“Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya
Bermuda, Bahama come on pretty mama
Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go”
sang the Beach Boys, so I’ve always had visions of lovely sandy beaches surrounded by swaying palm trees. Wrong! Oranjestad, Aruba turned out to be dusty and pretty neglected. The central part of town was really like Rodeo Drive with a casino. Every high end store with suited security guards. Outside that block it was pretty scruffy and peeling. Look, I figure that it would be just lovely if you wanted to stay at an all-inclusive resort up the coast with its own private, manicured beach, and buy your wife something from Tiffanys with your casino winnings, but for the rest of us it was pretty average.
So, a little about Aruba. Aruba was one of the Netherlands Antilles, often referred to as the ABC islands – Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao. Originally overlooked by the Spanish as useless, the Spanish quickly decided that the wild horses that populated Aruba would be rather valuable in subduing the countries of South America, so they changed their mind and created a few settlements on the island. Quite a volatile period of skirmishes ensued between the Spanish and English for some years, until the English lost interest. The Spanish garrison on Aruba dwindled following the Dutch capture of nearby Bonaire and Curacao in 1634, and the Dutch occupied Aruba shortly thereafter, retaining control for nearly two centuries. The meant a period of some stability, however it also meant taxation of the indigenous peoples, an almost complete eradication of the horses, and the sale of much of the land to the Dutch West Indies Company, who introduced disease and slavery.
The collapse of the Dutch West Indies company in 1792, and the abolition of slavery in 1863 sent the area into decline. It wasn’t until 1986 that Aruba seceded from the Netherlands Antilles, a victory much fought for by political activist and local hero Betico Croes. In this process of “Status Aparte,” Aruba obtained a separate status as an autonomous country in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
We wandered up and down the streets of the central city looking for something interesting. The tourist organisation had put some effort into painting the close-by facades in pastel colours (“a birthday cake for a Barbie party” was how Mandy described them), and they had put up signs pointing in the direction of things, but the shop keepers hadn’t done their part. The information boards were blank, the museum didn’t show its opening hours, the trolley tram wasn’t running, most of the shops were shut – many of them permanently.
After wandering up and down for a while, we actually stumbled on a coffee shop. Nice coffee, but the wifi was broken. We thought we’d do better by taking the bus to San Nicolas to view the famous murals, but the bus terminal had no maps and no timetables, and the ticket office is only open Monday to Friday between 6am and 10am. You could only buy single tickets on board the bus, and only with small denominations, so we went looking for an ATM. The only one in the CBD was “temporarily out of service”, so we decided to walk down to a servo and miss the bus. Maybe they had a working ATM. Success, but it wanted to levy a US$10 service charge for dispensing us US$5. Forget it.
We finally found another one that only wanted US$5 for the privilege, but would only give us a AD$25 note which was too large for the bus, so we walked all the way back to the servo and bought a drink to break the note. Back at the bus depot we joined the line of tourists asking every bus if they were going to San Nicolas until we found one the waved us on. Received a square 50c coin amongst our change – never seen a square coin before.
Tracked the bus on my phone as we headed down the road, and was a bit puzzled when it turned off in a strange direction. Sure enough a little while later the bus stopped, and the driver yelled something in Spanish. A few people started to get off, and the rest of us tried to work out what was going on. “Walk down that way and you’ll get to where you want to go” was the instruction, so half the bus formed a conga line and trudged off in the sunshine down the road for 20 minutes.
Cars everywhere, and music got louder and louder. So, San Nicolas was obviously where it was all happening, and it was. Carnival! Actually the 70th Aruba Carnival, and we stumbled right into the middle of it. The parade wound its way through the town, and it was huge. Probably 2km from one end to the other, and thousands of participants. An hour or so later as we tried to walk out of town to get home, we passed the tail of the parade where floats, bands and groups of dancers hadn’t even started yet.
The bands were so loud that they were handing out earplugs to the spectators. The costumes were colourful and intricate, but the dancers has a distinctively different physique to those in Brazil’s Carnival (if you get what I mean)! We found out later that groups hire the costumes as a set, and return them at the end of the day. They also provided their dancers with drinks all day dispensed from a trolley rattling along behind them. They needed it!
Mid afternoon after walking well out of town to where the buses could operate, we caught one back in to the city, and climbed back on board our ship. Today is changeover day, so 203 passengers got off this morning, and another 203 now have luggage arrayed all the way up and down the corridors to replace them. Felt rather smug on behalf of the 90 who remained on board as we walked purposefully around the various corridors and stairwells to get to our rooms.
Enjoyed a drink on deck as the newbies suffered through their mandatory evacuation drill, then dinner in the restaurant.
A Birthday Cake For A Barbie Party
So I Lied
Carnival
Carnival
Carnival