In July 2007, Melissa and I took a week long trip to the tropical island of Aruba. We stayed 7 nights, six days, and had a fantastic time! We took over 500 pictures on our digital camera, most of which will hopefully be available at some point. What follows is a detailed account of our trip, for posterity.
There are probably way more details than necessary, especially about some of the less interesting parts of our trip, but this is more for us than for other people. We want to make sure we remember everything, because it was (so far) the best trip we've ever taken.
Contents |
Travelogue
Saturday
We arrived at Logan Airport in Boston around 9AM, had minimal trouble getting through security and everything, and sat around in the terminal for like an hour and half waiting to board around 12:30PM. It was our first time flying anywhere, so we were a little nervous. Once we were on the plane, we were pretty much fine. The take off was just a little nerve twinging, but once we were in the air, it basically just didn't even seem real. In not too long, we were just way to uncomfortable in those damn coach seats to even think about how high we were. From here on out, it's first class all the way.
We had a brief layover in Miami, then onward to Aruba, where we landed sometime around 8PM. We got through customs and immigration without issue, even though my passport had not actually arrived yet! We waited like 20 minutes for our luggage to finally come out, but it did, so we were glad. We took a taxi out to the hotel. The taxi was about the nicest car I've ever seen, complete with in-console television. However, the drive was insane! We thought it was pretty ironic that we made it all the way to Aruba on two planes, only to die in a taxi on the way to the hotel. But we didn't, despite going about 70 MPH around two different rotaries.
We got to the hotel, The Mill resort and suites, checked in, and headed to the room. We were both feeling a little unsure about the whole thing, primarily because we spent all day traveling and were also starving. It was also long after sunset and the island was dark, so we couldn't even see all the beautiful tropical paradise around us. So we headed to the hotel's restaurant for a late dinner (it was about 9:30PM at this point). The food was alright, but nothing to write home about. We soaked for a little bit in the hot tub when we got back, but were still feeling pretty out of it, so we just turned in early to recover from the day.
Sunday
We woke up the next morning, and went back to the restaurant for breakfast. Once again, it was nothing special, pretty standard buffet with diner-style food: eggs, omelets, pancakes, fruit, etc.
After breakfast, we decided the first order of buisness was to find the beach, which was allegedly right across the road from the hotel. So we crossed the road and started looking for the beach. We found the ocean pretty easily, but nothing that really looked much like a beach, so we kept walking for a ways through the Aruba desert. Oh yeh, that's right. Aruba's a desert.
After a while, we found a beach, but it was very small, and there were only three other people there. We figured this wasn't the right place, but thought we could at least take a dip before continuing on. So we waded slowly into the water. It wasn't exactly the crystal clear tropical waters you hear about: the sand was all kicked up and suspended in the water, so it was very cloudy. Given my health respect/fear of the ocean and things that live in it, this was making me a little nervous about the rest of the trip. We were up to about our knees—and walking on rocks—when something touched Melissa's foot, and we hurriedly removed ourselves from the water.
Discouraged, we went back to the hotel, and decided to spend some time by the pool, and find the beach later. So we swam in the very lovely pool for a bit, had some nice tropical drinks (a rum and coke for me, a strawberry daqueri for Melissa, which, as it turns out, we think was non-alcoholic), and enjoyed the tropical sun.
After the pool, we decided to give up on the beach for the day and try to figure out how to get downtown. The thing about Aruba is there's three primary tourist areas: the capitol city of Oranjestad, and the hotel area which is actually two areas, the low rises and high rises. So we wanted to get down to O-stad so see what was there, and because we were freaking out a little about not having any food in our room.
We asked at the front desk how to take public bus (because that's really just our style, forget taxis, especially after the death trip the night before). They told us to just go across the street and we could take the "Arubus" down. So we did that and took some pictures of ourselves on the bus, and not too long later we arrived in downtown Oranjestad. Here's the funny thing about Aruba in the off-season (the in-season is actually in the winter when it actually makes more sense to take a tropical vacation): Aruba isn't open on Sundays. Everything downtown was closed! We walked around for ten or fifteen minutes, then decided to head back. Oh well, at least we learned how to take the bus for when downtown is open. Plus, we had seen a super market on the way down, so decided to stop on the way back.
So we did stop on the way back, at the super market. Conveniently enough, that was also closed on Sundays! But, right around that same area, there was a flee-market going on that was only open on weekends, so we went there and got some fun little souvenirs and things, and generally felt a bit better about the whole day.
When we got back to the hotel, we were pretty hungry, and decided to go to The Sunset Bistro, which we had seen on our walk earlier, and had read about in a travel guide we got on the plane. It was about 5:30PM at this point, which, according to the magazine, was when they opened. It turns out the magazine was only accurate in the in-season, so we had to wait outside till 6PM. But it was so worth it! We were the second couple there, and got seated right on the beach! I mean right on the beach. A table for two, along with three or four others, set up not ten feet from the water's edge...at sunset! The night was incredible and totally vindicated the somewhat wasted and frustrating day.
Our waiter was very friendly and helpful, and the food was excellent. I got the mixed grill: four different pieces of meat (italian sausage, grilled chicken, grilled pork chop, and an incredible piece of steak) along with a twice baked (stuffed) potato, and some vegetables, of course. Melissa got some shrimps served in a conch shell for an appetizer, then more shrimps for the main course. It was the first of many many shrimps she ate that week. For dessert, I had cremem brulee, which I had never had before, but it was really good. Melissa had some sort of apple-pie like pastry, which she said was also pretty good.
One the way home, we stopped at this little grocery/tourist store right next to the restaurant, and got some pop-tarts and juice for morning, and an underwater disposable camera for later in the week. Then we just headed back to the hotel, watched a little television, then off to bed.
Monday
On Monday, we woke up pretty early and had out little breakfast of pop-tarts and orange juice on the patio of our hotel room. Other than those, our room was still devoid of food, and Melissa was getting a little panicky, so we decided the first order of buisness was to head back to that super market we had found (closed) the day before.
The Aruban super market was...smelly. There was a pretty strong stench of rotting meat in the air which made it difficult to concentrate on getting food, but we managed to pull it together and get some supplies. We ended up getting a load of bread, peanut butter, and jelly for sandwhichs, more juice and poptarts for breakfast, some chips, napkins ("Nokky-Naps"), fruit, and—despite the smell—some deli ham (which we ended up throwing away later in the week).
When we got back from the grocery store, we were determined to find the beach. So we got into our bathing suits, slathered on the sunscreen, and headed back to the front desk to find out where the hell it was.
As it turns out, we had walked right past it the day before when we were looking for it, and then again when we went to dinner. We just had to turn down this little dirt road to get there. So we headed off triumphantly to the beach.
On the beach there's these little palm-leaf umbrellas set up all over for shade. We weren't really sure where to go on the beach, and it was pretty crowded by the time we got there anyway, so we just sat down beneath the first one, which was fine. So we spent that afternoon on the beach swimming in the beautiful tropical water. They had an actual roped off swimming area in the beach, which was actually pretty large. In the middle of the swimming area was this rather large dock cemented into the ocean floor. It was maybe about 50 yards out into the water, which was probably about 12 feet deep at that point. We decided to be brave and swim out to it, which we did. There were lots of little yellow, white, and black striped fish swimming around beneath it, which Melissa really liked. So we climbed up onto the dock, which was about 5 feet out of the water, and took a couple of turns jumping off it into the water, which was fun, and the water was so clear you could see all the way down anyway, so it wasn't really scary.
For dinner that night, we walked up the main road there that all the hotels were on to this restaurant we read about in the travel magazine, Iguana Joe's. When we got there, a big colorful wooden iguana greeted us, and we were seated amongst some very colorful picnic tables, each with it's own entire roll of paper towels. The food ended up being really good, but really potent. Melissa got more shrimps, of course, twelve all together that night. I got a barbecue plate with two racks of ribs, and half a barbequed chicken, plus a pile of french fries. The ribs were there classic recipe, which were proclaimed as "the best ribs in the Caribbean". It never said where this title came from, but I'm not inclined to disagree, they were great! The chicken was grilled with Jamaican jerk sauce, and that was also really good.
They serve all their drinks in 16 ounce mason jars, which sounded too good to pass up. Melissa got a mojito, I got what they called "moonshine", which was basically just 5 or dix different kinds of rum mixed together. I think most (if not all) of it was their own home brew that they make, included an ounce of their own 151 proof. All together, it was a damned fine drink but boy was that a lot of rum.
After we had thoroughly stuffed ourselves, we headed (slowly) back to the hotel for the night. I had (per usual) wickedly overdone the eating and spent the rest of the night with those two racks of ribs, half a chicken, and 16 oz of moonshine doing acrobats in my stomach. I don't regret it for a second, but I did spend the rest of the night lying like a dead bloated fish on the bed while Melissa watched something that can only be described as "Mexican-Idol flashback to the 80's". It this bizarre singing competition, but they competed in groups (or teams, or pairs, they seemed to keep changing, we couldn't keep up), and they all wore jump suits. Plus all the music (and clothes) was very 80's. It was all in spanish, though, so we had very little idea what was going on.
Tuesday
Tuesday was our big adventure at sea. We had booked some spots on the "Mi Dushi Snorkeling and Sailing adventure", and headed over early to the beach to catch the ship. I guess I overestimated how long it would take us to get there, because we were getting to "Palm Pier" to just as the lady was opening up her booth. But she gave us our boarding passes, and we waited on the beach till the water taxi was ready to take us out to the ship.
The ship was a really cool sailing ship, like an old-time wooden one, not one of those silly yachts. It was called the "Mi Dushi", which is papiamento (the Aruban language) for "My Sweet". Our crew was a blast, a couple of them had "swam over" from Venezuela, and the captain was from Columbia. They were all very nice and very helpful, and very funny. There was an open bar and they started us offnice and early with bloody mary's and mimosa's.
So we set sail and sailed a bit around the island as the crew explained about the snorkeling, and equipment and stuff. Melissa and I had never been snorkeling before, or sailing for that matter, and were nervous, but excited. Our first stop was in shallow water, within easy swimming distance of a little beach. So we put on our snorkles, and flippers, and masks, and life vests, and climbed down into the water. Once we were in the water, we pretty much forgot about our anxiety, and had a great time kicking around and looking at the sea life. Aruba isn't exactly one of the best places in the world to snorkel, but it's certainly not the worst. We got some decent pictures with the underwater camera of lots of little fish (and a couple of big ones), plus the various "plants" and other things that live on the bottom. After a half hour (though it didn't feel like that long), the captain blew three blasts on his conch shell, which was our signal to head back to the ship for the next leg of the journey (3 blasts meant "come back", 6 blasts meant "swim like hell" because they were already sailing away).
They told us the next stop was in deeper water. We were going to be snorkeling at the largest ship wreck in the Caribbean. The ship was pretty close to the surface (the water wasn't real deep), and they warned us not to get to close to it because it was covered with fire coral. They warned us not to touch the fire coral because "if you touch it once, you're burned. If you touch it twice, you're stupid".
So we, more reluctantly, got back into the water, and kicked around a bit, and swam around the ship wreck. It was a lot scarier here than the first stop, though. For one thing, the water was deep enough that we couldn't see the bottom. That's not a good feeling to know that something could be swimming towards you our of the depths, and you can't see it. The shipwreck just added to the creepiness of the whole thing. To make matters worse, there was a pretty significant current in the water which kept pulling us (towards shore, at least). This was particularly annoying near the ship wreck, because we'd be floating a good distance away from the ship with our heads above water, than we go back under and all of a sudden we're right on top of it! So all together, we didn't stay in the water too long that time, but we didn see the ship wreck, and got some pictures with the underwater.
The last stop was shallow water again right near another little beach, and we stayed in for a while this time. It was pretty much the same as the first stop, but we were happy to be back in shallow water. Back on the ship, we stayed anchored there while the crew prepared our lunch. While we were waiting, they had set up a rope swing for us off the side of the boat, so everyone took turns doing that. Melissa and I lined up with everyone else and took a few turns, too. The captain also brought out his little pet love bird, Pi-casso (that's how he pronounced it, emphasis on the "Pi"). He looked like a miniature parrot and was very adorable. He had apparently gone for a swim because he was all wet (we're not sure if it was in the ocean, or what).
Then came lunch, which was catered by one of the restaurants on the island. We had two different meat dishes, chicken and beef I think, each in some sort of gravy, plus corn on the cob and rice. I'm not sure what kind of food it was, whether it was Dutch, or Aruban, or what, but I enjoyed it. Melissa ate some it, but wasn't crazy about the gravies.
We had just finished up lunch and the crew was cleaning up when we noticed a big dust cloud blowing across the road on the shore. So we all watched as this dust cloud grew on shore and thought "wow, glad we're not on land right now". We all very causally took pictures as the sky began to darken, and the air took on this red tint. All of sudden, the wind and dust were no longer just on the shore! The seas starting getting real choppy under the ship, and the winds picked up something fierce. The spray from the wind and waves were pretty cold and we huddled up a little under our towels as the crew set sail back for the pier.
As we traveled, the winds were getting stronger, and the seas rougher. The boat was rocking back and forth, and a couple of the passengers were getting a little scared, but most of us were still pretty fine, just a little cold. This one older woman was note doing too well though, and was pretty scared. Her husband, though, was an ex-marine, and was having a grand old time.
So we sailed on through the storm, until of a sudden, one of the crew members went running down the deck of the boat yelling to the captain "Pirate! Pirate!" We had no idea what was going on! Melissa thought maybe this was part of the "adventure", some kind of a staged pirate attack like they used to do with bank robbers in the old Wild West amusement parks. But we couldn't figure out how they made the weather cooperate for the mock-drama.
But then we saw what he was talking about. Another tour ship, "The Jolly Pirate", which we had just seen an hour earlier full of people, had capsized in the water! All of it's passengers and crew were sitting on top of the overturned boat, floating just a few feet out of the stormy waters! The crew immediately started racing around to get our own sails down so we didn't capsize as well. Some of the other passengers, including the ex-marine and another guy who was also in the marines, were helping get the sails down, because one of them had snagged while it was still part way up. It took five or six full grown men hanging on the rope before it finally came down. While they were doing that, some of the other crew members started passing the life jackets back out, and that's when people really started to get scared. Melissa of course was more afraid of loosing our stuff than anything else. We had our brand new digital camera with us, and didn't want to loose it or have it ruined if we went in.
Meanwhile, the captain headed our ship over to where The Pirate had capsized to see if anyone needed to be picked up. There were several other small boats and jet skis already there picking people up, and we didn't end up getting anyone, but we got some closer views of the capsized boat. At one point we saw this big wooden trunk floating past us in the water, just like in the movies!
Then, all of a sudden, the winds died down, and the clouds broke to let the sun shine through. The seas settled down to gently chops, and our faithful bartender announced "The bar is open!", to which we all cheered heartily. She went right over to the wife of the ex-marine, the one who had been the most upset during the storm, and told her "I've got a special drink for you".
And that was pretty much the end of the excitement, not that we were disappointed. Our wonderful crew managed to keep us afloat and more or less upright during the storm, and we left them a nice big tip on the way out. And the storm was over just like that. By the time we anchored back by the pier, the sun was shining, and people were back out on the beach.
During the storm, the crew remained very calm about everything, and did well making people feel safe. When we were on the water taxi to take us from the ship to the pier, though, the captain of the taxi wasn't quite as tactful. He said he'd been on the island ten years and had never seen such a big storm come up that quickly. He also said that if anyone on The Pirate had been below deck when they flipped, they probably wouldn't have been able to escape. That's when Melissa started getting a little afraid again. During the storm, kind of like the plane ride, it had seemed very surreal. Now that we were back at shore and the storm was over, she had time to think actually realize what had happened. But we found out later that everyone had survived. We're not sure what happened to the ship though. Is there a way to un-capsize a sailing ship that big?
Once we were back on the beach, we decided we had had enough ocean for one day, and spent another hour or so back at the hotel by the pool
For dinner that night, we headed back up the strip towards Iguana Joe's, but we didn't actually eat at Iguana Joe's, but across the street from it at Le Petit Cafe. That food there was fine, but the dining experience was a little wierd. We got there pretty early and were the first ones there fore the dinner crowd. They seated us on the porch, and gave us some really good bread, but then the waitress, without any explanation and before we had even ordered, brought bibs over for us to wear. She actually put them around our necks for us! We had no idea what was going on, and never really found out what the deal was with the bibs. But then we ordered, I got the Chicken Parmesan, and Melissa got more shrimps, but this was one of those "stone grill" places where you cook your own food. So when they brough the shrimp to her, they were only partly cooked, and they gave her this rock slab that had was sizzling hot. The waitress asked if she had ever done this before, but when Melissa said no, she only gave her the briefest explanation of what to do.
Fortunately, another waiter came over who was quite a bit friendlier, and more helpful, and he showed her exactly how to do it. So she enjoyed the shrimp, and my chicken was quite good, though the bed of pasta it was on wasn't very good. It was very starchy pasta and I ended up leaving most of it. But the chicken really was good.
We ended up being done with our dinner pretty early, but decided not to get dessert; there was a Ben&Jerry's ice cream shop right outside the hotel, we decided we would get some ice cream there later. As soon as we told the waitress we weren't going to have dessert, the entire wait staff seemed to be angry with us. But anyway, the brought us the bill, we took off our bibs, and left, only about an hour after we arrived. All in all, it was a somewhat unpleasant dining experience, but the food was pretty good. Not the best we had that week, but it was good.
Walking back to the hotel we passed all the other high-rise hotels, and most of them had casinos. We decided, considering our "survival at sea" earlier that day, that maybe lady luck was smiling on us. So we decided to take a shot. We had twenty dollars that we agreed we could bear to part with if it came down to that, which we figured it probably would. So we headed up to the casino as "The Occidental" hotel and resort.
Neither of us had ever been to a casino before, and we had no idea what were doing which was probably very obvious when we walked in the front door, stopped, and just looked around the room for a while. We decided slots were probably our best shot since we didn't know how to do anything else. As it turns out, we didn't really know how to do the slot, either.
So we walked to the cashier's window, I handed the guy the twenty, and said "Hi, can I get whatever we need to play the slot machines?". He looked at me like I had three heads and one of them was insulting his mother. But then a look of understanding kind of swept across his face and I think he realized we had no idea what we were doing. So he was very friendly and said "Most people play quarter-slots." So I said, "ok, sounds good", and we each got a roll of quarters.
Melissa sat down at one of the machines, put a quarter in and tried to pull the lever, but it wouldn't go down. She kept trying, then decided the machine must be broken, and went to a different on. Then another girl sat down where she had been, put another quarter in, pulled the level, and got some kind of a jack pot. It turns out that was a 50 cent slot, not 25. So that was pretty sad.
But we settled into two machines side by side, and just kept feeding the quarters in and pulling the lever with no apparent success. Now, based on our experience with television and movies, we thought that any kind of winning would result in bells, whistles, and gongs going off to alert everyone to our good fortune. This did not happen, so we assumed we had not won anything. Then I noticed this little display on the machine that said "Credit: 12". What does that mean? I put another quarter in, pulled the lever, and when the dials stopped spinning, this went up to "Credit: 15". Was I winning? Where were the bells and flashing lights? I went up the cashier again and further betrayed my ignorance: "The machine says I have a credit of 15, does that mean I one?". "On the top display or the bottom?" "The bottom." (it turns out that the top displays how much it's already paid you). "Yes, that's right, you've won 15 quarters." "Oh...but nothing came out?" "You have to push the button". "Oh". So I went back to the machine and there's a big red button that says "PAY ME MY WINNINGS" or something subtle like that. So I pushed that I 15 quarters came jingling out of the machine! Well what do you know?
So we kept playing, and we won another 8 or 9 quarters back, out of the eighty we had started with. So we were thinking, "hey, that's not bad, at least we didn't loose all $20, which we were planning on in the first place". But then we were thinking, "On the other hand, we were planning on loosing that twenty anyway, so why not keep playing with the extra quarters we won." (This is how gambling problems start). So we kept going, we had like ten quarters left, and we decided to focus our efforts on one machine. So I did the first five, and Melissa did the last five. She was on our second to last quarter, and she puts it in, and she pulls the lever and....ding ding ding ding ding! Just like in the movies! The lights are flashing, and little "Credit" meter is climbing it's way up, and we were getting very excited.
When the lights stopped, we had 117 quarters credit, and one left in Melissa's hand. We played that one, didn't win anything, and decided to call it quits. Hurry, let's cash out while we're ahead. We had been there all of twenty minutes, had turned down the waitress when she asked if we wanted to order any drinks, and now rushed the counter grinning like idiots to cash our our meager winnings. But we walked away with $29.25, a solid 146% of what we came with. We couldn't be happier.
- Epilogue: Our luck apparently didn't last. Melissa went to Saratoga race track with her family later that summer, and they lost in every single bet they made. Oh well.
So we headed back to the hotel with our winnings, watched a little TV, then walked out to the Ben&Jerry's for some icecream to finish off one whirlwind of a day.
Wednesday
We spent most of Wednesday relaxing on the beach again. All of the umbrellas were taken on the beach, so he had to sit under these funny little dug-out like structures towards the back of the beach. That ended up being better, as it turned out, because we had more room and more shade, and were pretty well protected against the winds, which had turned the beach into a sand blaster on our first trip there. We swam some more, and relaxed and read and napped in the shade, and it was good.
After we beach, we decided to try out down town again, figuring that Aruba must be open on Wednesdays. So we got back on the Arubus and headed back to downtown O-stad. It shops were in fact open, and we looked around a little, and Melissa got some Aruba Aloe brand skin cream for her Mom. We were looking for souvenirs for the rest of our family members, but were distracted by hunger, so we decided we'd finish up after dinner.
We headed across the street to "The Paddock", a little dutch grill on the water front. This wasn't a beach type water front like The Bistro, more like a dock, but it was pretty all the same. The restaurant was nice and the wait staff was very friendly.
Melissa for some reason was craving Chicken soup, despite the heat. She likes chicken soup, and gets annoyed because it should be a staple, but a lot of places she goes doesn't have it, they have other kinds of soup instead. So of all places, she managed to get a bowl of chicken soup as an appetizer at The Paddock in downtown Oranjestad, Aruba. And, as it turns out, it was like the best chicken soup she's ever had. I had some, too, and she's right, that was really good soup.
For the main course, I got some roasted prok medalions (more pork!), and Melissa got more shrimp, this time served in a clam shell with been sprouts. She liked it, though it was a little spicy for her. My pork was really good, too, and I topped it off with a few Coronas (I think I may have actually not had any rum that day, surprisingly enough). We decided to get dessert this time; Melissa got a "Dame Blanche" (White Lady), which was on pretty much every dessert menu we saw. It's just a bowl of vanilla ice cream with whipped cream and chocolate sauce. We're not sure if there's some kind of story behind this dish or why it's so popular, but it was good, anyway. I got apple pie a la mode, which was also good. There's also a lot of apple pie and apple-pie like desserts on the island, we figure probably because so many Americans go there.
After dinner, we went back to check out the shops some more and that's when we learned the sad truth: Aruba closes at 7PM, even on weekdays. Again, it was the off season, so apparently it's just not worth it for the shops to stay open. Unfortunately, I had to pee pretty bad, and didn't think to go when we were still at dinner. Fortunately, we found a security guard in the little shopping plaza and he opened the bathroom for me.
Then we just got back on the Arubus, and headed back for another early night in the hotel. But that's alright, our days were busy enough that we enjoyed unwinding a little each night. Besides, we didn't go on a tropical vacation to be out all night, we went to spend all day on the beach. So early to bed it was.
The one thing that kind of bugged us about the hotel was that the pool closed at 8PM. It would have been nice on these early nights to go for a little dip after dark, but alas, we couldn't.
Thursday
We had booked another tourist activity for Thursday, the Pelican Bus Tour. This old colorful school bus picked us up in front of the hotel that morning, and we were off. After we made stops at a few other hotels to pick up the rest of the passengers, we headed off for our bus tour of the island. Our driver and tour guide was a native Aruban who spoke English just fine, but with a thick accent that was hard to decipher at times, especially over the buses PA system. It turned out he was a very good tour guide and bus driver, but we didn't realize at first because he had a very dry sense of humor.
Our first stop was the California Lighthouse, and on the way out we drove threw some of the most expensive neighborhoods on the island, and he pointed out some of the famous houses and beaches. They were beautiful houses, all very colorful with lots of plants and open spaces. There was an obvious Spanish styling to them, but also with a lot of Dutch aspects and accents.
Just as we pulled up to the light house (which is named "California" because there's a ship wreck right near it, and that was the name of the ship), it started to rain. It wasn't too hard though, so we got out, took a few pictures, walked around a little, then got back on the bus. Of course, all the windows on the bus had been removed so the rain came in some, but it wasn't a bad break from the heat. Plus, that day was the worst whether we had all week (except of course the storm on the Mi Dushi), so it was a good day for a bus tour instead of the beach.
After the light house, we drove through some of the island's desserts with big cactus forests growing all around. The next stop was a little chapel on top of a hill in what seemed to be the middle of the dessert. We stopped there, and by then the rain had stopped, so we wandered around some and took some pictures of the church and the dessert. The church was very small, maybe twenty feet wide by thirty feet long, I'd say. There was only room for a handful of people inside, so there were rows of benches set up outside the front door, apparently for the rest of the congregation.
It was very pretty inside, with an elaborate shrine to Mary above the alter. Melissa and I looked at the shrine and discussed, not for the first time, how Catholics were Goddess worshipers, and they didn't even realize it.
When we got back to the bus, our driver had set up a little bar and was serving rum punch out the back of the bus. After everyone (except him) had a cup or two, we got back on, and headed off.
We drove through some more desert, and past some more Aruban homes. They weren't as fancy as the million dollars ones we had seen earlier, but they were all very pretty and very colorful. Some of them had goats and chickens just roaming around in the street. We also stopped at what must have been the quintessential Divi Divi tree. The Divi Divi tree is a species of tree that grows on the island, and is supposed to grow in the direction of the wind. On Aruba, the trade winds are pretty constant, and always blow towards the northwest, so all the Divi Divi trees on the island are supposed to point towards the northwest. Most of the ones we had seen, though, didn't seem to point in any particular direction, and the ones that did seemed to point at each other. This one, though, fit the rule, and pointed very obviously and very beautifully towards the northwest, so he stopped the bus to tell us the story and let us take pictures of it.
Our next destination was the natural bridge, on the north side of the island. This is a rock structure that was formed by the ocean and other natural processes into a pretty good sized bridge spanning a gap in the shore line. Unfortunately, the same natural processes that shaped it also recently collapsed it, so it no longer spans the gap all the way, but it's still about half there, and is still pretty cool to see.
The waters on the north shore are a lot rougher than where the beaches are, so Melissa and I went out onto the bridge to take some pictures of the waves. Apparently, the ocean wanted to help us get a real good experience, and we got drenched by a particularly large wave that splashed up over the rocks.
On the way back from the bridge, our driver was telling us how they used to not have a slaughter house on the island, so periodically they would gather up the animal carcases, bring them to the north shore, and dump them in the ocean, where the sharks had a feeding frenzy. It was quite an event, and tourists like to come watch. After some time, though, they decided that attracting sharks to the island was a bad idea, and that sharks on the north shore would eventually mean sharks on the south shore (where the beaches are), so they don't do that any more.
The next stop was a rock garden. The garden was a bunch of boulders which had been naturally formed into some interesting shapes. Our guide pointed out King Kong, an elephant, and a polar bear. There were also some 4000 year old cave drawings that we saw there. Before we left, he re-opened the "bar" and served some more rum punch for those who wanted it. (This was also when we found out, from the driver, that everyone had survived from the Jolly Pirate).
The next stop was even more rocks! We drove out to a national park (and saw two wild donkeys along the way) where there's a big cliff with caves in it, and he lead us through some of them. Inside, he said that anyone who wanted to could follow him a little deeper in to where the bats lived, but we had to leave our flashlights behind, bend down real low to get through one of the passages, and move quickly because it was very hot down there. Melissa, who is afraid of bats, didn't go, she stayed behind with a few of the other guests who also didn't like bats. But I followed the driver and the rest of the guests into the bat cave. Once we were inside, he told us to get our cameras ready, because he was going to shine the light up at the ceiling, and the bats would go scattering. And boy did they! At one point, he shined it into a deep narrow hole in the cave ceiling, right above my head, and the bats just came pouring out, right over me! I could have swatted them down with my hand! (But I didn't). I did get a good picture of it though. When we came back out into the main cave, Melissa said she had expected to hear screams coming from inside, but none of us had.
After the caves, we went to lunch at a little barbecue place that was included as part of the tour. We each got a couple of ribs and a few pieces of barbecue chicken, plus corn and rice. It was a fine meal, and it we ate on a deck overlooking a beach, which was very nice.
After lunch, we headed just a mile or two down the road to Baby Beach. They call it that because it's sort of separated from the rest of the ocean by a sparse wall of rocks, and you can walk all the way across with out going in past your waist. We spent a little over an hour there, and it was nice to get some more beach time in. The weather was so-so at that point, no rain, but it was a bit overcast. But the beach was nice, and we swam with some pretty big fish (about two feet long, several inches thick) where it got a bit deeper (over my head) off to one side of the "swimming area".
That was our last stop for the tour, and when we got back on the bus, our driver had a few words to share with us. He said that so far today, he had been our driver, our tour guide, and our bar tender...and now...he was going to dance for us, as well. this was probably about the funniest and most awkward thing that happened all day. Our driver was not a small man, and not a young man, and, as I mentioned, he was a very dry person. But then he started playing some salsa music over the bus stereo, and started dancing at the front of the bus. Then he started making his way down the isle, still dancing. When he got to the back of the bus, we all suddenly realized what the pole was for that had been installed at the back of the bus! He started pole dancing! Then he danced part way back up the while, took one of the passengers by the hand, and led her back to the pole to dance with him!
So after the dancing was done, we just started the rather long trip back to the hotels, and he pointed out more things along the way and told us more about the island. And that was about it for our bus tour. We had a really good time, and got to see a lot more of the island than we could have on our own. We were glad we took the tour that we did, too. One of the other tour companies on the island is De Palm tours, which, from what we can tell, pretty much run the island. They do bus tours, sailing excursions, party boats, water sports, pretty much anything you can think of for tourists to do, you can do it with De Palm tours. But there bus tours were on these big luxury busses with air conditioning and everything, which means they were all sealed up. That's no way to see a tropical island! Through a pane of glass? Ridiculous. And I really doubt there drivers dance, or if they do, it couldn't possibly be as funny as when our driver danced.
For dinner that night, we went to Salt&Pepper, another dutch restaurant up near Iguana Joe's and Le Petite Cafe. Par for the course, the dinner there was great. Very nice wait staff, out door seating, and good food. Melissa got the Grouper, which was pretty adventurous for her, but she enjoyed it. I actually can't remember what I ate, but I remember it was good, and it was probably some kind of pork. I also got some tacos for appetizers, which were also very good, and a couple of Harvey Wallbangers to drink. Unfortunately, we were so excited about eating that we completely forgot to take pictures of our food, which we had done for all of our other dinners. We did remember, at least to take pictures of dessert. Melissa had a banana mousse which was very good (the banana flavor, which can easily be overpowering, was pleasantly subtle), and I had a chocolate mousse, also very good. I also finally got some coffee that night, which I hadn't had for three or four days prior, since we always ate breakfast in the room. It was pretty standard restaurant coffee but at the time it was really hitting a couple spots.
The restaurant is part of a small strip of three or four restaurants, with little souvenir huts set up out front. After dinner we strolled through here for a bit, and picked up some gifts for people back home. I also got my cowrie shell hemp necklace there, for which we had to venture across the street back to The Occidental to find an ATM. We also decided that night that we would come back in the morning for breakfast.
Friday
And so we did go back for breakfast the next day. I had a really good egg sandwich with ham, lettuce, tomato, and cheese. Oddly, the egg was actually a hard boiled egg which had been sliced, instead of a fried egg. It was a nice little breakfast and we were glad to have something other than poptarts to start the day.
We spent pretty much the rest of the day on the beach, soaking in as much of the tropical sun and sea as possible (well, not really the sun, we stayed in the shade when we weren't swimming). I also learned that day that you don't by drinks from the bars right on the beach: I paid six dollars for a corona in a dixie cup! Had to be about 6 ounces, tops. But it was a beautiful day and we lingered a bit later than usual.
When we were getting ready to go back to the hotel to get ready for dinner, we dragged our chairs back to the towel shack for our hotel, and noticed a Somerville, Mass Police Department patch tacked up inside the shack. This was pretty weird, since we had just moved to Somerville a few months earlier. I asked the guy there if he knew anything about it but he didn't. The mystery lives on.
We actually saw a lot of Boston-area stuff down there; some kind of Boston sign at Iguana Joe's, and a lot of people with obvious Boston accents proudly sporting their Red Sox gear. Just one of life's little quirks, I guess.
For our last dinner in Aruba, we wanted to back to the Sunset Bistro and have another magestic evening on the beach. What never occured to us, though, is that Friday night dinner is a lot different than sunday night dinner. We got to the restaurant a few minutes before they opened, just like we did on Sunday night, and were the only ones there. When they opened, the host asked if we had reservation, which he had asked on Sunday, as well, and we said no. This time, though, it took him a lot longer to look up from his seating chart. But eventually, he did, and he said "I have one table left on the beach" which we gladly accepted. It wasn't quite as nice as it had been on Sunday; we weren't right on the water's edge, we were a bit further back, and instead of having the table right in the sand, it was up on this wooden platform. But, we were just glad we got a table at all, and it was still on the beach, so we were happy.
Melissa got the same thing she had on Sunday and sadly ate her last Aruban shrimp. I got the steak teriyaki, which ended up being very good, and we each got an Aruba Ariba tropical drink. The sky was somewhat overcast that night, so the sunset never turned red. Instead, there was this amazing silver glow cast on everything as the sun set behind the clouds. The sky, sea, and sand all took on the same glittering silver sheen and the color just faded out of everything. We took a couple of pictures that ended up looking like they were taken in black and white, but they were actually full color.
So as it turns out, the restaurant had some kind of set up with one of the hotels in the area, where a bunch of newly weds kick off their honey moons with a sunset dinner at the Bistro. So there was this row of couples lined up at their tables sipping champagne, watching the sunset. It was very romantic...for them. As the night began to wrap up, Melissa started looking at me kind of funny, and kept glancing at my pockets. I had no idea what she was doing. Finally she said "So is there anything you want to give me?" I still didn't know what she was talking about at first, and then it finally sank it. Apparently, her sister had predicted that our trip was when I was going to propose to her! I felt horrible! She wasn't really that upset, though, apparently she didn't really think I was going to. More than anything, she felt bad for me, because, as she said, "I kind of handed this too you, it was pretty much your perfect opportunity". I actually had briefly considered it a while back, but I decided she would end up finding the ring at some point, like when we went through airport security. Plus, like I told her, it would have been so cliche. Perfect, maybe. But cliche. But I told her I had a better plan for how to propose, and she wouldn't be sorry I waited.
So that pretty much wrapped up our last night in Aruba. We watched some TV when we got back to the room, including the first episode of the show Greek, when we then became mildly obsessed with and continued watching each week when we got back home.
Saturday
We agreed to wake up nice an early on our last day and get down to the beach one last time before we headed to the airport. So we woke up at six, had a quick breakfast, and went do to the beach, before the sun was even above the high-rises. We sat in the sand for a while and thought about our week, then took one last dip in the warm waters of the Caribbean. We also took one last swim out to the dock to jump in. We were pretty terrified the whole way out there, but decided we had to get one more jump in or we'd regret it forever! (We may have been a little over dramatic). There was no one else on the beach or in the water, and the sun was still too low for us to be able to see anything in the water. We were apparently both thinking at the time (but not sharing with each other until later that day) that most shark attacks occur during early morning and dusk, when the sharks can't see well, and that with the water being devoid of swimmers all night long, the sharks might come in the snack on all the little fishies living under the dock. But anyway, all the went unsaid as we stood on the dock. The sun was just about coming up over the towers of the high rises as we lept as far as we could off the dock and swam like hell for the beach as soon as we hit water.
The rest of the story is the sucky part, but I guess it still remains to be said. We got took a cab to the air port, and got there before their was even anybody at the counters! I mean anybody, even airport employees. But the line did get long behind us, so I guess it was a good thing we got there when we did. We made it through customs and security without any problems, I stopped and got a bottle of Tortuga rum at the duty free shop. We still had an hour or more before we could board, and were pretty hungry, so we, regrettably, got some papa-gino's personal pizzas which were not good, especially at ten o'clock in the morning. We tried once or twice to buy some magazines, but, as usual, the shop wasn't even open yet. Eventually, it did open, and I got us each a magazine...for 10 dollars each!
The real damper that morning was when we found out we could have taken a direct flight from Aruba to Boston, thereby avoiding the three hour layover in Philly. But, it was too late for us.
The flight to Philly was uncomfortable but uneventful. At the Philadelphia airport, we got some more chicken soup (not nearly as good as at The Paddock, but not bad), and I got some shot glasses at the gift shop. Fortunately, the flight to Boston was pretty short, and we made it on time, but then once again had to wait forever for our baggage. At least our baggage actually made it, though, and in tact.
We decided not to take the four different types of public transportation that would be required to get us even up the street from our apartment, and caught a taxi instead. That was also uneventful, and we made it home sometime after 11PM, and sadly unpacked from our trip.
And that's the end of our first trip to Aruba. But don't worry, there will be many more trips, and Melissa made a really great scrap book for us. Hopefully I can come up with a good way to get all our pictures on line for easy viewing and browsing.
