Jan 17 - Aruba
Aruba was an interesting island -though entirely too over-the-top Vegas-style commercial for me. Well.. half the island anyway - the north side of the island is a completely different story. Best described as moon-like terrain, a jeep is definitely the only way to travel on the north side of the islands where there are no roads and boulders at every turn. We woke and looked out the veranda on a sandbar which was a little odd, but very cool.
We didn’t plan an excursion for this island - I had my travel book and had my heart set on climbing Mt. Hooiberg which is a haystack shaped mountain near the southern/middle of the island. So we threw caution to the wind and rented a jeep. The jeep wound up being standard - and I being the better standard driver, got the opportunity to go off-roading! M was awfully brave!
We first made our way to the California lighthouse named for the USS California which sunk off the shores of Aruba many years ago. The lighthouse is very, very tall and quite a bit inland compared the lighthouses of New England. Aruba is a mostly flat island though so I’m sure it’s very visible from quite far away. We also caught a glimpse here of the Troupial - a beautiful orange and black bird.
After the lighthouse we headed “off-road” onto the dirt like roads of the northern side of the island. We didn’t encounter very many other people which gave us even more of a moon-like impression. We were making our way to the Alto Vista Chapel which sits in the middle of nothing but dessert. We stopped a few times along the way unable to resist the thundering waves which made the waters seem slightly unfriendly. At first glance, I thought we were seeing bike tracks in the sand, but we’re pretty sure they were snake tracks. Could they have belonged to this rare and elusive inhabitant? We arrived at the Chapel just as a group was leaving so we had some time to get some great shots without anyone else around - which was exactly what we needed after having so many excursions with our fellow travelers.
After the chapel, we made our way to the Ayo and Casibari Rock Formations. Another free attraction on the island, the park is quite beautiful though we didn’t get to climb much due to the thousands of wasps swarming the caves of Casibari. We did get some amazing pictures of the Indian Drawings however and climbed that rock to get a great view of the island and Casibari. From this angle - the main formation of Casibari looks like a giant shark cresting out of the water. We also caught some more birds here, the Caribbean or Brown-throated Parakeet (green bodies) and the Tropical Mocking Bird. Again we were alone at this park which was heaven.
Finally it was time to head to Hooiberg. We made our way there, thankfully you can see it from almost all points on the island so it wasn’t too hard to find! Hooiberg is over 500ft. high and has 561 cement steps along it’s side. This is helpful because the rest of the mountain is covered with cacti! We encountered several friendly whiptail lizard. One particularly brave male climbed over my foot and almost onto M’s back!
Once we regained our breath from hiking up all those stairs (thighs definitely felt the burn!) we walked to the other side of the peak and could just barely make out the coast of Venezuela - which was exactly why I wanted to climb Hooiberg to begin with. We also got a great view of the whole island, including out ship docked at Oranjestad.
After climbing back down all those steps we had a great lunch and headed back towards the ship. We explored the shopping district a bit - but it was very commercial and definitely had a Vegas vibe to it with it’s flashy casinos and desert-like ambiance.
Tags: caribbean 2009