Here’s to you from sunny Aruba! We found out immediately why Aruba is so popular with Americans. Everyone speaks English. You can use dollars anywhere. And it has every American chain restaurant imaginable. You might as well be in Cleveland under a sun lamp.
Except…the beach really is beautiful. The ocean is calm (and warm) as a bathtub. And if you get really bored, you can play with the birds – there are parrots, macaws, toucans, etc. in cages around the pool – who love to be petted. I’m half expecting to die of bird flu because I forgot to wash my hands before eating, after giving a full-body massage to the cockatoo.
In spite of being so geared toward American tourists (and we’ve seen, or should I say heard, an inordinate number from New York city), Aruba is perhaps the most fascinating mélange of languages and cultures I’ve seen. All the streets and place names could have come straight from Amsterdam: our hotel is near the town of Noord, the main street in Oranjestad is Wilhelminastraat, the airport is named for Queen Beatrix. The people speak a creole that seems to be based largely on Spanish, with a touch of Dutch: “danki” is “thank-you”. In addition to creole, most Arubans seem to speak Spanish and English, but I have yet to hear anyone speaking Dutch. (I hear Russian all the time, however.) The people who live here, as well as the hotel guests, are of every race and color. All the supermarkets and most of the restaurants seem to be owned by Chinese, and Chinese characters are on many of the signs. When we asked the taxi driver to recommend a restaurant that Americans don’t go to but the locals frequent, he laughed and said, “We all go out for Chinese food.” And now that we’ve tried the local cuisine, I’m sorry to say, we understand why! But we’ll give a thumbs up to the Balashi beer.
From: Allen
We've scoured the place for good restaurants. Forget the ones in the hotel! Went to a seafood restaurant last night that was decent. Tonight, we'll head outside to an Italian restaurant and this was recommended highly by the concierge but I don't have much hope that it will be great--I'll settle for okay at this point. Went snorkeling with Diana today -- that is, she rented the equipment and hauled my fat butt out to the place where all the fish were hiding and then I went under to look at them and have them look back at me. I think I've probably wiped out half the next generation of tropical fish here by frightening the heck out of them. Diana also rented a raft for me to float around on. Tomorrow, we head out in jeeps on a kind of tour of the highlights of the island. I think we'll see a refinery and the whorehouses of the small town called San Nicolas which really has mostly bars and, yes, whorehouses. We went there the other night and the bus driver leaves us off at this seedy neighborhood saying this is where we should come back to pick up the return bus. We walked about 6 blocks and saw probably some trannies (transvestites to the un-washed) and some hos etc. which were not worth the money, not to say I spent any, just an observation. So, we high-tailed it back to the bus stop and rode home. I mean, what else was there to see after that? Bye.
