BC (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao) Dutch ruled islands on the map. I hadn't planned to go to Aruba but as luck would have it, my friend Frances works for a friendly airline that was able to get me a free ticket and hotel stay while she worked and I played. I've been to Curacao before (if you read my blog, you would know) and I was interested to see how Aruba compared.Aruba was definitely different, however my most cultural experience was taking the local bus into town from the airport. It definitely was not my usual route on M15 in New York! The bus was actually not a bus, it was a minivan from the 80's and the "bus" stopped anywhere...literally. The bus stopped when anyone rang the bell - mind you it was a door bell that was glued to the top of the van, classy!
Because Frances was working during the day, I had a lot of time to observe people and sleep - both on the beach, of course! My general impression about Aruba and most of the Caribbean is that it's where the gap between adults and kids exists but not really. Adults wear their skimpy bathing suits as they probably once did in their adolescence, while kids stayed out late and drank mud slides by the pool like the lushy adults I know. It was kind of funny to watch at first and then just became strange the more I thought about the situation.
One day I decided to go windsurfing - I've always wanted to try it and Aruba is a great place to learn because it is so windy, or at least while I was there. My instructors name was Henry, he was a really funny tan Dutch guy. He taught us how to read the wi
nd, sail (when people go uncontrollably fast), turn and stop on the windsurf board. As soon as Henry let us go on our own to practice, I looked over to a woman in my class and she had lost her board. She claimed that it suddenly got away from her as if she couldn't see it coming. I was amused and laughed as I thought she was such a novice as I was doing pretty well staying up. Soon enough though, I found myself way out in the deep part of the ocean or Chavez (Arubans referring to Venezuela, the So. American country closest to Aruba) with my board and someone had to come rescue me in a power boat to get back to land! I enjoyed it and will definitely do it again - not the getting stuck part but windsurfing.On a side note, I put on tons of sunblock given that I'd be in the sun mid-day but there was an area on my back that I couldn't reach. I ended up having my back towards the sun for mo
st of my time on the windsurf board and resulted in an unfortunate burn. I have had multiple friends point out that my burn looks like a bat which is awesome because that's exactly what I want to show off during the summer months!Frances friend Karen came into town for the weekend and we all went horseback riding. We got picked up by a shuttle and driven out to a horse farm. The ride was actually the best horse ride I had on holiday - the terrain was desert-like and mid-way through was right by the ocean.
A random story about dinner - so we found this restaurant on tripadvisor.com called Gostoso Restaurante, rated number one in Aruba. It was sort of out of the way but people were RAVING over the place and so off we went. We got there and it was in a neighborhood, which was good, but no one was there, which was bad. Upon arriving to the restaurant we were promptly seated (because no one was there) and our hostess came to greet us. All was well, well with the exception of Frances who got a bit sick on the turbulent taxi ride over but we were all hungry and looking forward to a nice meal. As we were picking our food the chef came over to speak with us as well which was great, until he started to read the entire menu from top to bottom - not really adding more to the description than was already written. After he stopped by the waiter came by and talked to us. Well, we finally ended up ordering but after we ordered the hostess, waiter and chef would come by to ask us if we were ok or make small chit chat. Perhaps New York has made my skin a bit tough, but I was seriously starting to get annoyed with the constant disruptions to our conversations. At one point I thought we were on a hidden camera show to see how much we would take before blowing up from all of the visits to the table. They 1) had way too much time on their hand and not enough customers and 2) thought we were from tripadvisor or another website doing a secret review (they kept alluding to this and asked if we were or not more than once). After all of that, dinner was just ok - at least I had good company and something to write about :)
One of my memorable people-watching moments in Aruba was watching the sunset sitting on the beach next to some old hairy men shaking their bon bons listening to Your Wildest Dreams by the Moody Blues from the 80's. The song was playing on a bright yellow boombox that still had a cassette player - I truly felt like I was somewhere else.
