I've been back from my vacation for a couple days, but I've been too lazy to write anything about my vacation. I was going to write a TON of stuff for this, but really, who wants to read pages and pages about my Aruba vacation? I'll just give a couple of the highlights.

- Where do we go for our first meal in Aruba? Pizza Hut! Our second meal? McDonald's! After that, we had some other kinds of food, like the Caribbean place, the Argentinian place and the Filipino place. However, I don't understand why we had to go have Filipino food since we eat it all the time, but hey, Filipino parents are weird like that!

- We went on vacation with Dave's parents. Dave's mom works for an airline, so we got a pretty great deal on the airfare and rode first class on the way down to Aruba.

- This whole Natalie Holloway thing is giving Aruba a bad rep. It's a shame that the girl is missing, but Aruba is actually a very safe and clean island. There's police patrolling at night, and the streets are clean, with garbage cans on every block. We were talking to a couple of the locals and they told us that you could walk from one part of the island to another without having to worry, that they never lock their doors at night.

- On the license plates in Aruba, it says "one Friendly Island", and it definitely is. Anyone who was a local was extremely nice and nice to talk to. People seemed genuinely happy.

- Iguanas run wild in Aruba. It's pretty cool. I was tempted to pick them up, put them on my shoulders and rub their chins, but I don't know how much a wild iguana would like that.

- Our hotel had it's own private island that a shuttle would take us to. It was pretty cool - not packed, the food was great, the water not too cold and there was good snorkeling around the edges. Iguanas, pelicans, hermit crabs and flamingos were all over the place.

- During one day on our island, they were having some sort of bikini shoot. Models and photographers were all over the place, and Dave and his dad were in heaven! Another bonus for Dave and his dad? Topless sunbathers. Though some of them were older women, there were several young, buxom women who were sunbathing topless and provided the men with plenty of eye candy.

- Dave and I went snorkeling on our own a couple times. I don't know how to swim, but I can snorkel pretty well. However, I have this fear of the water (mostly of big things under the water) and there were times when I'd see some really big fish and I'd have a mini panic attack underwater. I really had to pay attention to regulating my breathing so I didn't start flailing around. Snorkeling is fun and it's cool to see the pretty fish, but sometimes my imagination takes control and Jaws is just around the corner.

- I really wanted to go to the Butterfly Farm that was on the island, but knew that no one else would want to go. I decided to take a bus to get there, since taking a taxi would cost some money. Because of the whole Natalie Holloway thing, Dave and his parents told me not to go, but I convinced them that I'll be on public transportation during the day, and I wasn't going far. So I had my own little adventure on the bus with the locals, looking for the butterfly farm. I overshot it on the bus and went to the Wyndham to ask for directions. Turns out that they had a power outage there, so their workers were walking around with flashlights. It was pretty cool. They told me I missed the farm by about a quarter of a mile, so I had to walk down the road. During my walk I encountered several iguanas, one that was as big as Godzilla. It was pretty intimidating! But I finally got to the farm and took tons of pictures and learned about the life cycle of several butterflies. Of course, I took a ton of pictures. It was cool.

- We also went parasailing in Aruba (where you're riding behind a speedboat in a parachute). We took a speedboat shuttle to another speedboat, and had to do one of those "jump from one boat to another" deals. I pretended I was an international spy, jumping from our shuttle to the main boat - even though they were right next to each other. However, it was so windy up there that I got a little motion sick - I didn't throw up or anything, but I definitely got a headache. Dave did, too, which accounted for the lack of conversation while we were up there. But it was really awesome to fly up so high above the island, so high that we could see the other coast of the island and the Caribbean waters past it. Flying above the waters we could see the different coral formations and the blue waters. I even saw a turtle swimming by. Parasailing was a cool experience, except for the motionsickness part.

- There was a thunderstorm in Aruba during our vacation. Aruba's a desert, and outside of the hurricane belt, so they don't get too much rain. But as soon as I saw lightning and that telltale smell of coming rain, I knew it was going to be a good storm. It rained, hard and in buckets. I was thinking that the rest of our vacation was ruined. But then, it stopped after 15 minutes and that was it!

- It also rained on our first day. The sun was shining (and let me tell you, it was HOT since we were so close to the equator) and I was tanning on the island (because if you've ever seen my Redpac-white legs, you know I'd need it). I saw several dark clouds come in, and the sun was in and out for a couple hours. Then, as I was wondering if my skin was hot enough to cook eggs because the sun was so bright, it started to rain. Just a couple drops at first. Nothing to bother me too much. That, and the sun was still out. But then it was a pretty steady rain. A steady, cool rain. The surprising thing was that the sun was still out, in full force. The rainclouds were to the side of the sun. I looked at my fellow sunbathers and they just stayed where they were. So I just lay there, catching my rays while getting drenched (and cooled off) by the rain. It was a pretty weird experience.

- The waters of Aruba are so clear that you could be in neck deep water and still see your toes.

- There were people from all over the world visiting Aruba. I heard people speaking Japanese, Dutch (Aruba's official language is Dutch), Australian, Spanish and all sorts of other

- Dave's dad and I went to go see the show "Let's Go Latin" one night. Dave and his mother were too flakey to go. It was a really entertaining show, with acrobats and lots of dancing girls in fantastic costumes. The singers had amazing voices, singing the hits of Gloria Estefan, Celia Cruz, Jennifer Lopez, Cheyenne and Ricky Martin.

- I did a bit of shopping, mostly for souvenirs. The cool thing is that even though the official currency of Aruba is the florin, they accept US currency also. One US dollar equals 1.75 in Aruban florins. So it was weird to go to McDonalds and see that a sundae costs 2.70. However, that only translates to about $1.50 in US money, which isn't too bad. However, I was running out of reading material and I wanted to buy a magazine. I picked up a copy of "Marie Claire" and the price on the cover said $3.50. I went up to the counter and she told me it costs $8. I asked her if it was florins, but she said, "No, dollars" Turns out that magazines cost a bit more out there. Bah! I didn't end up buying it.

That's about it for my vacation. We spent most of our time on the beaches rather than touring the island. Aruba has some beautiful white sand beaches that aren't crowded at all. It was very relaxing, and just what I needed after all the stress I've been under. I would definitely go there again, and probably will, since Dave has named it "My favorite place for beaches". I think it's because of the topless sunbathers and models on the beach. *wink*

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To check out my pictures from the vacation, just click here.

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Thanks to my awesome crew of guest posters for holding up the fort! You guys rock.

Posted by Yano at August 22, 2005 06:48 AM

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