Aruba #4

Most of the day yesterday, we spent either at the pool or the beach. We watched the Bush live news conference from the Rose Garden, at lunch, and then back to the outdoor activities. Everyone played poolside bingo, and then Vickie entered the beer drinking contest. She has a method which is guaranteed to never win. First, she doesn’t really even like beer, and second, when they say go she sips the cup and talks about how southern ladies don’t gulp anything. Later Vickie and I walked up the beach to see them pulling in the activity boats for the day. She met a new friend Angel who works on a parasailing boat, and is going to personally look after her when she goes Friday (we think). On the way back, we heard some great music from the vicinity of the beach bar, so investigated. Well it was happy hour(s) and they had a small band playing Caribbean music along with other stuff. The rum punch was 2 for 1 and pretty good, so we stayed. The band later played Under the Boardwalk and Vickie and I shagged in the area in front of the band. You would have thought we were the king and queen of shag, not a Myrtle Beach original and a Yankee gimp. We had quite an appreciative audience. Things progressed from there, and we ended up getting a little “partied up”. On the way back from the beach, they had a fellow cutting up fresh coconuts. He would remove the top with a machete and stick a straw in the top. It was tasty and quite refreshing. I have the coconut in the refrigerator now, and intend to see if I can get to the meat. With Vickie and I well partied, and 2 cruise ships were in town, so we opted to stay up on this end of the island for dinner. We went to the strip down near the other hotels toward Oranjestad (not very far) to a Brick Oven Pizza place Corky knew about. Had beer and some of the best pizza I have tasted in a while. We like our pizza extra thin and crispy, and that’s how they fixed it here. Cooked in a brick oven, it was toasty and good. For dessert we had a most interesting plate of cream puffs (but ice cream was substituted for the cream) drizzled with what else….chocolate. It was delicious. After dinner we wandered around the little shops that are in this strip, and found an Aruba ornament for our Christmas tree. One of the shops had a most magical do dad. It looked like a 3 inch diameter piece of bamboo, sealed on both ends, and about 18 inches long. When you turned it over it made a sound like a rain storm. Too big to get in luggage to carry home, but amazing. Later we watched a little tube and crashed. Needed sleep to prepare for our trip with Vader tomorrow. (Little did we know how much we did need to rest up)

Thursday AM, Corky and I were off to the More 4 Less rental place to get a Jeep. This is the place Vader had recommended and was supposed to have good Jeeps. While standing in the office, discovered the other couple that was there was also going with Vader, and had in the past. Meanwhile, the girls were back at the condo getting things ready. Judy and Vickie made some great sandwiches. We got back to the place, and picked them up with 10 minutes to spare. We headed to the Occidental Hotel where we were supposed to meet Vader and the other couple. Things started to appear a little curious when we got to the hotel and no one was there and no one knew anything about Vader and a Jeep trip. We were just beginning to wonder what was up when he appeared and soon after the other couple. Guess this is the time to say, Vader is this quite an interesting (Dutch lunatic with dog named Cheech) tour guide. Apparently he does many of his operations under the radar of the syndicate that controls much of the tour activity in Aruba. We understood this when he said “if we get stopped, you are just some folks I met on the beach who asked me to show you around”. Meanwhile Cheech had jumped in Judy’s lap, and appeared if he was going to make the trip right there. Vader has been in Aruba for 32 years and has seen the evolution of the tourism industry here. He makes a living doing water sports, snorkeling catamaran trips, and the occasional jeep tour. (he seems to really care about the island, but is also about 50% full of BS) First stop on the tour was the grocery store. Vader gave us each a cooler, and suggested we fix it up with water food and drinks. We got all packed up with some good stuff, and got on the road again. Then it was off to the Texaco station to gas up the Jeeps. I had already done ours. Worth mentioning was how Vader made an appearance at each of the establishments we stopped at. We were guessing he got kick backs from them all for bringing us. After that we were off to the lighthouse end of the island. We did the typical tourist tour stuff at that end of the island, and then skipped on, on paved road, further down the island. Vader said the lighthouse end of the island was nothing but red dust, and nothing to see. We turned off and went to the top of a hill with a big water tower and great view. Then we went on to the little chapel and more great views. Then it was on to the natural bridge (which has fallen down—rumor was it fell from all the traffic vibration during the Natalie Holloway mess). So far we had been on pavement and dirt roads, didn’t even need 4 wheel drive. All the attractions so far were typical tourist stuff. But then when we left the “Thirst Aid Station” (Corky treated us to ice cream bars), instead of going back the road we came on (with the giant tour busses) we turned left. I had noticed some 4 wheelers coming down the side of the big hill across from us on what appeared to be a goat path. That’s where we headed. We were soon in 4 wheel low crawling up the rocks. I soon understood why Vader had hollered “the trip starts here” when we left Thirst Aid. I had seen rock crawling, and the Rubicon type stuff on TV, but I wasn’t sure if I could do it, especially in a basically stock Jeep Wrangler. I was really glad I opted for the manual transmission, because it gives you much better control on the accents and descents. The women were somewhat panic strickened, but after we didn’t rollover on the long rocky side hill accent (Vader congratulated me on my performance), they settled down and were just scared. Of course, they were continually fighting cooler burn (from having the cooler between them in the back seat of a CJ), and trying to juggle drinks, cameras and flying out of the truck. I couldn’t let on to them, but using a Jeep for it’s intended purpose, and actually tackling obstacles that required some driving skill, brains and _alls, was me serving my intended purpose. From that point on, we didn’t see anything but rocky trails and incredible scenery for the rest of the day. I’m sure we saw sights that 90% of the tourists to Aruba never see. We stopped for lunch and a swim at the natural pool. It was quite a hike, down 72 “stairs” from the Jeeps to the pool. Vickie was the only one who thought they could make the climb over the rocks to get in the natural pool. She made it, with the help of one of the young girls in the other Jeep. Coming out, she had to climb, and Vader got behind her and pushed. We climbed back up the “stairs” and remounted our trusty steed. We continued onward for the balance of the afternoon, and ended up at the other end of the island near Baby Beach. At one point Corky commented he thought he had lost at least 20 pounds from all the jigging (like one of those old belt exercise machines). Another time he said all he needed was some milk and ice cream in his stomach, and he could have a milkshake. By that point, we were all covered in dust, and worn slap out. Vader took us on a quick trip through the red light district in San Nicolas. (San Nicolas is a town on the end of the island near the refinery, which consists mostly of bars and brothels). We made our way back to our end of the island, bid Vader farewell, hit the Wendy’s for grub, and back to the condo. Everyone was beat, hungry and dirty. After some showers and grub, the beds looked pretty good. Watched some tube and crashed.