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From the deck of the ship coming in to port

27th of December 2006

We came into Aruba late enough in the day that I was able to take photos of the harbor etc as we came in. I could see the California lighthouse way up north of us in the distance. The Empress of the Seas was at the dock across from where the Crown was last year and there wasn't enough room there for two of us, so they put us down along the side of the terminal building - docked on the port side. The reef line was not too far away on the starboard side of the ship, and we could see planes coming in to the airport just on the other side of the reef.

I could see two Pelican catamarans loading people up at the dock - onewas a motor boat and the other was a sailboat - maybe the same one I took last year. There was also a marina on the other side.

I wanted to see the three lights in Aruba which I had looked up on the internet. I had found this page http://www.thejanskys.org/lighthouse/Other/seroe.html about the Serio Colorado lighthouse, and printed it out, so we were able to show the taxi drivers where we wanted to go. Bob thought that we should get a taxi, but the taxi drivers only wanted to take us to the California lighthouse (named for the wreck of a ship named California) where he went last time. They insisted that there was no lighthouse at Serio Colorado, and that it would take an hour to go down there and an hour to come back. They wanted $40 and hour to take us there and another $40 to bring us back.

In addition to looking up the lighthouses, I had looked up the rental car rates, and we could have pre-booked on the internet for $32/day. But Bob had been against that, even though they drive on the right. When he heard what the taxi drivers wanted, he decided that renting a car was a good idea after all. So we went back to the car rental places at the dock. The first one in the line was Hertz and the lady was saying that she had only one car, a station wagon. Other people who had been asking her apparently wanted a smaller car, and also wanted to keep it to 8 or 9 oclock (the boat didn't leave until 10 pm). So they left.

I asked how much it was ($60) and whether she would give us a AAA discount which was in the AAA book. She said she would give us 5%, and did we want the car. I said yes. The other people came back and were negotiating with her also, and she asked if we were together. I said no. We got the car and they didn't.

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Road signs

We drove south (it is easy to drive along the west side of the island) while I was trying to decipher the road signs. Some were easy to figure out (stop, no left turn), but some were unfamiliar to me. A yellow/orange diamond meant that it was a right-of-way road. A triangle bordered in red with a big black vertical line with a little cross in the middle mean that you have the right of way at the intersection.

I had a little difficulty with the frequently seen signs that had two cars next to each other, the right one black and the left one red. I discovered that this one meant "No passing". And a dark blue circle rimmed in red with a red slash across it was "No Stopping or Parking".

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Scott's Oriole on a pipe organ cactus

First we went around the oil refinery which took up almost the whole west side of the south end of the island. The little town of Serio Colorado was almost completely engulfed by it and we never did get to it. We knew that Baby Beach (so called because the shallow water goes out a long way) was in the area, and we headed in that direction.

When we got to the coast, we saw a large red anchor, and we could see the lighthouse from here, so we headed for it. The road was indeed narrow and surprisingly winding considering that Aruba is such a flat island. It looked like there was a prison on the next peninsula of land. Do lighthouses and prisons go together? Based on Barbados and Aruba you might think so.

It was a very arid area. I saw at least two kinds of lizards - one brown and one a brilliant teal. They were very hard to take a picture of because they moved so fast (as I would if I was barefoot on the hot ground). The rocks were a rusty color - it was almost as though the ground was made of iron which had rusted.

In addition to the pipe organ cactus and the prickly pear cactus there appeared to be two barrel shaped cactus, and we even saw several different birds. One was a dove type bird and the other one looked sort of like a Baltimore oriole in that it had some orange on it.

When we came back to the big red anchor, we saw people kite surfing. We saw signs for a model train museum, but we didn't stop. It was getting to be noon and I wanted something to eat.

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ATV riders near the Natural Bridge

I would have directed Bob to drive along the east side of the island, but there appears to be is no road there, and there wasn't much in the way of habitation on the south or east side. Bob remembered that there was a little food place by the old Natural Bridge, so we headed over that way.

The road was rough and unpaved. At one point a bus was coming toward us and it disappeared into a big dip in the road. The landscape was rocky and barren, and there was a lot of surf on the shore. We saw various packs of ATVs.

Bob parked and said he was going to use the bathroom (which cost 25 cents) and I wandered along the shore and took pictures of the surf and the smaller natural bridge. Then we both went into the shop at "Thirst Aid". I got a kind of meat pastry, and Bob got a "finger dog" (a hot dog inside dough for $1) and a pineapple drink which was carbonated. This cost us under $6.00. We ate at a table inside which was next to a large parrot - people stood and had their pictures taken with the parrot.

We passed the Bushirbana ruins (Bob stopped there on the trip last year and he said there was nothing to see), and the Gold Mine Ranch and the Ostrich Farm. The latter might have been interesting, but I didn't was to pay $15 each to see it.

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Boating near the California Lighthouse

After lunch and the visit to the Ex-Natural Bridge, we went to the California lighthouse, and I took several photos of it from various angles and also of the surrounding countryside.

On the way back along the shore, we stopped so I could take pictures of all the kinds of boats that were there snorkeling or sailing. We saw the old windmill which is now a restaurant in the distance - I had originally thought we might eat there or at the California lighthouse.

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Road back to town

Then we went back to town. After one attempt to park in what turned out to be a gated lot where you needed a password, we parked and walked over to Fort Zoutman, Willem III Tower, and Museo Arubano. This is the oldest bit of Dutch architecture on the island. The Fort was completed in 1796 and was named after a Dutch Rear Admiral who had outwitted a British convoy on the North Sea during the 4th British War, the tower is situated on what was then the shoreline and is armed with four cannons.

The Willem III Tower was added in 1868 with Aruba's first public clock and originally served as a lighthouse equipped with a spire and petrol lamp and to sight pirates.

It was not open, even though it was within the hours that were listed for it to be open. There were no signs to indicated that it was a museum or to show why it was not open. I am guessing that it was closed because of Christmas week. So we walked around the fort once, and then drove around Orenjestad a little bit - past the parliament, Wilhelmina Park, and a bunch of casinos and shopping malls.

We decided to turn the car in although it was only 2 pm because we were tired, so we went to a gas station - no self service here. The gas was priced in liters. The man put the nozzle in the gas tank and went to see to someone else, and it cut off. He put some more in and then we paid him $11.00. But when we turned the car on again, the gauge went from 3/4 full to under half full.

We put the car back in the parking lot, and then went to find the Hertz lady, but she wasn't there. We had to go to the car gate (there were separate gates for cars and for people) and have the guard phone her. She was there in about 15 minutes and tried to persuade us to keep the car the rest of the day, but I was too tired. So we turned it in. The gas gauge showed wildly varying levels of fill, but she decided to take our word for it that it was pretty much full.

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Sunset through the curtains in the dining room

We went back to the ship and I went swimming in the outside pool.

When we went to dinner, we could see the Empress behind us, and also the sun setting.

Tomorrow Curacao