Aruba 2024

 This is a bit out of order. Yeah, I know I need to backtrack and write about getting back to our beloved Spanish tall ship work last autumn, but at the same time wanted to write about this one while it's fresh. So, here goes!

Welcome sign downtown near the airport

For the first time since Covid and Dan's disastrous diving experience in February 2020, we were ready to travel again. The beginning of the trip was stressful, magnified by the first air travel we've done since Covid. We checked into an airport hotel the night before. Our room was huge, actually two rooms put together into a king suite, and quiet on the top floor. But I wished I'd researched the online comments more carefully, because it was also about as dirty as I'd ever seen at a name chain hotel brand. I really expected to see roaches living in the relative warmth of the electric outlets, and decided to sleep in my clothes; didn't even want to get undressed to slip between those sheets. And simultaneously less of a treat or "pre-vacation vacation" than we were used to now that we're living on land part time. As is our custom though, we found a Mexican restaurant for a hearty night-before-travel meal. A tiny hole-in-the-wall place with excellent and authentic food. I admit to missing my margarita, though it's just not the same without Dan sharing with me. The hole-in-the-wall aspect foreshadowed our dining this trip; all casual locals places instead of Americanized sit down restaurants. 

The airport was empty when we arrived at 7 AM. We blazed through security, checking our bags, and were directed to the (otherwise empty) TSA Clear lane. No taking off shoes or removing electronics, or 100-ml bottles of liquids in plastic bags;  simultaneously delighted, and remembering this is how it used to be, and what we've had to become accustomed to. The terribly blunt instrument that is the US's security screening (I remember reading that we spend $7 per passenger for screening while the famously stringent El Al spends over $60) The airline had recommended arriving 3 hours early for an international flight, all in we were from curbside to gate in a little over 20 minutes. 

We were among the last groups to board the plane (after chilling at the gate for 3 hours, ha) but this time Southwest's famous no-reserved-seats policy worked in our favor. The first two rows were occupied by couples who had tried the hack of sitting in the window and aisle seats, hoping no travelers would want the single seat in the middle... Wrong! I motioned to one, Dan to the other. Both couples promptly offered to switch seats so they could sit together, leaving Dan and me side-by-side in aisle seats, close enough to hold hands. And we were expecting to need that quick exit when we landed, because I had a bad feeling about our rental car. Too many people in the online Aruba group I belonged to had commented about the rental companies not honoring their reservations and giving the car away if they were even a little bit late. The front-row seats were handy too, as the flight was on the bumpy side.

We landed right on time and did the divide-and-conquer thing: Dan waited to collect both our checked bags while I with my backpack on fairly sprinted out of the terminal and across the street to the car rental place. Sadly, my stress was not misplaced; Dollar overbooked and didn't honor our reservation "but they could find us one with another company although at a higher rate." Ironically it was the same local company that I had tried to book as a backup when I first heard about the problems with rental car availability; but at the time they told me they had nothing available. In the end we got a great car from "Jay's" -- my namesake -- remarkably similar in size, shape, and even a similar gray color to our beloved Mitsubishi Outlander at home, and it had an A license plate and no big stickers with the company name on the door (advertising this is a tourist's car and might have good stuff for stealing). So now, I joked with the counter staff, everyone will think we're locals, and they won't cut us any extra slack in the roundabouts because they'll expect that we know our way around. Anyway we finally got to the resort just in time to check in and head to the beach to watch the sunset and begin to decompress. 

As soon as the sun had set we made tracks for dinner; a nearby place as popular with the locals as with those relatively few tourists who knew about it (though it's been getting "discovered," we learned). There was so much new development in the intervening 4 years that we got semi-lost on the way there in the dark. We've had better, less roller-coaster vacation starts, but it began to settle down. I missed my wind-down rum (no time to buy that before the shops closed, and what they offered at the beach bar was ridiculously overpriced -- literally two drinks cost as much as a whole bottle at the liquor store.

Next morning, feeling much better, we went out for coffee and croissants on the beach bar, now transformed for more dignified use, the deck just steps from the ocean, watched the waves then walked along the water's edge for the length of the bight and back, 2 km, then headed off for mundane errands at a relaxed pace, groceries and a few items to round out the timeshare kitchen. This time our sunset drinks did include rum (mine, at least) and we watched the sun go down and the stars come out and headed back to dinner and eager to explore in the morning.

Sunset on Druif Beach never ever gets old. The trade winds carried a lot of Saharan dust making the sky a brownish orange. 

After a very long travel day and not enough sleep, having someone else prepare a meal of extremely fresh fish was wonderful

A beautiful morning to sit with a cup of coffee ... or two