Last Aruba pics

Okay I have plenty more but don't want to bore all of you to tears.

Here is a cave that has early Indian cave paintings!!



The Cave paintings


We took a sunset cruise on another day...
Here is the 40 FT Catamaran


The view to shore

Here we are on it...



the sunset...

Some more Aruba

Okay - So we can keep on moving. So the next place we went to was the Ostrich farm. Just so you know, Ostriches are not my favorite thing. They're huge and they look like they'd poke out your eyes if you looked at them twice, and that killing you comes to them as natural as breathing.

So it took me the time it took about 5 other tourists to feed them to decide I would try it myself. You can notice this is not my natural smile, :).

But the babies are soooo fluffy and cute!


Then on the drive to the natural pool, we saw some sights:

Some wild Donkeys:

We went by htese big rocks. These are odd rocks in that Aruba is a volcanic island, and should not have htese kind of rocks on it. Naturalists do not understand how these rocks came to be on Aruba! Mysterious!


This crazy ranch with these weird huge plastic animals (like you'd see on a mini-golf course or something) and it had these catci fences. It was bizaro.

Then we took this insane dirt road. For about 45 minutes it was pretty scary. I was really worried people that people fall out the back. It was a little nuts. I'm glad I was not driving.

So you can see what the people in the other jeeps... but can you see the road below? No. Neither could we.

And here is Harland driving along a cliff.


But what we were driving to was sooo worth it. We went to the natural pool It was so beautiful. There was this circle of rocks where the waves would break over them, and it was like swiming in waterfalls. The water was clear and there were all kids of beautiful fish swimming in the pool. You can see the pool in the middle of the picture if you look closely.

The tour - take 1

On Wednesday we took a tour of the Island... but since I took sooo many pictures I'll have to break this down a bit.

We took a tour with ABC Jeep Tour. It was a good tour, interestingly, Harland got to drive one of these old Land ROvers. I'm pretty sure these wouldn't fly in the US. For one reason having a member of the the tour drive around 7 other tour members around just wouldn't work.

Anyway, Here is a picture of us in the Jeep.

One of the Shipwreck.


One of the California Lighthouse.

Of the Alto Vista Chapel.


Of some rocks.


We took a stop at the Gold Mines... But we didn't see any gold.




And we also stopped at the natural Bridge. The old one, which was the biggest in the Carribean collapsed in 2005, but there is another one next to it.





It was also nice to see what the "wild side" beach looked like.

Aruba - beach

When people ask about your vacation, they always want to know about your hotel and the Beach. As for the Bucuti, it was awesome and the people were great, the staff was the friendliest I have ever seen, and they were extremely environmentally friendly. And they happen to be on the best area of the Eagle Beach. No one could ask for any more than that.




We had pretty much the same view from our room.





Here is a pic of the restaurant and also of an Iguana. There were 3 or 4 around the area of the hotel, and this green guy was rather large, at least 2 feet long! He made me nervous one day when we were cozying up to the "Sandbar" taking advantage of happy hour. All the sudden there he was at our feet!




I'm afraid I won't have time to blog tomorrow, but on Friday or over the weekend, I'll have pictures for you from our tour of the Island... don't miss it!

Aruba - days 1 and 2

Okay so day one was really just us schlepping from the airport to the hotel (Bucuti) and chilling out, then eating at the hotel restaurant (the Pirate's Nest). I had the Keshi Yena which is a traditional Aruba dish, and the version at the Pirate's Nest was vegetarian. It was really delicious. Of course now that I'm at home I realize I should have begged for that recipe, since usually it is cooked with chicken or fish and the recipes don't really sound like what I ate at all. I have a few recipes that kinda seem similar, I think when H. is gone I'll work on trying to get a good veggie recipe created.

I mean you're not surprised I'll likely go back to being vegetarian once he's outta the house, right?! And this will keep me busy. Hahaha.

Anyway, so I took some pictures of the hotel but because it was overcast, they're not the best ones of the group. I'll show you more of the hotel later.

We did catch a wee bit of a sunset that poked through.


The next day was a little nicer. Here is the view from our room and also a shot of some of the dragonflies. Every morning there were hundreds outside of our door then by mid morning they disappeared. Very fun to watch.

We then checked out the Butterfly Farm. Here are some pictures from there.








These ugly, 5 inch caterpillars are Owl Butterfly caterpillars. They're so impressively huge and ugly. Apparently they'll just crawl away and cocoon! Did you know that when they cocoon, all their organs turn to liquid and everything re-forms into a butterfly! How crazy is that?

Also Aruba is known for the fact that it rarely rains! So there are a lot of cacti.
We're special in the fact that we went there when they had rain! Lucky Us!


Then that night we went to a pretty decent Cuban restaurant called Cuba's Cookin. They had a free mojito coupon, which I highly recommend taking with you! And also - it is best to take some one with you who doesn't like them - then you can drink theirs too! I highly recommend doing that. And ordering the Ropa Vieja.