Willemstad · CW

Marie Pampoen Beach

Marie Pampoen Beach (also written Marie Pompoen) is a small, free public beach tucked into a residential corner of Willemstad, Curaçao, just east of the city centre and beside the Sea Aquarium and Mambo Beach resort strip. It is the island in miniature: calm, shallow water where the seabed drops away gently, a scatter of sand and pebbles under palm trees, a curving little pier, and a flotilla of weathered fishing boats riding at anchor in its miniature bay. There are no beach-club daybeds or DJ decks here—what you get instead is an informal, local seaside with real character. Its true fame, though, is underwater. The shore here protects one of Curaçao's most celebrated shore dives and snorkels: a healthy fringing reef that gives way to an artificial reef of scuttled cars, cranes and scrap, dotted with coral-restoration outplants. For a beach you can wander onto straight from a parking lot, Marie Pampoen offers an unusually rich day—swim, snorkel or dive in the morning, picnic under a palapa, and watch the fishing boats come and go all afternoon.