Remember way back in March, when Curacao's tourism board announced that it would be giving away 70 island trips and a lump sum of $500,000 to ten lucky finalists? Yeah, we had to search the archives for news about this but we learned today that the contest has been successfully launched and that the island of Curacao has their ten lucky finalists in hand.

Ten lucky North Americans will be put to the test when they compete in a real treasure hunt on the island of Curaçao in hopes of winning half a million dollars. The Curaçao Treasure Hunt will take place from August 23-25, 2009.

The contest garnered nearly 500,000 entries and 70 other lucky people won a free vacation to the island. But we're still not so sure what this treasure hunt will involve. All we know is that they've hidden $500,000 somewhere on the island and these 10 people have to go find it. Um...may we suggest you bring a shovel?

Remember there's still time to enter the Jaunted-Competitours Travel Contest where you can win a free trip to Europe and a chance to compete against Amazing Race alum, Tyler MacNiven.

Related Stories:
· Half a Million Dollars Is Yours to Find in Curacao [Curacao Treasure]
· Caribbean Travel Coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: cmgramse]]]> juliana 2009-06-23T18:28:32-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/3/19/13710/6606

Sometimes, you just need to stare at a picture of a perfect tropical beach, breath, and relax a bit. If the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao has anything to say about it, however, you'll be doing fare more than simply looking at a picture of a beach, you'll be stretching out on one and singing the praises of their little blue water gem.

In order to convince Americans that vacations on Curacao are as good as or way better than in the usual spots like Cancun or St. Barth's, their tourism board is giving away 70 trips and a lump sum of $500,000 as a kind of tropical bailout package. Register to win on their website CuracaoTreasure, and of the trips, 60 vacations will be your run-of-the-mill (but awesome) free island packages. The last lucky 10 trippers will however be marked to "participate in an on-island Treasure Hunt in August 2009 with a grand prize of a half million dollars!" ]]> JetSetCD 2009-03-19T13:53:53-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2006/4/14/83725/8571

Travel Writer Alex Robertson Textor was in Bonaire and Curacao at the end of March. He'll be filing five dispatches for Jaunted this week about the relatively unknown (unless you're Andruw Jones) Caribbean islands. The fifth and final post, Last Dispatch from a Disintegrating Nation, starts below and continues here. Alex, when not traveling and writing, is a Senior Editor over at EuroCheapo.com. Take it away, Alex:

A dramatic title of my last entry on Bonaire and Curaçao, the southern two islands in the soon-to-disintegrate Netherlands Antilles fivesome, exaggerates the situation a touch. In fact, the Netherlands Antilles is both relatively well off and stable--in global terms--so "disintegration" shouldn't imply collapse or disaster. Nonetheless, the Netherlands Antilles, a nation within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, will soon fall apart.

Story continues here... ]]> AVB 2006-04-14T10:45:02-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2006/4/13/91334/9561

Travel Writer Alex Robertson Textor was in Bonaire and Curacao at the end of March. He'll be filing five dispatches for Jaunted this week about the relatively unknown (unless you're Andruw Jones) Caribbean islands. The fourth, In Search of Antillean Grub, starts below and continues here. Alex, when not traveling and writing, is a Senior Editor over at EuroCheapo.com. Take it away, Alex:

After a number of failed attempts to eat local food on Bonaire (the highly touted Gibi's Terrace has closed, and the location a local gave us for the house where Gibi lives and continues to cook up culinary masterpieces for takeout yielded no evidence of Gibi) we were hungering for a break from the formulaic Eurofusion of the tourist restaurants on Bonaire.

Story continues here... ]]> AVB 2006-04-13T11:00:02-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2006/4/11/83313/9974

Travel Writer Alex Robertson Textor was in Bonaire and Curacao at the end of March. He'll be filing five dispatches for Jaunted this week about the relatively unknown (unless you're Andruw Jones) Caribbean islands. The second, Learn with Luxury, starts below and continues here. Alex, when not traveling and writing, is a Senior Editor over at EuroCheapo.com. Take it away, Alex:

The Kurá Hulanda Hotel and Museum, located in Willemstad's Otrobanda neighborhood just up the hill from St. Anna Bay, is an unusual resort. In addition to the standard boutique hotel, retail, and restaurant tangle, it includes a museum. The Kurá Hulanda complex, historically-driven and aesthetically-coherent, is a possible model for future luxury resorts. The resort manages to remain rooted in the histories of its location, rather than the site-independent extreme luxury more typical of super-luxe resorts.

Story continues here...]]> AVB 2006-04-11T11:00:02-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/