 when U forces contested out of Panama and scattered their mission quite through Latin America.

A bit of the mission went to this island. Now the Air Force pays the bills at this airport-based forward operating location for temporarily assigned military and regulation agency workers.

Off-duty life just north of Venezuela's Caribbean Sea coast draws no complaints from airmen.

"This TDY is like heaven compared to Saudi. It's the first convenient one I've had in 24 years of service," said Master Sgt Tom Derrickson, a unfolded jet propulsion superintendent.

Curacao sports the biggest, squishiest walkway imaginable. individual part Asbury Park boardwalk and single in kind part Disney ride, the Queen Emma Bridge is a large, floating pontoon plaything.

The bridge is really a big toy in civic disguise. Local kids are in succession the pontoons, smiling and fishing from privileged positions. The bridge swings expand so massive cruise ships and small tugboats can insert the harbor. A crowded ferryboat whisks Curacao's schoolchildren, German tourists, hardworking citizenry and a scarcely any lucky airmen to the other side, for a nominal fee

one time ashore, airmen buy fish and plantains at the floating market. Then they take them to "the" chef at their sleeping mingle That's where Italian native Augusto Checcoti colors Caribbean fish and chip meals with a European "kick" for airmen.

While he prepares a exquisite consomme, packs of card-playing GIs watch sports piped in from a sometimes-finicky satellite TV setup

"At work, I do anything to make life for the stays from America better," the chef says.

certain there are airmen doing "island time" at more recognizable locations: many in Hawaii, recon in Greece airlift folk in Australia, recruiters in Manhattan. Curacao is in succession their level.

The island was originally a nave of slave trade. Ick, you might say. if it were not that the people who remained have remov those vestiges. In fact, the world's solitary remaining slave ship is part of a jaw-dropping museum of natural history in Curacao. The oldest active synagogue in the hemisphere calls Curacao family circle too.

The persons are friendly

The family of Curacao are low-key. That's part of what attracts visitors seeking a sunshiny place where people can just learn along. When Dutch Shell set uped the world's largest oil refinery there in 1915 the islanders said "Bon Bini" [that's "howdy" in the native Papiamento Creole language], while they encouraged commonalty from more than 50 countries to work, and stay.

Those citizens have also been advantageous friends of the United States. The history of U airpower in Latin America has been dominated by means of various monitoring and detection missions, from German sub hunting in the 1940 to remedy traffic monitoring today.

Ye Uncle Sam had a World War Ii field in Curacao, and a little record marking U.S. deeds is a convenient place to visit and consider on Memorial Day.

"Everybody who works maintenance in succession a flight line and has an opportunity to travel TDY always thinks about a great place to fare and it never happens. This is a once-in-a-career chance to walk to a real Caribbean island, do your work at jobs right and have some frolic at the same time," said Staff Sgt Dave Liffick, a jet engine mechanic.

A flight-deck view of Curacao's historic architecture reveals a hardly any shelters of clearly rural African design. They apply the mind a bit like the little white plaster and peat bogged-roof cottages common finds on the Irish isles, unless nobody lives in them today. They're part of the mysterious heritage of Curacao.

Like in the greatest degree of the road signs, the main architectural features of Curacao are Dutch to the hilt. The "Old Europe" buildings of governor Peter Stuyvesant's mid-1600s reign were originally white as the houses of Greece unless they glared like fun house mirrors in the Caribbean sun

in like manner the city fathers of Curacao ordered them painted in relaxing pastels and arresting primary colors years ago. A slew of 17th hundred buildings were recently declared a world historic site.

The sea waterway that divides the city's downtown is placid like the ritzy Cannery affray bayfront in Monterey, Calif. Airmen can afford an evening of waterside dining in a French restaurant. There, they can people-watch and gaze at the pastel scenery

Something for everyone

still some folks don't want to eat shrimp with tourists and well-heeled locals. For them, Curacao gives alternatives. How about a Denny's with a pricey "Curacao Creole" menu? Or maybe street-legal drag racing, Amstel Brewery tours and cheap tickets to live boxing matches at the local "boxeo?" What about a mellifluous month-long carnival? It's "Eon," as Curacaons say.