Oranjestad, Aruba

Aruba. I’m sure you’ve all heard about Aruba and its beautiful beaches. It’s all lies, there’s nothing to see here. The sea on the north shore of Aruba is as angry as I’ve seen with the possible exception of the great ocean way in Australia. Aruba is essentially uninhabitable, with no fertile land, no fresh water, perpetually windy, and covered in long spiny cacti. They import everything and there is no meaningful industry at all outside of tourism. They do have a large desalination plant that provides drinking water to the resorts and locals.

There was a thriving gold mining industry here that collapsed in the 20s because the workers kept dying. Could have been the cyanide and or mercury the miners were using. We visited one of the ruined processing sites on the north shore.

The capital is Oranjestad is fairly spread out, with not much of note to see. The resorts are on the west coast and most of the locals live in Oranjestad or on the southeast tip in San Nicolas. Naturally, we headed to San Nicolas. San Nicolas was pretty sleepy, but the main attraction there is the fantastic murals painted on the various buildings. Our bus driver returning from San Nicolas to Oranjestad was one of these guys who thinks they have to have their foot buried in the pedal at all times. Either full-on accelerating or slamming the breaks, no in between.

Arubans are the Swiss of the Caribbean, they all speak four languages fluently and have an instinctive flair for languages. Dutch, English, Spanish, and the native language of Papiamento can all be heard and many times when talking amongst themselves they mix in all four languages! Our guide was telling us that at home with his two-year-old daughter, they speak one language for a week, and then on Sunday, they switch to another. They rotate Papiamento, English, and Dutch, once she goes to school she’ll learn Spanish. The school continues with the method of rotating languages.

Besides learning four languages, another advantage to being born on an ABC island is the issuance of the sixth-best passport in the world, a Dutch passport. A native Aruban can easily move abroad to anywhere in the EU for work or school.

With any resort area, there are timeshare scams that abound. We were approached with a game card to open to see if we won anything. Lynne opened up a free beer, I reluctantly opened it and saw WINNER. The girl noticed and quickly began her act, feigning excitement and how lucky I was that we had opened the rare game card. The girl explained how she was so happy I’d won as it meant $100 for her and a paid day off. All we had to do now was sit through an hour-long presentation and then once over, we’d scratch the game card to see which of the four prizes we won. The prizes were, $500 cash, $700 casino credit, and $500 restaurant credit we could take in cash or a seven-night vacation. It seemed like I was guaranteed $300 for an hour. The trouble for them is I value my time more than $300, and with my luck, I’d scratch the dumb 7-night vacation, with no cash value. We had just learned how to bus to San Nicolaas and the bus was leaving in 15 minutes so to their surprise we left. We found out later it’s a common scam in Aruba and essentially every couple “wins”. I look at it like this, we waste an hour and miss out on going to San Nicolas, then for us to return to Aruba to go to San Nicolaas would cost me way more than $300.

I may have fibbed a bit at first, the sea in the north is dangerous and hostile, but the beaches on the south side are as good as anywhere in the world. Eagle Beach has recently ranked the best beach in the world on one list.