Niki in Aruba

Thursday July 23rd
Bob and Niki arrived today; I had cocktails and some delicious nibbles waiting for them. Once Niki had, had time to relax and get settled, Bob and I showed her around the resort, and I introduced her to the iguanas. Later on she met the finches that she comically named Philippe and June, it wasn’t long before another finch showed up that she named Fernando.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking, we’re all a little weird, that’s probably true, but in a good way! We’re a family of animal lovers, so giving these friendly little creatures names is not really all that strange.

Every morning at 7am Niki and I went to the hotel pool to swim, well I pretty much just splashed around while Niki swam 40 laps. I have to admire her stamina; I did manage a pathetic 10 laps, with a break to grab a coffee half way through.
We toured the shopping areas, and local stalls on the seafront, looking for gifts for Niki to take back for her friends. I couldn’t resist buying her a cute skirt from the designer shop Ralph Lauren, but we decided against the $680 gold flip-flops from another designer shop; that shall remain nameless!

We took Daisy up along the coast towards Palm Beach to do some snorkeling, the water was very shallow, and there were so many shoals we had to anchor about 1 mile off shore. The wind is lovely this far out, such a change from the sheltered, airless slip we had in the marina. We made the long, wet and very choppy ride in to shore in the dinghy, then walked up and down the beaches, stopping for a cocktail at one of the beach bars. The beaches were teaming with people, and there was practically every type of water sport underway, it was very busy, a veritable hive of activity.

Aruba is ideal for water-sports, the water here is absolutely perfect, calm flat and shallow, and because of that Aruba attracts tourists in the ten’s of thousands; great for the islands business, but not what we were looking for… We decided to snorkel off the boat, instead of the beach, preferring the peace and quiet further off shore.