Wednesday

December 6, 2008 Maurice 1 Comment

Sorry, but I’m posting this on Saturday! We’ve been busy doing the tourist thing – shopping, laying on the beach, swimming, eating….

But Tuesday night there was a big tropical downpour, and it lasted almost 20 minutes! Man – talk about a deluge! It made the ocean kinda cloudy and the snorkeling wasn’t great, so we made the tour around the island again, catching Charlie’s Bar.

It’s quite a place – it’s in the refinery town of San Nicolas and it’s worth the drive to experience the place. People from all over leave, or send, memorabilia and it’s quite the pile of stuff in there. You could spend three days just checking it out.

Unfortunately, we forgot our money, and we’d ordered and ate lunch and couldn’t pay so Charlie put us to work behind the bar for a couple hours.

We snorkelled Baby Beach again, but it was fairly cloudy from all the storm stirring things up.

——

Yes Mike arrives today (Saturday) – we change condos, moving close to the beach this morning. Yes the camera we bought on the internet arrived the morning we left. Some pics on the site are from the new one. My Olympus died – got some water in it and that’s that. So – I bought the new model here, and we’ll have some pics from it up tomorrow – it’s a 10.1 megapixel camera, and can be underwater to 100 feet, versus only 10 feet from my other one.

I’ll have more to post today – Thursday we were on De Palm Island and it’s great – I’ll save the details for later.

OH – BTW – if you click the GALLERIES link on the top menu, you can select the Aruba gallery to see all the pics i’ve uploaded. Most I’ve put into posts, but some I didn’t. It’s a cool slideshow anyway…. (you can even make it full screen to view them in the slideshow.)

$Piet\'s Bar$

$Stuff in Charlie\'s Bar$ $The exterior of Charlie\'s Bar$ $Inside Charlie\'s$ $Charlie\'s bartenders.$ $Sign in Charlie\'s$

Pretty flower near the California Lighthouse

This ballyhoo is snacking on a french fry!

Aruba, Vacations

If it's Tuesday, it must be Baby Beach

December 3, 2008 Maurice 4 Comments

Yesterday we had explored the north side of the island, with the California Lighthouse. Today, (Tuesday) we took in the South End of the island, with the small town of San Nicolas which has an oil refinery. I was under the impression the refinery had stopped producing in 1985, but it sure looked busy!

The south coast sure takes a beating from the waves, and because of the volcanic nature of the island, the waves sculpt the earth with the constant pounding. There are rock formations, created that are almost works of art! There are a number of “bridges” around where the ocean has worn away the lower sections. One for which Aruba is/was famous for has collapsed.

The undulating topography of Aruba is in stark contrast to the flatness of the Caymans. One could even say there is a mountain on this island! There are a number of cliffs where the views down into the crashing surf are quite amazing.

After chasing geckos and looking for places to shoot the surf, we took a dip in Baby Beach.

It’s a very busy beach, the most crowded I’ve ever seen down here! And it’s little wonder – there is a naturally protected bay, with beautiful white sand that is quite shallow. It is sandy for quite a while. As you get closer to where the ocean enters the bay, suddenly TONS of fish fill your space!

The ocean rushes into the bay at the point, and comes over some very shallow areas. The fish just sort of hang around the rushing water, and drift with the waves. The bad thing, is that the speed of the water stirs up the sand, and it creates a “haze” in the water that makes it tough to get a good clear shot.

We did see some cool fish – trumpetfish, houndfish, stoplight parrotfish, tons of stuff. We even saw a little trunkfish, but he took off before I could get his pic. There were a couple of houndfish, and either a needlefish or a ballyhoo.

I’d read quite a bit about Baby Beach, and people complained it was too crowded, too this or too that – take it from me – what Baby Beach is, is a place to go for a cool swim, to see some cool fish, and to be with people. If you’re looking for a quiet place to get away, then this is not the beach to be!

We made our way back downtown and had dinner in an ultra cool restaurant called the Buccanneer. It’s made to resemble a sunken galleon in one dining room, with aquariums lining the walls. There are all sorts of cool memorabilia along the walls, too.

The other dining room is dominated by 7500 gallon tank with 3 large sea turtles! I want to swim with one of those suckers! They also had a couple of barracuda closed off from the main inhabitants of the big tank.

Definitely a nice finish to the day!

Aruba

If it’s Tuesday, it must be Baby Beach

December 3, 2008 Maurice 4 Comments

The south coast sure takes a beating from the waves, and because of the volcanic nature of the island, the waves sculpt the earth with the constant pounding. There are rock formations, created that are almost works of art! There are a number of “bridges” around where the ocean has worn away the lower sections. One for which Aruba is/was famous for has collapsed.

After chasing geckos and looking for places to shoot the surf, we took a dip in Baby Beach.

I’d read quite a bit about Baby beach, and people complained it was too crowded, too this or too that – take it from me – what Baby beach is, is a place to go for a cool swim, to see some cool fish, and to be with people. If you’re looking for a quiet place to get away, then this is not the beach to be!

Definitely a nice finish to the day!

Aruba, Vacations

Monday in Aruba

December 2, 2008 Maurice 1 Comment

We took it easy on Monday, taking a look around Oranjestaad, the main city on Aruba. It’s quite a neat little town, with lots of different architectural styles. The mall kind of looks like a wedding cake, done up in raspberry sherbet, with lots of levels, and layers, with little figurines and creatures everywhere!

Click on the panorama, and see a larger version of the picture – there is quite a bit of detail in it.

We had lunch at Iguana Joes, a kind of open air restaurant/bar that is very popular in these warmer climates. The food was pretty good. But it was more fun to sit on the second level and watch the traffic go by… tons of De Palm Tour buses, seemingly one for every ten people on the island!

But there are lots of horns going off, and people running yellow lights, and pretending not to see pedestrians walk across the street. There are already eighteen dead in traffic accidents here, with a population of barely 100,000, so you can imagine how poor the drivers are!

We checked out the local Harley dealer – only 165 a day to rent one. Gotta say, the new flat black paint job on the Harleys look terrible. The kid’s sized Harley on a rocker were cute as heck tho!

We stopped off at the local market and picked up some things to make for dinner. Then we came home for a swim and had dinner at Coco Locos instead!

There are two pools here, and two hot tubs. Each hot tub is in a Romanesque pergola, surrounded by statues like Venus on the half shell, Neptune with his trident and cherubs. It`s a very attractive complex.

Note the cruelty of my wife – dumping me on my butt in the pool…

Aruba, Vacations

Sunday in Aruba

December 1, 2008 Maurice Leave a comment

Today – Sunday – we spent some time in the water, and some time doing a little exploring. We headed north to the California Lighthouse, but stopped for a swim at Malmok beach. The water was good and clear today, and we saw a number of fish we had not seen in the Caymans.

The water seems a tad cooler to me, than last year in the Caymans – not that it is difficult to get in or anything – it’s still warm enough to walk right in, but I do think it’s cooler. Some of the fish seem bigger too. The ubiquitous Sergeant Major seems to be fatter here! Maybe more tourists feed them! hah

After about 90 minutes in the water, we headed to the California Lighthouse for a beer and a rest. The view from here is pretty good. Aruba is not as flat as the Caymans, but it’s not like it has towering peaks, either!

After our rest, we headed back into the ocean at Arashi beach. It was a little rocky getting in, but man, was it worth it! We saw some Carribbean reef squid – very cool looking beasties that travel in schools of 20 or more. Big eyes and kinda alien looking. We also saw what we initially thought was a sea snake of some sort, but turned out to be a type of eel.

The coolest thing tho, was seeing some French Angelfish! In the Caymans, we bought a photo by a local favorite diver/photographer of the French Angelfish, but we never actually saw it in the water. Here in Aruba, we’ve seen at least a half dozen already.

For dinner, we headed to the Amazonia Churrascaria (steakhouse). It was quite an experience. There are no menus – they start you off with a big salad bar, and some pumpkin soup. Then they give you a little wooden peg, painted red and green. Put the green side up, and you’re going to get meat! They bring around meat, meat and more meat skewered on swords – if you want some, he cuts you off some. There was steak, and porterhouse, and filet, beef roasts, pork roasts, chicken, sausages, lamb…. you name it, it was there! Quite an experience!

Then we came home and lounged in the swimming pool and hot tub for a while. We ended the evening listening to some karaoke in the pool bar. It was lots of fun, with some real talent there… Simon Cowell better get his butt down to Aruba!