Hesselblogger: Aruba Vacay Part 2

Waiting for the bus

Picking up where we left off: Day 4 of our trip we decided to make like locals and take the bus to downtown Oranjestad to walk around. We figured the $0.50 bus ride would be better than a $15 taxi, so we went for it. However, buses in Aruba are not the same as the Metros here in Phoenix. For one thing, the driver didn't speak a bit of English and we don't speak one bit of Dutch (the native language there). And it's not so much a "bus" as it is a van that drives locals around. At one point, the driver was taking back roads and side streets through really run-down industrial parts of town, and we started getting worried that the bus didn't go to downtown at all. We thought they might be taking us to a ghetto little town called St. Nicholas where, as Madi informed us, the "chocolate people" live. Sounds delightful until you realize the people don't make chocolate and Madi was apparently a little racist. So Matt and I start quietly panicking and make a plan to get off at the next stop no matter what. When the bus stopped, we went to jump out and the driver must have seen our confusion. She stopped us and managed to communicate, "No. Stay. Shopping next." Phew! Sure enough, the next stop was the downtown shopping area we wanted to be at. Thank goodness she took pity on us so we weren't wandering around lost all day.

Shopping downtown was ok - nothing too exciting. It was more of a major mall than unique shops like I had been hoping. After a while, we decided to try a restaurant on the pier called Pincho's that we had read about, so we walked about a 1/2 mile up the shore. We were sad to find out that they were only open for dinner, and it was still only about 1:00pm. We were starving, so we walked up the beach further until we came upon a weird little place called Nikki Beach. I thought we were at a hotel, given the pool on the patio and the large building, but apparently it was more of a club. The whole experience there was weird. Everyone there was European (mostly Dutch) and kept confusing Matt and I for Dutch-speakers as well given our fair skin and blonde hair. They moved at a slow pace and were slightly rude, explaining to us "that's the European way." Makes me re-think my aspirations to visit Europe someday soon :)

After a whole day of too much strangeness, we decided to treat ourselves to our fancy dinner for the trip. We had read GREAT reviews about the Screaming Eagle restaurant that was just a short walk on the beach from our hotel. So we made a reservation and headed over. The cool twist to the restaurant is that you can choose to sit at a regular table, or you can sit in their bed area where you have your own private lounging bed with a privacy canopy around it. Up for the experience, we chose to sit in the bed area. It was really fun being served our food on a breakfast in bed tray. And the food was insanely good! Fresh mahi, awesome soup and salad. Since it was our anniversary, they also brought us a decadent dessert with a fun sparkler fireworky thing in it. The whole experience there was great and we went home full and happy.

Eating in bed at the Screaming Eagle

Sparkler in our dessert

Snorkel site

Sailing

Day 5 was our Sail and Snorkel day. We went out on our excursion ship and coasted around the island a bit. It was a gorgeous day and we had a great time sitting on the bow of the ship and feeling the breeze as we sailed. They took us to a few different snorkel sites, the best of which was a sunken ship from the war. It was really neat and kind of eerie to see the ship sitting on the shallow ocean floor with barnacles all over it. There were a lot of fish around there that we had a good time spotting. Matt is the best at finding the unique sea creatures (like eel, octopus). I can only find the colorful ones :) As our boat made its way to our third and final snorkel site, we had an unintended adventure as the boat came in to the cove where we planned to drop anchor. Matt commented that we were coming in pretty fast, and he hoped they were planning to stop before we hit some rocks up ahead. Since this was a sailboat and not a motor-powered one, there would be no way to pull back fast. Sure enough, we slid into the cove and felt a jolt as the bottom side of the ship scraped along the rocks. The crew was visibly upset as they jumped in to asses the damage. Not bad enough to keep us from getting back safely, but you could tell someone would be getting their butt handed to them back at the marina!

Hanging out at Moomba Bar

After our sailing time, we walked up to the high rise area of Palm Beach. There was a lot of activity there, apparently the sand tennis tournament was taking place that week (like volleyball and badminton. But not.) We grabbed lunch at a place called Moomba Bar that my cousin Bridget had suggested, and from there we could watch all of the beach activities taking place. The beaches in that area made us very glad that we had chosen to stay in the low rise area, as they were very crowded and not nearly as relaxing as our Bucuti. That night, we just headed back to our hotel and had burgers on our beach. I could get used to that lifestyle.

Day 6 was nothing more than laying out at the beach, taking a break to dip in our pool or the ocean, then heading back to the beach for more sun. We only broke that routine to grab a quick lunch at Matthew's, and then a quick dinner at Chalet Suisse. The food there was not as nice as the name of the restaurant implied, but not much of our food stacked up after the Screaming Eagle meal. Funny side story: any time we were in the ocean, these crazy ass pelicans would dive into the water at full speed to catch fish. It startled me every time, but one time in particular a bird dove out of nowhere one foot away from my head and scared me so badly I screamed. Matt and the other beach-goers had a good laugh at my expense there :)

Matt hanging out in the ocean

My friend Paco who lived at our hotel. Fun fact about Paco: he screamed "Water" every morning, but his jumbled voice made it sound like he was screaming "Murder" Fun times.

On day 7, we were ready for a little more action, so we headed up the beach to rent some jet skis. Matt drove while I held on and enjoyed the ride. We cruised around for about half an hour, exploring different parts of the island coast. Jet skis are so much fun - we may bite the bullet and just buy some someday. After that and some obligatory beach time, we decided to head to the Palm Beach shops to see what kind of nightlife they had. We ate dinner at a cute place called Taste of Belgium (that had great Belgian waffles!) They also had some live entertainment there that Matt and I shared a good chuckle over. The woman singing had a thick Aruban accent, but was singing very modern pop songs like Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas. Then we walked around the outdoor mall area. Since it was close to Christmas time, a group of native Arubans were putting on a Christmas music show for free in mall amphitheater. We stopped by to listen to that for a while and it was fun, funky and upbeat. We bought our souvenir for the trip at one of the shops, settling on a tree ornament with an iguana on it. I loved seeing all of the lizards all around town on this trip, so I thought it would be a fun way to remember our time here. Back at the hotel, we snuck a bottle of champagne onto the beach and just listened to the waves as we drank to our last night in Aruba.

Belgian waffles

The next morning, we packed up our things and headed down to the beach for one last dip in the water and soak in the sun. On our way back in, we got a fun surprise when we finally encountered a friendly iguana who wasn't afraid of us! In fact, one of the other guests had sat down in the lawn to get a picture of the little guy, and he climbed right up onto his leg to say hi! I told Matt to wait where he was while I ran to our room and grabbed a banana. The iguana liked the look of the treat, so he walked right over to us and proceeded to eat the whole freakin banana! It was adorable and awesome, and I thought it was a fun way to say goodbye to this awesome island.

Our little buddy munching a banana

Matt hand-feeding a wild iguana

We headed home that afternoon and got back to AZ tired and glad to be back in our own bed. And also happy to be reunited with our sweet pup, who had fun being spoiled by my sister for the week. We had such a great time on this trip and made some great memories. I would love to go back to Aruba someday to relax on those beautiful beaches again. But now we are looking forward to our 3rd anniversary trip later this month to Playa del Carmen, Mexico!