Further exploration of Aruba, with Edi & Niki

Thursday 30th July
Edi arrived for a two-week visit, and Bob rented a car, another version of the yellow peril, but this time it was lime green, how lovely! It did however have great air conditioning, and unlike the yellow peril it didn’t squeak.

We all piled in and set off around the island with me as the experienced guide, having recently gained extensive local knowledge following two days in a car with Angie! We headed west towards the California Lighthouse, and I proudly pointed out the exclusive hotel where Angie and I made our infamous escape. I told Bob to drive past quickly, while I ducked out of sight in the pretense of picking something up off the floor. I’m really hoping that the hotel isn’t looking for the women in the yellow car that made off with free drinks from their bar. Just kidding!

I was hoping we could have lunch at the lighthouse, unfortunately when we got there the restaurant was closed for a wedding, so we wandered around, took some photographs and then headed back this time following the road inland.

We drove around until we came to the natural bridge. This is a very popular tourist attraction where you will normally find busloads of tourists, and we did! There’s the usual gift shop, ice-cream bar, and café, called the ‘Thirst-Aid Station, but what was not so usual was a sign on the premises that read “NO FARTING”. It makes one question the type of clientele they are accustomed too here, I couldn’t help but wonder what happens should you accidently, um, well, you know, let one out! Fortunately none of us did so I guess we’ll never know! Anyway back to more intellectual matters:

The natural bridge was one of Aruba’s most popular attractions. The bridge was a formation of coral limestone cut out by years of pounding surf and was one of the largest of these types of spans in the world. It stood 23 feet above sea level and spanned more than100 feet. The bridge collapsed on the 2nd of September 2005; fortunately it fell down in the middle of the night, (as so many things do,) so no one was hurt.

Just a few yards away nature is already carving out another natural bridge. We took lots of photographs, before getting back in the car, and heading out again.
We arrived at the Bushiribana Gold mine, or rather the ruins of the gold mine. A rock heap and a crumbling stonewall is all that now remains of the Aruba Island Gold Mining Company. The views from the gold mine are spectacular, it’s fun to explore, and offers some great photographic opportunities.

I was interested in the original building techniques used here, as the building was originally constructed using a dry wall technique, where rocks are fitted perfectly together without the use of mortar. Most of the original houses in Aruba were built using this method; they had slanted roofs and tiny windows, which kept the dwellings cool inside while allowing the heat to rise. This technique is no longer in use today, but examples of these early structures can still be seen throughout the island, and of course at the Bushiribana Gold mine. We climbed through the ruins taking photographs as we went.

The Aruban economy was boosted by the discovery of gold in 1824, when a young boy found a couple of nuggets in the dry valleys on the northeast coast; which with excavation, eventually yielded 3 thousand pounds of gold for the island.

From the Gold mine we headed on to the caves. There are three caves; all located within close proximity to one another, on the southeastern side of Aruba. Guadirikiri Cave, which stretches for approximately 150 meters, is famous for its two chambers, illuminated by the sunlight streaming through the holes in the ceiling of the cave. One has to climb stairs, and pass through two corridors to reach the large open cavern. A flashlight would be advisable if you plan to visit this cave, as the footing is very uneven and it’s almost pitch black at times.

The other two caves are Baranca Sunu (also known as ‘the tunnel of love’) and the Fontein cave; which is the most popular of the caves as it is the only one with original Indian drawings on the ceilings.

Niki, Edi and I found the caves fascinating; although Bob wasn’t as keen to venture in, as the exploration of the caves involved almost having to crawl at times, and the heat became really intense the further into the cave you went, so he waited outside while Niki, Edi and I followed our guide through.

The guide pointed out some paintings from the original Indians on the island. Unfortunately, a few visitors to the caves felt the need to display their ignorance to the world with graffiti; which has defaced parts of the caves, and now makes it necessary for Guards and gates, to ensure the continued protection of the caves and their drawings.

From Fontein cave we drove out through the Arikok National Park. The park has recently been reopened, and now has new roads with proper drainage for the run off from the unexpected rainfall. Rocky outcrops between the formations in Aruba have created microclimatic conditions that support the flora and fauna here. There are a few different varieties of wildlife, some indigenous to the island such as; The Cascabel (Aruba’s rattlesnake) which is the only venomous snake on the island, and can be found in the Arikok National Park. This protected variety of snake now has less than 500 of its species left on the island, due to its decreasing habitat.

Also the Santanero (Arubas cat eyed snake) is another that is unique to this island, as are the kododo blauw (whiptail lizard) and two bird species, the shoco (a burrowing owl) and the prikichi (the parakeet found only in the ABC islands).

From the park we continued south to San Nicolas. We still hadn’t eaten and I was getting grumpy and quite desperate to locate a restaurant. As we drove south we passed nothing that was open other than the occasional gas station, I’m under the impression that no one eats lunch on Aruba.

We were all feeling quite miserable from hunger when we quite accidentally drove past ‘The Flying Fishbone” a restaurant that Angie and I had searched and searched for the previous week without success. This restaurant has a wonderful reputation on the island for it’s fabulous fresh fish, and was somewhere I really wanted to try. We parked the car are walked in, but to our dismay it was closed, as apparently they only serve dinner.

There were a couple of guys cleaning so we asked if we could look around. The Flying Fishbone is a truly delightful restaurant that literally spills out onto the beach, the tables on the beach go right down to the shore and each table has a rack for shoes so you can wiggle your toes in the sand and the surf as you eat. We immediately decided that this was where we wanted to eat dinner tonight. One of the staff gave us a menu to look over. The food was definitely not cheap, but the menu was adventurous and inventive, we all decided this was it, so we reserved a table for 5:30pm, (do remember that we hadn’t eaten in almost 8 hours).

Still starving and miserable, but optimistic at the thought of a wonderful dinner in three hours we headed out again.
We eventually arrived at San Nicolas, and parked on the beach. A little beach bar was serving food, which was such a welcome sight. I was so hungry I would have eaten anything. The beach was beautiful, and the water clean, clear and turquoise with gently rolling waves. Unfortunately the oil refinery rather overshadows the beach here, which is such a shame as it would have been truly magnificent otherwise.

The New Jersey based Oil company LAGO established the oil refinery in San Nicolas in 1924, bringing real prosperity to the island of Aruba. Unemployment dropped and the island flourished. Unfortunately as world demand for oil decreased in the late 70’s early 80’s the refinery was forced to close in March 1985.

In 1991 the refinery was re-opened by another company Costal El Paso Oil, but sold again in 2004 to the Valero Oil Corporation, who are today the main distributor on the island.

We all enjoyed our beach lunch of shrimp and fries, just enough to keep us going until 5:30. After lunch we paddled in the water for a while, before all piling back in our little motorized lime, to continue our exploration of the island.

Dinner on the beach at The Flying Fishbone was spectacular, our table wasn’t quite on the shore, those tables are reserved for two (usually honeymooners).
However, we were able to wiggle our toes in the cool sand as we ate. It was one of the loveliest meals I have shared with my family; I just missed Danni and wished she could have been with us. The food was good, the service friendly and the setting breathtaking. This restaurant is another on my list of “Not Too Be Missed” if not for the food, absolutely for the atmosphere and friendly service.

For the rest of Niki’s stay we swam every morning, shopped, relaxed on the topless beach among the flamingos, worked out at the island gym, tested cocktails at the local bars and generally had a wonderful time.

One afternoon as we were packing up getting ready to return to Daisy from the island; Niki spotted a shark, “Mum look, a shark” she called to me pointing at the water, I spotted the fin above the water swimming slowly towards the bridge, but as the rest of the people on the beach started running towards Niki the shark turned and swam away.

We all stood watching for about 20 minutes to see if it would come back, but it never did. Niki swore it was a lemon shark, she said she recognized it from the discovery channel. On the way back to the marina I asked the boat captain whether the resort ever had sharks, “OH yes”, he said enthuasticaly, “We get Lemon sharks here all the time, they’re harmless, so you needn’t worry”.

Every day after that we looked for the shark but we never saw him again. The next afternoon Niki found a large living conch, definitely not the most attractive of the sea’s creatures, in fact I would go so far as to say it was really quite ugly, poor thing was like a gigantic snail, and quite slimy, I don’t think I’ll ever eat conch again. We put it back in the water hoping it would work its way out to sea instead of ending up on a dinner plate somewhere.

Niki also found countless hermit crabs, and some fabulous shells (uninhabited, of course) for my collection.