Weg'i Domino & Wara Wara -- Quirks of #Curaçao (#AtoZChallenge 2015)

The sharp crack of tiles against wood -- domino tiles, that is -- is a trademark sound of Curaçao streets. At every bus stop and taxi depot, at every snék (when the bachata music isn't too loud--and sometimes even then). Crack! Crack! Crack-CRACK-crack! They follow one another at impossible speed, as if the game is about who slaps them down faster.

And, in a way, I suppose it is.

One of these taxi drivers at the Otrobanda depot gave me
a curt nod as I held up my camera in a non-verbal question.
I snapped away for a good three minutes, but none of them ever looked
my way again.
Like those chess tables in parks, where it's a matter of pride how fast you make your moves, in Curaçao the weg'i dominoe is not just about the right plays but about the speed at which you make them.



The full phrase is

wega di domino [WHE-gah dee DO-mee-noh] Literally: game of dominoe
but no one says that. It's always

weg'i domino [WHE-guee DO-mee-noh] ("game o' dominoe", I suppose comes closest)




Here's something really quirky about Curaçao (too quirky to use as a bonus question):

The  Wara Wara  [war-ah-WAR-ah], aka Cara-Cara elsewhere, is Curaçao's most ubiquitous (I'd say only, but what do I know) bird of prey. Out in the mondi (the wild) -- which is pretty close to civilization, really -- you can see them soaring up in the big blue, specks of brown flying high, high... Talk about a bird's eye view of the island.

And when you rent a car in Curaçao, it comes equipped with a Wara Wara. 

Yo, Wara Wara! I'm lost, swa. Any chance you know how to get to Montanja Abou?
(Image source)No, Hertz doesn't have a roomful of cages with these birds in them, and they don't have one tetherered to each car's antenna. It's the GPS navigator. In Curaçao it's called  Wara Wara . (God, I love this island.)