There are many enchanted places on the small island of Curaçao but none as magical as Playa Piskado. The small beach is not Curaçao’s prettiest stretch of white sand and turquoise waters. It might even look ordinary at first glance but it’s far from that. It’s the only beach on the island where you are guaranteed to see and swim with sea turtles. Yes, they do roam in the waters all over Curaçao but they definitely hang around Playa Piskado, a small fishing beach where fishermen feed them scraps of fish and octopus.

{ Volume up for this video below! }

My advice is to arrive to Playa Piskado prepared with snorkelling gear and flippers (optional). You can rent snorkelling gear all over Curaçao but if you wear prescription glasses like I do, you’ll have to get a mask with adjusted lenses, which you can’t really rent. You can purchase these from specialized dive shops. If you are planning on only going in and out of the water for a short swim, don’t rent a beach chair. I suggest you do, however, not because you’ll want to spend too long on this ordinary beach but because you may want to go for more than one swim with the turtles. You may also want to stay long enough for the tourist groups to thin out so you can enjoy the turtles calmly. However, if they don’t thin out, you can still have your moment with the turtles without being crowded by groups of swimmers. I suggest you swim a little further than where everyone congregates and look for straggler turtles. There are always one or two a bit away from the group which you can join for a swim. Please don’t attempt to touch them as they swim by you. Don’t crowd them either, give them space to move and come up for air when they need to.

I have never come as close to reaching a transcendental state of meditation as when I was swimming with these turtles. Following them around while they effortlessly glide through the crystalline waters, watching their flippers move elegantly like wings and listening to my own breath through my snorkeling tube relaxed me more than any meditation I’ve ever done. And I just couldn’t get over how cute they are when they stick their little heads out of the water to breathe! I enjoyed these encounters so much that I returned the next day for more turtle therapy.

If you do go to Curaçao–and I highly recommend that you do–add swimming with turtles on your list, you won’t regret it.

Click here for more articles on Curaçao and check out my Polynesian trip and swimming with sharks and stingrays!