Aruba – Thursday, October 8, 2015

We set our wake up call for 6:00 AM this morning so that we could get an early start for our self conducted adventure on Aruba. The ship was docking in the city of Orangestad. The plan for the day is to take a City bus to a beach on the northern end of the island called Arashi Beach.

We had read form some online posts that the snorkeling here was really good, and that the bus dropped you off right in the parking lot for the beach. We were planning to get off of the ship soon after our 7:00 AM arrival, but we just took a little longer than planned to get ready, go to breakfast, and gather up all of our gear.

Information we had from online posts indicated that the bus station was really close to the port. We could actually see some buses lined up in a parking area from an outside deck on the ship that we visited after eating breakfast at the buffet.  However, it did not really look like a “station”, just an open lot, so we were not sure if this was the station or not.  Some of the lot was partially obscured by buildings, making it difficult to be sure it was the station, but it was in the general location shown on a map we had of the town.

We had heard that Arashi Beach was pretty remote, and there were not a lot of facilities there, so we were a little concerned about leaving any valuables on the beach while we were snorkeling. We took our waterproof pouches for our money, ID and credit card, and only took the snorkel gear bag and small underwater camera. Normally, Stephanie also takes a backpack for other camera gear, but we opted to be on the conservative side and minimize what we would be leaving on the beach while we were snorkeling.

With everything finally packed we were off of the ship at about 7:30 AM and headed into town to where we thought the bus station was located. It was only about a two block walk, and we arrived in the area we had seen from the ship, which was indeed the station. There was no terminal, just a small ticket booth and some marked lanes for the various bus route pick up locations, with signs showing the bus route timetables and route designations.

We purchased two “return” tickets, normally what we would describe as a round trip ticket. The tickets were plastic cards that were loaded with the fare amount and read by an automated machine on the bus when you got on. The fare for the two tickets was $8.00. We went over to the lane designated for the 10A Bus Route, and waited about 15 minutes for the bus to arrive at the 8:15 AM scheduled time.

There were several other cruise passengers getting on this bus with snorkel gear. The 10A bus stops at several beaches on the way to northern end of the island, and also passes by the area of Aruba where many of the major hotels are located.

By the time we left, the bus was pretty full. It was about a 30 minute ride to the Arashi Beach, which was the final stop on the route, and we were the only two cruise passengers left on the bus when we got there, along with one other local person. The information I had gotten off of the internet was obviously old, the beach had many thatched roof stands built to provide shade, and was a lot more developed that we had read. There were quite a few people already at the beach there when we arrived. Unfortunately, with the wind today, the water did not look clear, and the area we read about for snorkeling was quite a distance from the beach, it was a designated boat mooring buoy, much farther out than we were comfortable going, especially with the wind that was blowing.

There was a large lighthouse on a hill on the very northern tip of the island that we could see from the parking lot for the Arashi Beach, so we opted to walk to that instead of snorkeling. It was not far away, but we found out that the road to get there went a fairly long way around, actually past the lighthouse and then back around to the back side. It took us about 25 minutes to walk to the lighthouse, and several tour buses past us as we walked on the road.

The lighthouse was not in operation and did not appear to be open to climb up into, but the views of the area from the top of the hill were quite nice. The northern shore of Aruba we could see from the top of the hill was more rugged than the protected beach areas, it was the prevailing wind side of the island and we could see waves crashing into the shore form the high winds.

On the walk there, we had also seen a building up by the lighthouse that had a stairway going down to the bottom of the hill, but we had never seen any trail or road going to the building or the stairs.

Once we got to the lighthouse, we found out that the building had once been the lighthouse keeper’s residence, but had been converted into a restaurant. Stephanie needed to use their restroom, so we went inside.

The entire area on this part of Aruba is mostly sort of a desert, with tall cacti and some of the thorny bushes we had seen on Antigua.

We asked people at the restaurant if there was a short cut through the natural vegetation to get back to the Arashi Beach, and found out that there was.  One of the persons who worked there walked from the Arashi Beach bus stop to the restaurant everyday. We actually found out that he had been the other person who had gotten off the bus with us, and he also recognized us from the bus. He gave us some directions of how to get through a fence, around some of the bushy areas, and through to the road, through another open section of fence.

Apparently the property for the short cut was owned by a golf course resort, and we could see part of the course from the restaurant. After using the restroom, which cost $1, we headed down the steps and out into the “desert”. The instructions were quite precise, “go left through the opening in the fence, go to the clearing, follow this trail to the two cacti, go right, follow another trail to that clearing and find the opening in the fence to get back out to the main road”, or something like that.

It was actually pretty easy, we made it without any issues, and it only took about 5 minutes instead of the 25 minutes it had taken to get there.

The man at the restaurant also suggested another beach for snorkeling, which was only a short walk from the Arashi Beach, but more protected from the wind. We got to that beach, and there were quite a few people already snorkeling there, so we gout out our snorkel gear and headed into the water.

The visibility was pretty good, and the number of fish we saw was amazing. We also saw many of the large starfish on some areas of the bottom that were sandy. We saw a moray eel and even a small flounder, which was much lighter in color than any I had ever seen, it was almost white with purple rings, and blended into the sand quite well.

We snorkeled for about an hour, and headed back to shore. Several boats full of people on snorkel tours began to show up, so we did not want to be out there with that many people. Had the conditions been better, as in less windy, we would have ventured farther out away from the shore into deeper and clearer water, but there was quite a chop on the water so we had stayed closer in.

After we finished snorkeling, we packed up our gear, and headed to the bus stop to catch the bus back to Orangestad.

The bus was scheduled to be here about five minutes before each hour, and it arrived right on time. We were waiting with another couple from the ship who had initially paid a taxi $30 to get to this beach this morning, but were now opting to ride back on the bus. The bus system, buses and schedule were much better than we had experienced on any of the previous islands on this trip.

We rode back into Orangestad, to the same bus station we had left from this morning, and walked back to the ship to drop off our snorkel gear and get some lunch. It was about 12:30 PM, and we had enjoyed the morning.

After lunch, we headed back into town to look at some of the shops. There were local vendors set up in small shacks along the waterfront, and then regular souvenir shops, and other typical port shops in the buildings across the street.

We headed back to the ship and spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing on our balcony, enjoying some refreshments, and watching the people walk back to the ship. It is amazing how out of shape some people are, severely overweight, and it was painful to see them hobble along in the heat walking back to the ship.

Everyone made it back on time today, and we left on time at about 4:30 PM. It had been a nice day in Aruba, and we definitely would enjoy visiting here again. Next time, we would consider renting a jeep and exploring more of the island. At least the driving is normal, on the left, not like many of the other islands we visited that were influenced by the British, where the driving is on the right. Although we could have done more today since the buses had been much more efficient than others we had taken on the trip, we had done a lot and were tired at the end of the day.

We got ready for dinner and finally made it to one of the special evening receptions for Elite members of the Captain’s Circle Club, held between 5:00 and 7:00 PM everyday. It featured boiled shrimp, which was good. We took some of our own wine, but found out that they have some drink specials for reduced pricing at the reception.  We have tried to go to this special reception on other cruises, but it is earlier in the day than we normally are able or want to get ready.

Afterward, we headed to the Vines wine bar and used a free coupon we had gotten on the last cruise from our travel agent that was for a free small bottle (350ml) of wine.  The coupon was supposed to be used with a specialty dinner, but our favorite bartender there, Russell, got it for us anyway. It was just large enough for a couple of glasses, but it was good.

We headed to the buffet for dinner, which was really good. We were too tired for the dining room tonight, and had it was the same menu they used for one of the nights from the first cruise when we had gone to the dining room.

We headed back to the room after dinner to get another glass of our own wine. We turned on the TV and started watching the President’s Cup Golf Tournament, and it was not long before we both started napping. It had been a full day, and we were tired, so we just stayed in the rest of the night.

We have two sea days left before we get back to Ft. Lauderdale on Sunday morning. Hopefully, we will have some time to add pictures to both the posts and the photo albums. It has been a hard trip to keep up with the blog with all of the consecutive port days.