ARUBA

Our stock response to the many questions and comments we received before heading South was: “We only have so many good years left and we won’t let one man decide where we go or how we spend them.”

The border crossing guard at Calais checked our passports, did a casual walkaround of our car, asked us the standard questions, and told us to “Have a good time!” No photos, no fingerprints, no third degree!

Our plan was to take four days to reach our destination in Fort Lauderdale, rather than the usual three. We stayed the first night in Fishkill, NY, and the second in Asheboro, NC. For our third night, we stayed in a hotel in the old part of Savannah, GA, one of our favourite American cities. Arriving there early afternoon, we settled in and took a 6K walk through the many beautiful parks and the downtown area. It was a beautiful day for February 12, sunny and 16C.

In three days on the road, we went from February to June, not a bad bargain! It being a long weekend – Valentine’s Day, Daytona 500 and President’s Day – traffic was heavy on I-95, and we reached our hotel in Ft. Lauderdale around suppertime.

JetBlue flew us from Ft. Lauderdale to Aruba and we picked up our car at the airport. Rentals are very hard to come by and quite expensive here. After a few wrong turns, we found our lodgings for the next two weeks, Naïma Cottage, settled in and went to the supermarket for some grub. Traffic here is crazy. It reminded me of Guadeloupe: too many cars and not enough island!

A nearby rooster was kind enough to remind us when it was morning, something we’ve become used to in our Caribbean travels. . This guy is the most handsome rooster I’ve ever seen and very popular with the ladies. The day greeted us with a heavy rainstorm, a fairly rare occurrence on this island which has to desalinate its drinking water because there’s so little groundwater to be had.

Aruba is officially a “constituent island country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands”, quite the mouthful. The island, home to approximately 125,000 people, is 20 kilometers long and 10 kilometers across at its widest point, about one-thirtieth of our island’s land area, and it lies just off the coast of Venezuela. Together with Bonaire and Curaçao, it forms the ABC island group. Other Dutch possessions in the Caribbean include Sint Maarten, Sint Eustatius and Saba.

The economy is dominated by two main industries: tourism and tourism, with maybe a bit of  offshore banking thrown in. Aruba has one of the highest standards of living in the Caribbean region, a low unemployment rate and is classified as a high-income economy. Its main trading partners are Colombia, the United States, Venezuela, and the Netherlands.

Although we hadn’t planned it that way, we happened to be here during Carnival, the big celebration before Mardi Gras and the beginning of Lent. Serendipity has struck us before: the swim from Rottnest Island to Fremantle in Western Australia, religious processions in Piraeus, Greece, and Cadiz, Spain and, last October, the No-Day parade in Chora, Naxos. Because there’s a strong Latino population here, Carnival is a big deal. The parade is lined with families and corporate groups, each one with its own shelter against the hot sun. People bring food and drinks and generally have a good time. The parade rivalled anything we’d seen elsewhere in our travels, as good as New Orleans’ Mardi Gras. The costumes and the music were incredible!

On our second full day in Aruba, we linked up with friends Joan and Richard Birt. It’s their third year on Aruba and they know their way around well, so we asked them to be our tour guides for the day. We started with a visit to the California lighthouse, named after the SS California, a steamship that sank nearby in 1891. We didn’t climb to the top but had a very nice view of both coasts from the western tip of the island.

Next, we stopped in at Aruba Aloe, an impressive facility that produces a full range of aloe products. Our tour guide explained the whole process from the aloe plant to finished goods, everything from soap to suntan lotion. We were surprised to learn that only 5 acres remain in production on the whole island, all located next to the plant. Our third stop of the day was Hooiberg, known locally as Haystack Mountain owing to its distinctive shape. To get to the top, we had to climb about 600 steps, but the views were well worth the effort.

After a light lunch at our place in Paradera, we visited the Casibari Rock Formation, one of two we’d see during the day, the other being at Ayo. According to ChatGPT, both formations are made up of granite boulders stacked in unusual formations and weathered by wind, heat and rain. A few of them reminded me of Fred Flintstone and Barnie Rubble’s houses. The site at Ayo contains petroglyphs (rock drawings) believed to have been made by the indigenous Arawak people about 1,000 years ago.

We drove to the wilder northeast coast to visit the ruins of a gold smelter called Bushiribana that operated in the late 1800s during the brief Aruba gold rush. From there, we continued eastward along the coast to visit the natural bridge, a huge natural limestone arch carved by the sea. We met dozens of quads loaded with tourists, having a great time bouncing along the gravel trails while eating more dust than they may have bargained for. Finally, back at the Birt residence, we put on our swimsuits and walked to the nearby beach called Boca Catalina for a refreshing dip. The water temperature was a toasty 27C, the perfect antidote for tired muscles. Eight stops in one day, quite the accomplishment for old people!

We’d heard that Baby Beach was one of Aruba’s nicest, so we drove to the southeast tip of the island and settled into our chairs for some sun and relaxation. It’s called “Baby Beach” because it borders a shallow protected lagoon, ideal for small children and inexperienced swimmers. There are few resorts on this end of the Island and not much to do in the nearby town of San Nicholas, Aruba’s second-largest settlement, home to 15,000 islanders and about half the size of Oranjestad. We stopped there for something to drink on our way back to Paradera and took pictures of the beautiful murals that adorn many of the downtown buildings.

When I received my combined COVID-flu shot in October, the pharmacist told me that the flu component might not protect me against a new strain of the virus. Boy, was he right! It hit me hard on our fourth day on Aruba, and lasted several days. No fever to speak of but there wasn’t a part of my body that didn’t hurt, especially my upper back between the shoulder blades. Elva did some shopping in Oranjestad while I stayed close to our apartment. 

While we were having breakfast one morning, this beautiful bird, a bananaquit, stopped by for a feed of nectar from the hibiscus flower next to our table. How do I know it was a bananaquit? Easy! I right-clicked on the photo on my laptop, clicked on “Ask Copilot”, and typed “What kind of bird is this?”. So then I asked about the cactus and the flower; the cactus is an organ-pipe cactus and the flower is a pink hibiscus. Technology is amazing!

On another day, we met up with Joan and Richard at their comfortable apartment in Malmok and were treated to a delicious lunch. We walked to the nearby beach, and Joan, Richard and I went snorkeling for the best part of an hour. We saw many different types of fish, notably parrot fish, four-eyed butterflyfish, angelfish, trumpetfish, a poisonous lionfish, and a sea turtle. While the corals have pretty well disappeared due to heavy foot and boat traffic, it was still nice to get into the warm ocean and just float along aimlessly looking at another world.

Elva and I decided to tour the main resort areas and nearby beaches, starting with the most developed one, Palm Beach. It’s a beautiful beach, for sure, and offers all the amenities for a family vacation, but it’s really not our cup of tea. The street that runs parallel to the beach is lined with restaurants and boutiques, making it far too “Americanized” for our tastes.

Eagle Beach was next on our list. Lying next to Palm Beach, it’s much more relaxed, and reminded us of the best beaches on our island. The sand is beautiful and the water warm. It’s the perfect place to go for a dip. I took a walk in the direction of Oranjestad, going as far as the neighbouring beach, Divi. Like Palm Beach, Divi is lined with condos and hotels. While people-watching is fun on any beach, in all our visits to Arubian beaches, I didn’t see one man in a thong, something I’m ever thankful for!

On one of our last days on Aruba, we took a guided tour of the WEB plant, a combined electrical generating and desalination facility that provides most of the island’s electricity and all of its drinking water. Aruba has no groundwater. Early settlers relied on rainwater but, when the population began to expand and the tourists showed up in the early twentieth century, desalination was the only solution.

The plant takes in water from beach wells and removes the salt using a process called reverse osmosis. About 10% of WEB’s electricity is needed to power the desalination plant, and the rest is distributed to islanders. Most of the power is generated from heavy and light crude oil and the utility is expanding its solar and wind generating capacity. It’s always interesting to learn how others deal with problems that would seem insurmountable to us, given that we have plentiful groundwater and are able to buy our electricity from New Brunswick.

Aruba has many attractive features to offer the visiting tourist: consistently warm weather, beautiful beaches, friendly people, good restaurants, and nice resorts. A few years ago, we visited eight Caribbean island countries on the same trip: Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Barbados, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis. The theme for that adventure was to travel and eat like the locals. We stayed in a variety of locations, sometimes in the capital, sometimes not. The one thing we never needed was a car; we rode with the locals in 15-passenger vans for $2 a trip, and they took us everywhere people lived.

In Aruba, the public bus system runs on one route only, the main road that follows the southern coast past all the resorts and through the capital, Oranjestad. There is no bus service inland where we stayed, so we had to rent a car to get around. Rental cars are ubiquitous on the island, they’re hard to get, and they’re very expensive. Taxis are ridiculously expensive and there is no ride-share option. Without access to local bus service, Arubans must have their own cars, and this makes for major traffic tie-ups during the morning and afternoon rush hours. One smart thing they’ve done is to forego traffic lights in favour of roundabouts. But the two-lane versions have a curb between lanes, making navigating through them challenging for the first-timer.

While we loved our quiet and secluded oasis in Naïma, it offered no cell service, and the wifi connection and TV were iffy until our hostess, Ana, had a new router installed. Battling the flu for four days, I kept busy with work and the New York Times Sunday Crossword. And since Elva and I are not the resort types, Aruba is not a choice location. But for those wishing to get away from it all in a friendly and welcoming place that features great weather and the modern amenities not offered on many Caribbean islands, Aruba would be a very sound choice.

I give my head a shake sometimes and wonder how I got here. It seems like only yesterday that I was picking bottles out of the ditches in Wellington, gathering enough to buy myself a chocolate bar at the Co-op. It’s been a great ride so far!