Aruba ... our last port of call

Aruba, a small dot in the Caribbean, barely seen on the map (Thursday, February 27).  It’s 20-miles long and 8 miles at its widest, coming in at 69 square miles.  That’s not much turf, but there’s a lot to it, and again, we went on a whirlwind tour, starting in Oranjestad, which is Aruba’s largest port and where we landed.  It’s also its capital and known for its Dutch Colonial architecture. 

There are 72,000 cars, 111,000 people, 24 hotels, 13 casinos, and it’s in the top 10 for the highest taxes at 58.8 percent.  But on the plus side?  It’s outside of the hurricane belt, there’s never been a reported shark attack and the crime rate is low.  (It costs about $300 per day to house prisoners and most of them are foreigners). 

Other pluses are it ‘s very clean and there are no street vendors pushing their necklaces, fans, flutes and so on.  However, they shoot off a lot of fireworks.  At New Year’s the Arubans set off about $2 million in fireworks.  It’s said they can be seen as far as the coast of Venezuela. 

Our guide for the day was Giovanni, who was an excellent tour guide with loads of information.  And he packed it in for us.  As we rode along in our bus we could see wonderful white beaches, turquoise seas, and organ cactus.  It’s quite dry here and cactus is indigenous to the area.  There are also three kinds of snakes, one of which is not indigenous to the area … the boa constrictor.  You have license to kill them on sight.  The other two are the lowly garden snake and an Aruban rattlesnake.  I had to ask that question about snakes.  Wonder how they got here … it’s an island.

Our first stop was at the California Lighthouse, named after the steamship California that sank off the coast of Aruba.  The lighthouse was built in 1910 and there are awesome views from here of the island and coastline.  If you wanted to use the restroom there, it was in a restaurant and you had to pay 50 cents.  There was a lady there to be sure that you did. 

The California lighthouse.

Enterprising folks have coconuts and can hack off the top, stick a straw in it and sell you a drink.

Next we went to the opposite end of the island to the Baby Natural Bridge.  It’s a natural bridge formed from rock and coral.  The original bridge fell into the ocean in 2005 but the smaller bridge remains. There are powerful waves here and it was fun watching some guy photograph his bikini-clad lady who stood close to the rocks.  It was even more fun when a large wave came up over the rocks and spooked her.  I’m not sure if she got hit by any of it or not, but she rapidly left her spot and moved up the beach.  She didn’t look very happy and I can only imagine she was giving him a piece of her mind wondering why he didn’t tell her the wave was coming at her.  Whoops!!!  There was a restroom here, as well, at the cost of $1 due to them having no running water and having to haul it. 

On the way to the natural bridge we saw lots of pipe organ cacti.  The climate is quite dry.

The baby natural bridge.  I never saw a big wave come up and break under it.

The little stone figures are quite fascinating.  I wondered who had put them there, if there was a rhyme or reason.

There are some beautiful areas on this island, beautiful water.  It would be a great place to come back to visit again.

On the rock-covered beach there were little rock formations built by I don’t know who.  There must have been hundreds of them … and I ran around trying to get the perfect photo … rocks, rock formations, ocean and waves.  It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it.

The colorful buildings are a joy to see.  I especially loved the green ones.

The hotels are beautiful and there sure are a lot of them for such a small piece of real estate.

The beaches are lovely, and lots of people take advantage of them.

From there we headed to the beach, for which Aruba is famous.  But we weren’t laying on the beach.  We were loading onto a catamaran to head out to board a semi-submarine.  I didn’t really understand that we would be in the submarine part and the pilot would be in the semi-submarine part – above the water piloting and running the boat.  We were trapped in the underwater part, not a problem for me, but Jaz is claustrophobic.  I was hoping she wouldn’t have an anxiety attack.  She came through with flying colors.

There were several parasailers and I enjoyed seeing their colorful chutes.

This is a sailing ship that had taken out a group of snorkelers to the wreck.

This was just a colorful catamaran.

The main reason to be on the sub was to go out to the wreck of the Antilla.  The Antilla sank during World War II and is one of the Caribbean’s largest shipwrecks.  It’s lying at a depth of 55 feet and parts of it could be seen by us in the sub although we weren’t nearly that far below the ocean surface.  Hundreds of colorful, tropical fish swam by, as well as some snorkelers. 

The Antilla ... not easy to see.

From there we made another short stop at a natural rock garden.  Large boulders and small rocks had plants and trees growing in and around them, some flowering, some not.  It was a beautiful place, and quite serene probably if you didn’t have dozens of tourists wandering around snapping photos.  I was one of those. 

This rock makes me think of "Jaws."

There are a variety of trees and plants but I would expect more blooms at other times of the years.

Then it was time to head back to the ship.  We didn’t have much time in Aruba and would have liked more.  We saw a Harley shop but didn’t dare take the time to stop as we might have been late getting back to the ship and I don’t know that our Captain would have waited for two old gals from Alaska.  So we chose to save our money and play bingo the next day instead.  We should have saved that money as well.

Many graveyards have little houses over the graves, making for a colorful sight 

Getting a small taste of Aruba … it’s a place where I’d not mind to return to see more and contribute to their main industry – tourism.  But not to live.  It costs $800 per year for 10 years before you can become a citizen.  It’s also an expensive place to live (gas is about $5.20 per gallon). Duh. It is an island in the middle of the ocean and takes a lot to get things here although they did have a refinery originally started by Standard Oil.  It’s now closed.  But even with the gas prices I saw very few scooters.  There were a few Harleys at one of our stops.  Jaz talked with them and they were rented.  I don’t know if anyone could afford one here, and there’s not much road to ride on. 

Building materials are mostly imported, although they make concrete blocks.  But a house on the beach starts at about $850,000.  The average worker makes about $950 per month (starting), and after you make $1,200 per month, the government takes its 58.8 percent in taxes.  Wow. 

I would have liked to see the Donkey Sanctuary.  And there’s an ostrich farm with ostriches and emus.  I would have enjoyed seeing them, too, but there’s only so much time.  Giovanni told us it takes 22 chicken eggs to make one ostrich egg.  What an omelet that would make.

The Spaniards had had the island at one point and it changed hands multiple times until the Dutch ended up with it.  At that point the Spaniards called it “Worthless Island.”  The last laugh was on them as gold was later discovered.  The gold is very orange in color and quite unique.  It’s been mined at various times and is currently being mined again.

There are 90 nationalities.  Interestingly, you could tell some of it by the names on the buildings.  Most of the hotels are owned by Americans, most of the supermarkets are owned by Chinese, and most of the bars are owned by Arubans.  Although there are many cultures, the two main languages are English and Spanish.  There’s also another mixed language spoken, that is a mixture of several put together.  Dutch is usually learned after the children start school.  So they speak multiple languages which in this day and age is a plus.

There were interesting buildings here, as well, and brightly-colored ones, too.  Perhaps it’s a way of the countries we’ve visited.  I like it as they seem to mean joy. 

This hotel has a lot of pink to it and was my favorite of the ones I saw.

I enjoyed the short time we spent on Aruba and was sorry to leave after such a short time.  It appears to be a vacation destination from the people seen on the streets, and knowing how many hotels and casinos there are. 

Another beautiful sunset.

As the sun was setting and our ship was leaving the harbor, once again it had been a very good day.  This cruising vacation is a lot of fun, and it’s nice to take our hotel and restaurants with us.

A Holland America ship was all lit up as we said our farewells to Aruba.  They are black which certainly makes them stand out in the crowd of cruise ships.

And just in case you didn’t have enough facts about this trip, the Island Princess entered service in 2003 and is 964 feet long and her beam is 106 feet.  It took 5,550,001 million hours to build her, 59,057 gallons of paint, 19,700 tons of steel, 1,350 miles of wiring and 48,150 square yards of carpet.  She’s carrying Jaz, me and 1,954 other passengers.  There are 887 crew members, of which Manuel from Portugal, Martin from Ireland and Allen from the Philippines were my favorites.  They took excellent care of us.

Manuel from Portugal, who was our guy for lunch. 

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Martin, Executive Sous Chef.

Allen kept our cabin tidy and left us our evening candies.
 

The last few days at sea were busy ones.  It doesn’t seem as though you would have enough to do, but there is bingo, origami classes, fitness classes, navigation at sea classes, dance classes, cooking demonstrations. 

A cooking demonstration with flair.

I celebrated my birthday while on board.

67 years old and still going.

This cake was absolutely huge, and look at the beautiful chocolate decorations.  I'm glad there were only five candles.

Martin left us towel animals a few times.  The one on the right appeared to be a dog sniffing at food.  I must have mentioned Beagles. 

There were six other cruise ships docked at the same time when we landed in Ft. Lauderdale.



Good bye, Island Princess, til we meet again.  Miss you already.

We’ve done a lot of it and are sorry to have to take to the land again.  But … as one adventure draws to an end, another begins.  Look out, Florida, it’s your turn.