Day 5: National Park! Part 1...Cacti

The next day we drove to the National Park on other side of the island. There are tons of photos, so first off, the Cacti.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day Four: Rented car

 

The next day we rented a car and drove into the main city for lunch. Turned out it was a holiday, which we knew, but turned out that meant there wasn't much open for lunch. So we drove up to a lighthouse. The lighthouse above was not THAT exciting, but the views were nice. The dessert below was quite nice. The ocean was too.

 

Then we went to a beach that didn't have any hotels!

 

All the locals were out camping and drinking, apparently good friday there is sort of like July 4th here.

 

Day Three: Kayaking Part Two

 

 

 

This is a desalinization plant that produces all of Aruba's water. Apparently the second largest in the world.

 

 

Day Three: Kayaking Part One

The next day I went on a "kayaking" adventure. It was more like a bit of kayaking and an all inclusive island for a few hours. Still fun...just not what I was expecting. Plus, they were very concerned about us tipping over, so I didn't have my camera while kayaking. So lots of island pictures instead.

 

 

 

We did kayak around mangroves like this. That was the main viewing highlight of the kayaking.

 

Day Two: Beach

Pirate Ship! (or tour boat, whatever)

 

Wild Life....

 

 

Moose!! (Isle Royal, Summer 2007)

I couldn't resist posting now anyway (see previous post). Before this particular moose headed into the water, he/she was standing on the trail like 10 feet from us! Seriously! And then there were a couple in the water, much further away. Of course we were coming back from getting water or something when we first ran into the moose, so no camera. (Plus, 10 feet from even a medium sized lizard makes one think, great, lizard, let me get closer with the camera. 10 feet from a giant moose is more of a wow, moose, I'll just stand here sort of feeling). Still, it was pretty exciting on the wildlife experience scale, especially given my usual lack of luck with these things.

 

Day One: The Beach!

The first day on the beach! The photo taking was not awesome, but the water was great and it was the only day when I enjoyed myself sans sunburn. I left red like a lobster despite not quite copious enough amounts of sunscreen. Nonetheless, it was lovely.


So the beach was basically divided into little sections for each giant hotel. Our hotel was not directly on the beach, but after much searching we found that we did have a section anyway complete with a guy giving us beach chairs if we showed him our handy wristband. We set ourselves up right behind these ladies, or more precisely we set ourselves up right behind some chairs and then these ladies returned. I'm not sure if the golddigga swimsuit is more or less appropriate on a woman who is surely pushing the age limits for gold-digging...

 

Beach feet! Becky points out that my strange interest in taking pictures of my feet on the beach this particular day was, well strange, but I like them anyway.

 

Even more than taking pictures of feet, I loved taking pictures of the lizards!! They are the perfect wildlife for photos. They dart around and will run away from you, thereby posing a photographing challenge, but on the other hand, they aren't THAT scared of you and are common enough that you don't have to stand down by a lake at dawn just trying to catch a glimpse of them from 50 feet away, which is my experience in trying to photograph/see any range of animals from a platypus in Australia to moose, caribou, bear, elk or anything really in the Canadian Rockies. (All of those efforts failed, but we did see some moose on Isle Royal. I'll post those after the Aruba pictures sometime.)

 

Finally the beach. Not the best photo, but still so lovely.