Jerry was up early and went to the upper deck to see us come into port. He was armed with his video camera and his digital still camera.
After we docked Jerry had breakfast and then came back to the cabin. We got ready and headed down to the fourth floor to disembark. We then headed into the terminal and found our spot for the Aruba by Land and Sea tour.
We boarded a bus and toured the island which isn't very large at all. We had an awesome tour guide/driver, Angela. She did a great job and was very funny on top of everything. It is much drier than I anticipated and had cacti all over the place. I thought I was in New Mexico again!
It is arid here on Aruba. They get an average of 17 inches of rain per year. There were a lot of cacti all over the island and the green
Angela pointed out Haystack Hill that has numerous steps to the top and then you can see all the way to Venezuela which is 20 miles away.
Jerry climbed to the top of a bunch of rocks and took pictures from there instead. It was like a mini version of the City of Rocks near where I grew up!
One of our stops was the California Lighthouse which is on the northwestern tip of the island and named after the ship, California which sank offshore in 1891. That was the ship that did not respond to the distress signal sent out by the Titanic.
The wind is always blowing on Aruba so there is no need to worry about your hair while you are here.
Aruba is owned by Holland which explains why the official language is Dutch and Papiamento. Papiamento is a mixture of Dutch, Spanish, French, English and Portuguese. Aruba is also known as "One Happy Island".
There are a lot of expensive homes on the island of Aruba and a really nice golf course.
Angela dropped us off at the Holiday Inn which is one of many of the hotels on Palm Beach and we waited for the boat to take us back to the ship.
We boarded the boat and made our way back along the coastline to the ship. There are a lot of condos and hotels along the way. Our guide told us there are no private beaches. It looked like the beaches went on and on. We have seen many places where the beaches were not very long but not the case on Aruba.
Once back at the port we came back to the ship and ate lunch before I headed out to buy the obligatory t-shirts and our memento for our curio cabinet. Jerry stayed behind to relax while I was gone. I did return back to the port again to try to find a usb for our camera because we are finding some images we are unable to retrieve from the card so we are going to try to do so with the USB. I didn't find what I needed but I was able to exchange Jerry's t-shirt.
We went to dinner this evening and saw that we had four new people at our table who came the night before when we were at the Chef's Table. We had a nice evening and did share our experience with those in attendance about our Chef's Table dinner last night.
Tomorrow our next port is Bonaire and we are there earlier tomorrow than we were today at Aruba and will leave the port at 2pm.
Here are some of our pictures of the day.
Sign our guest book here