Sint Willibrordus is a village in
Bandabou
Bandabou (also: Band'abou) is a district of the island of Curaçao. It is one of the three districts, and encompasses the north-western part of the island. The district stretches from Grote Berg to Westpunt. Bandabou is Papiamentu and translate ...
on the western half of
Curaçao
Curaçao ( ; ; pap, Kòrsou, ), officially the Country of Curaçao ( nl, Land Curaçao; pap, Pais Kòrsou), is a Lesser Antilles island country in the southern Caribbean Sea and the Dutch Caribbean region, about north of the Venezuela coast ...
, northwest of the Bullen Bay and about 25 km from the capital
Willemstad
Willemstad ( , ; ; en, William I of the Netherlands, William Town, italic=yes) is the capital city of Curaçao, an island in the southern Caribbean Sea that forms a Countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, constituent country of the Kingdo ...
. The village has been called this since the dedication of the church in 1888; until then, the town of Buitenbosch or as called in the Papiaments 'Mondi Afó' was called. The village of several hundred inhabitants has an imposing Roman Catholic church in neo-Gothic style, designed by the Rotterdam architect Evert Margry, for which the first stone was laid by Vincentius Jansen and was built from 1884 to 1888. Earlier in the nineteenth century, a school and an orphanage had been built by mission patrons.
A few kilometres from Saint Willibrordus are two of Curaçao's many picturesque bays:
Porto Marie Bay
Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropol ...
and
Daaibooi
Daaibooi is a beach on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, located close to the village of Sint Willibrordus, a 30 minutes drive to the north-west of Willemstad. The beach is in a secluded bay, surrounded by cliffs. The loggerhead sea turtle
Th ...
Bay.
Near the village are some of the
salt pans are no longer in use, including those of the salt pan Rif St. Marie, one of the oldest plantations on the island. Now only a few dilapidated walls can be seen.
Flamingos
Flamingos or flamingoes are a type of wading bird in the family Phoenicopteridae, which is the only extant family in the order Phoenicopteriformes. There are four flamingo species distributed throughout the Americas (including the Caribbean) ...
regularly stay in the salt pans. Near the village is also the rock formation known as El Indjan (The Indian).
There used to be a connection between the village and the Bullen Bay via the Saliña Sint Marie and the Boka Sint Marie.
References
Bibliography
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Bandabou
Populated places in Curaçao
{{Curacao-geo-stub