It's almost time... summer vacation is coming. Have you made your vacation plans yet? Are you going abroad with your family? To the Netherlands to visit grandpa, grandma, family and friends? Or maybe somewhere else, like America, Colombia, Costa Rica or another island nearby? After a long period of restrictions due to corona, it is finally possible to get on a plane again. We have been to Bonaire a few times ourselves, but that felt more like a bus ride than a long flight. Now the time has finally come and we will soon be going on vacation to the Netherlands with the family. Since the summer vacation is just around the corner, we thought it would be a good time to write a blog with tips on what to take into account when you leave from Curaçao and go on vacation abroad.
Don't worry, I'm not going to give you a list of tips for flying with young children, because there is enough to find on the internet. Instead, I would like to discuss what you can take into account when you leave Curacao for a foreign country with (young) children.
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The necessary documents
Let’s first discuss the business aspects. In addition to your plane tickets, you will need other documents to travel abroad. If you are travelling outside the standard school holidays, you will need an official letter from the school. Although the specific rules may differ per school, this letter must be requested in the official manner from the school board or the principal. Previously, you needed both a letter from the school and from the ministry, but these have now been combined into one letter from the school, which is sufficient.In addition, there has been a lot of uncertainty about traveling with children recently. There will be some changes from July 1, 2023. I have already read several messages on Facebook, where the information often contradicts each other. Since we are leaving soon, we went to Kranshi this morning to make sure that we can fly with our children. What I can say with certainty now is that if both parents are traveling with the children, no additional consent form is required. If one of the parents is traveling with a child, an additional consent form is required. A letter of consent from one parent is no longer sufficient. On June 23, 2023, an article was published on cw.nu which shows that there will be some relaxation between July 1 and August 1, 2023, and from August 1, the official new policy will come into effect. We recommend that you contact the official authorities such as Kranshi and/or immigration to be well informed about your specific situation and to avoid unpleasant situations. If you are travelling with your children, it is always useful to have your marriage certificate with you, as this has been requested regularly in the past.
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Seat reservations
Most airlines allow you to reserve seats 30 days in advance. Unfortunately, we made a mistake once. We thought we could reserve seats a week in advance, but that was a mistake. Suddenly, we were no longer sitting next to each other. At that time, we were only traveling with one child, so we hoped that we could sit next to each other and have the child on our lap. However, that turned out not to be possible. In the end, we were sitting diagonally behind each other with an aisle in between. The child went back and forth between us. It was not ideal, but we managed. However, we would like to warn you: do not forget to reserve seats in time. Forewarned is forearmed!
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Flying
At the beginning of this blog we already indicated that we would not give an extensive list of tips for flying with young children. A quick search on the internet will yield countless fantastic lists. What we do want to share here is our own experience that we think many parents are not aware of. When we flew to Colombia with our little one, who was 9 months old at the time, we had a stopover in Bogota before flying to Medellin. It turned out that there were special lines for parents with (young) children. Initially we neatly joined the 'normal' lines, but other people pointed out to us that we could go to that special line. That saved us a lot of time. Instead of a line where you stand in a line that feels like you are waiting for a roller coaster, there were suddenly only 3 families in front of us. This gave us a lot of extra time and peace. We were able to have a drink and a snack at our leisure before we continued our flight. I am not sure if this works like this at other airports around the world. Please let us know in the comments if you know if this is the case in other countries (so we can help each other), but in Colombia it was definitely the case.
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Clothing
When you depart from sunny Curacao, it is important to realize that as soon as you enter Hato airport, you will immediately find yourself in a cool environment. Both at airports and on the plane itself, the air conditioning is often set well. It is therefore important to dress yourself and the children well. Wearing layers works best. Also always make sure you have extra clothing with you. A glass of drink, yogurt or something similar can quickly be spilled, leaving you with a sticky child for the rest of the flight. So always take an extra set of clothes with you (from underwear to sweater), and a bag to put the dirty clothes in.
In addition, it is important to take into account the weather at your final destination. Although it is always warm in Curacao, this does not apply to all destinations. In countries such as Colombia or America, it can be pleasant to walk around in shorts and a t-shirt during the day, but it can cool down considerably in the evening. It is therefore wise to also bring some warmer clothing. Finally, it is useful to plan well in advance and think about what you need. This year, for example, we are going on holiday to the Netherlands again, so we will certainly do some extra shopping for ourselves and the children. So it is not necessary to bring too many clothes.
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Maxi Cosi, buggy, handcart and baby carrier.
Depending on the age of your children, it is important to think about the transport on site. What items do you take with you, such as a maxi-cosi, buggy, handcart or baby carrier? There are various options available. If they are still very small (younger than 6 months), it is useful to take a maxi-cosi and matching stroller. As they get older, we found a buggy indispensable. The distances you travel can sometimes be greater than you initially think (and what they are used to on Curaçao). Think of walking in a park, visiting a zoo or just shopping. It is then nice to let the little ones rest for a while in a buggy. When our little one was younger than a year, we also used a baby carrier a lot. On Curaçao we personally found this too warm, so we did not use it often. But abroad we used it almost every day. It gave us so much freedom. You can of course also combine this with a stroller or maxi-cosi. Once they started walking, we used the baby carrier less often.
When they were both still small, we bought a stroller during the holidays. Just an affordable option (HEMA for 50 euros), and it was a great solution. The children (1 and 3 years old) could sit in it and we could dump all our stuff in it. We walked through the zoo and through cities, etc. with the stroller. Because they could both sit in it (even lie down), we thought it was perfect. Now that the children are a bit older (3 and 5 years old), we will only take a good travel buggy. For the youngest, the distances are sometimes still too great and then it is nice to sit (and rest) in the buggy for a while. Even the oldest can still sit in it and secretly he likes it too. This year we will take the Miley2 from Easywalker as a travel buggy. It is light, compact and can even be checked in as hand luggage. Travel bag is included, so just put it in the bins above your head. This way you have it immediately at hand when you get off the plane and you can be sure that your buggy will stay tidy.
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Make arrangements with family/friends
For people who have not lived in Curacao for very long, it might be useful to read this. People who have lived here longer know exactly what we are talking about. On holiday to the Netherlands... honestly, we sometimes find it quite difficult. On the one hand, it is great to see family and friends, but on the other hand, we really want to have a holiday and not have a tight schedule from one appointment to the next. In recent years, we have already experienced everything. Almost overcrowded agendas in advance, where we even made schedules to determine when we would meet with whom, to the decision to see as few people as possible and just enjoy. Since we have children, we also notice that we do not want to make it too busy, both for ourselves and for the children. We do not want to constantly rush from one place to another and perhaps even sleep somewhere else every night for the children. This causes a lot of unrest and in the end it does not really feel like a holiday. Of course, this is different for everyone, but it is good to think about this in advance. You can choose to stay in a central location, so that you have a fixed base and can make trips from there. Another option is to invite all the family and friends you want to see for one day, and make your own plans around that. Or you can even plan a holiday within your holiday. If you are going on a longer holiday, you can choose to stay somewhere in Europe for a week where you don't meet anyone you know. As said, everyone has to fill their holiday in their own way. But we have noticed that we really want to enjoy our holiday and have therefore made certain choices.
Well, that's it for now. We're going to start preparing for our vacation. We've already bought the "snack boxes" (sorting boxes for tools) at Home Plus. We're also going to buy headphones for our youngest (the oldest already had one). We've double-checked our papers and still have to find someone to look after our dogs, cat and fish during our vacation. The countdown has begun!
We wish everyone a very happy holiday!
