ARUBA WITH A VIEW
I was there for 7 Nights 8 days during June.
It was a windsurfing vacation, went with about 31 people from
the Tackle Shack(All shred heads, 
and my girlfriend).
Aruba impressions:
Aruba is a rock.(No really, it's a rock) There is nothing but scrub
brush, cactus and rocks on the island.(Really
consistent in that manner). Goats on the side of the road.
One house I saw had a fence made out of cactus.
If you don't snorkle/dive/windsurf/gamble you will most
likely be bored. There isn't much else to do.
Locals are friendly. They don't hate tourists.
There were low to no good looking women on the island.
I saw more good looking women in 5 min of San Juan
Airport than in 8 days of Aruba.
Awesome steak house on the island El Gaucho, Try it !!!
Argentinian beef(Get the sangria).
Good climate. ~85 degrees, dry with a constant wind(15-30 mph)
It blows all the time.
For lunch some day go to the Plaza(in the main Oranjansted drag)
and get the shoarma with fries, reccommended by a local and
it was excellent.
Clear water, a couple of my friends got too beat up windsurfing
and did a dive on a wreck off of the coast. They said it was
AWESOME !(Locals advised that if you're going to do just 1
dive, do the wreck).
Wimpy beers, Amstel and Heiniken are the primary beers on
the island, (Great you say?) NO ! All beers are served
in 9 oz. bottles !
The natural bridge(Aruba's #1 toursist attraction) Isn't that
great. The food place there sucks too.
The big hotels are nice. I walked through the Hyatt(sp) and
it was impressive, multi-leveled pools, fish ponds with black
swans, palm trees on the beach, thatched roof bars..
BTW. The sand is more or less unique to the hotels in
the playa-linda area, the rest of the coast
is rock and coral.
You might enjoy the horse tour that marches up and down the coast.
Seawater is really salty. Takes some getting used to.
I got tanned to a golden brown putting on SPF 45+ waterproof
3 times a day. (You're only a few degrees off of the equator).
Be warned, or be burned. One of the guys got a great burn
through a tee shirt without sunscreen under it.
Water is really clear, couldn't tell if I was sailing in
2ft or 20 ft of water.(until I hit a reef, then it became more
obvious).
Frank Mueller's
shred-head Windsurfing homepage with a guide to FL sailing
Return to Joe's homepage
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