We chose the land and sea tour for Aruba today. We first got on a catamaran with a bunch of people and sailed northwest up the coast to a pier in the hotel district. The tour director gave us a lot of history and information about the island. Aruba is only 15 miles from the Venezuelan coast. We should be able to see the coast from the top of the ship, especially a mountain there called Santa Ana. Aruba is a state of the Netherlands and used to be under the rule of Curacao, but received it independence in 1985. The tour driver told us that Aruba is a very safe place. The only problems they have are illegal aliens (hoping to get work) coming over at night in small boats from Venezuela. We didn't ask what the local version was of the Natalie Hallowell story, we thought that might be a sore spot here and didn't want to contradict him!.

The coastline was not that beautiful, but the water was gorgeous. Here is our cruise ship from out in the water. The water was different shades of green-blue depending on whether the bottom was just sand, or covered with seaweed or something. The tour director said that once the water is 80 feet deep, it is too deep for light to be reflected up, and the color is a gorgeous deep sea blue, which we have seen a lot of.


We then got on a bus, the X treme Party Cruiser, an amusing name for an old school bus with a psychedic paint job.

There were not many photo opps on the land part of the tour. But here is the lighthouse at the northwest end of the 19.6 mile long island, with Bob standing on the right.


But here's thebest photo of the day!. Ha ha. This is the typical Aruba landscape - rocks, brush and cacti. One of Aruba's biggest exports is aloe.

In this port, the ship is pulled right up to the dock, so we could walk right off the ship after swiping our sea passes through the machine, they use this to make sure everyone is back on the ship at the end of the day, among other things. The ID card is a combination ID/charge card for anything we buy on the ship. We don't use any cash on board at all. On our way back to the ship, we swipe the card again, and then have to put everything we are carrying through a security check machine, just like at the airport!
Tomorrow we spend the day in Curacao.
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