Everyday is an adventure.

There are a lot of places we want to go but Denise has been wanting to go to a certain island she visited from a cruise. After some more research, we ended up ‘Going Dutch’ selecting the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba. We were holding our breath waiting for the arrival of the renewal of Denise’s passport. For the life of me I can not understand why a renewal needs to take more than a week processing time. All they do is automated queries of databases! It finally did arrive in the 10 weeks they said the renewal would take.

We packed our backpacks and took the direct flight (under 3 hrs) from Ft. Lauderdale. We processed through security, immigration, and customs with no issues on both sides. We were somewhat relieved since on our last return flight (Boise, ID) We were retained and I was searched and interrogated for almost 1.5 hours. We barely made our flight. I still wonder if they were training folks since they seemed confused and kept calling for guidance. Oh well, back to Aruba.

Aruba has a somewhat glitzy and glamorous reputation. Don’t let the marketing fool you though. It turned out to be just another island in the south Caribbean, part of the ABC islands off the Venezuelan coast. It was just another island except for the stunningly beautiful amazing beaches, resorts and high-end retail everywhere. For those that want to know, ‘no, I did not get my Gucci on!’ The weather is also pretty picture perfect and it gets no hurricanes. So no, nothing special…ya, right!

(Donate) Island Time Rosaries

We grabbed a cab and headed to our boutique hotel a block off of Eagle Beach. Eagle Beach has been rated the #3 best beach in the world. Since it was later in the day we opted for a walk along the beach and looked for an oceanfront place for dinner and/or a tiki bar. Coco-Loco is a popular tiki bar and was close by.

Our hotel room had a small kitchen. There was a small swimming pool and they provided nice beach towels and chairs. We decided to pick up some coffee, oatmeal, bread, Goober (remember it is peanut butter and jelly together in one jar), avocados, and some local beer (Balashi or Chill). We do not like all the glitz and glamour so we shied away from the resorts and casinos. We already knew our main objective in going to Aruba was the beaches and the amazing Caribbean waters. That is where we spent 90% of our time.

We were there a week and set part of one day aside to go into town to do the tourist trap obligations. Our usual day consisted of having coffee and breakfast in the room, make some PBJ for lunch, and head to the beach around 9AM. The shore, for a large part has a lot of mangrove trees and then it opens onto the amazing beaches. Where we were staying they had a number of palapas for use (stationary thatched umbrellas) as shown in the pictures. There were many of these up and down the beach at the resorts.

We would get to the beach, pick our palapa, set up our chairs and towels and head for the water. The water was very calm. I would equate it to the calmness of the gulf on the west coast of Florida. It was an easy slow sloped walk into the water. A person could see the bottom well past 6 foot of depth. When we got groceries we also picked up some foam noodles. Each morning would start with a long comfortable float. The high season had not hit yet so the people were sparse except the one day that a cruise ship was in port. On cruise day, about a ¼ mile down the beach suddenly dozens and dozens of beach umbrellas were set up and the cruise buses would pull up and deposit their guests. For the most part they all stayed in their designated area.

After about 1.5 hours in the water we would get out and head for our chairs and the shade and read. When we got warm we would head back in the water. At noon we would have our packed lunch. We also took a couple walks up and down the very very long beaches. For the most part it was floating, reading, eating, floating, and more reading.

The Caribbean water was so awesome. In Jupiter we get some days where you can see down through the clear calm water but in Aruba this is the norm. One of the fun things we experienced while floating around out there was to look up and see what looked like boiling water heading towards us. This perception was caused by schools of small fish that were swimming and jumping through the water. Some were only about 1/2 inch to a couple inches long. They would swim right up and around whoever was there. It was fun to see this and it happened many times. Of course I am sure they were jumping since they were being chased and didn’t want to be dinner. We could see quite a way out and deep and never saw anything longer then maybe a foot. Another fun fish thing were the jumping/flying fish. Referred at times as pencil fish as they were long and slim. They would also jump and fly through the air for many feet. We saw smaller fish, almost an arms length from us, that would play in the water by jumping back and forth 5, 6, 7 times over a floating mangrove leaf before swimming on. Yes, we were easily amused!

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the amazing white powder like sand. It is nothing like the sand we have in Jupiter which when wet sticks to you and it gets hot in the middle of the day. This sand would brush or rinse right off. It was soft and very clean. I can see why the beach had such a high rating. Even at mid-day it was not hot to walk on.

Around 2:30-3, we would have our last float in the Caribbean and then head to our hotel pool. We would then sit out in the sun, pool-side, with a few beers and music for our own happy hour. During this time we would decide where we wanted to head for dinner. Weighty decisions! (pun intended)

There were a number of ocean-front bars and restaurants. We tried different ones. Some even had, with reservations, a special dinner with champagne and linens right out by the surf. Very romantic for the newlyweds.

This is pretty much how we spent our week. We didn’t do any of the marketed tourist activities like diving, scuba, ski-dos, dinner cruises, 4-wheelin, casinos, etc,,, They certainly have pretty much anything you want in order to be parted from your money. For us, as said earlier, our focus was relaxing on the beach. Yes, we traded on beach for another but, hey, each beach is unique. If we wanted all that tourist trap resort stuff we could have just drove down to Hollywood Beach.

Coming home was interesting. It seemed we went through 3 or 4 different security checks and immigration’s, etc.. When we arrived on the island we were told to allow 4 hours at the airport when leaving. I now can see why. The good part is that all US immigration was done in Aruba so arriving home was a breeze.

There is no doubt that Aruba is one beautiful place and does live up to all the publicity but would we go again? I would say we probably would not! Why??? Well we want to go to Punta Cana, Puerto Rico, Jost Van Dyke, St Thomas, Italy, Spain, back to Santorini and Crete, maybe Hungry, etc…. I think you get my drift. Too many places and too little time but if you do want a unique adventure then don’t hesitate to ‘Go Dutch’ to Aruba!

tot ziens (Dutch for “until we see each other again”)

Da-hag (good-bye)