Brian and I spent last week in Aruba. Henson's invited us on another trip and it was the first since the whole debacle on the plane home from Costa Rica, so Brian endured some ribbing for that. He drank plenty of water and was well rested, so no problems on this trip home. :) We left VERY early Tuesday morning and spent a good majority of the day traveling. Once in Aruba, we had a couple of hours to rest up and then had a welcome dinner. We were in bed fairly early that evening - it was a long day! I didn't take as many pictures on this trip as normal, but still got quite a few.
On Wednesday, our first full day, we slept late and ate a leisurely breakfast. We had booked a UTV island tour with 2 other couples we knew. It was a blast. The UTV's were super fun. They would go pretty fast and we were all kinds of terrain - the main road with other cars, rocks, dirt road, a muddy, potholey road... we had mud all down our sides when we were done.
Aruba has a lighthouse. Who knew?
We spent a lot of the time right next to the coast.
A church that was built in the late 1700s, then destroyed, then rebuilt in 1952. :)
I didn't get a picture of us in our UTV, so this one of Logan and Mandy will have to do. :)
Gold Mill Ruins
We stopped to do some diving - there was a little cave that you could crawl down a ladder and scoot across some rocks (as the waves were coming though and splashing on you) and dive into a more calm pool below. We didn't wear swimsuits and didn't want to be wet the rest of the time, so we watched from the top cliff.
We stopped at this beautiful beach and took some pictures...
and even got a rainbow in this one!
Our UTV kinda acted weird the whole time, and we quickly found out why. Brian went to start it and the temperature gauge was all the way to hot. As you can see, there was a huge puddle of antifreeze under it and so we had to hop in another one and continue the tour.
Here's the line of UTV's (our sad little broken down one is up on the right).
We had a great day! We got back after dark and were muddy and gross, so we showered and went out for a nice leisurely dinner.
Thursdays we took a submarine ride. I was a little leary with my claustrophobia, but I looked online at the pictures of the inside and decided that I would go for it. We met at the office across from tour hotel and took a little ferry boat out to the "dive site".
The water was gorgeous.
There was already a little boat out there. The sub would "pop" up ( I got a video, but it's taking 100 years to load, so never mind) and then we would sandwich it between our boat and the little boat. We lined up on top of the sub and the people in side would get on the ferry and we would go down in the sub. It was a well oiled machine - I think they did it like 8 times a day. The inside of the sub was fine - almost like being in a little plane.
We saw fish and shipwrecks - it was fun and definitely worth doing.
Brian filmed some of it for the boys on hid little camera.:)
We went down pretty far.
We did some shopping in the nearby shops in the afternoon. Our hotel had stores on the first floor, but they included Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Carolina Herrera, Gucci, etc. Uh, no. This girl needed a good 'ol souvenir shop with keychains and magnets and t-shirts. :)
Brian and I stopped in an Archeology museum just a couple of blocks from the hotel. Not great, but it was free, so who's complaining? :)
We ate dinner that night with 3 other couples in a yummy steakhouse. My appetizer soup came in the cutest cast iron mini dutch oven thing. I took a picture and everybody made fun of me. I'm guessing this is what old people do. :)
After dinner we visited out in the open air lobby and i noticed i got some bug bites. I had tried a new smelly lotion and I think it attracted all the bugs. I woke up the next morning at 5:00 clawing at bites my legs. There was no going back to sleep, so I went downstairs to the Starbucks and got some coffee. I sat out by the pool and enjoyed the morning view.
After I finished my coffee, I went to the 24 hour casino. Yep, I was the joke on the trip. I had been to the casino on and off by this point everybody was making fun of me. I knew there was a casino, so I took $100 to gamble with. I did the penny slots, and by this time, I had lost it all but $8. But as I was playing, I won $100, so I ended up winning everything back and called it quits. :)
After Brian got up, we ate breakfast and got ready to do some snorkeling. We headed out to the hotel's private island. They had a ferry that you can take from the lobby. The island has two beaches and rock "walls" that keep the waves calm so its almost like you are in a private lagoon. The water is beautiful and there are flamingos that you can feed on the beach!
I snorkeled a little and then we had lunch at the restaurant.
The view was beautiful.
Lizards and iguanas everywhere.
After lunch we decided to do some more snorkeling - there was a shipwreck about 100- 150 yards past the rock wall of the lagoon. Leaving the wall messed with my psyche. When we were in open water, every Jaws movie scene came to mind. I sucked it up and swam out there to see. I didnt stay nearly long enough because my fear got the best of me. But what we did see was really neat. (Pictures stolen from Logan and his fancy waterproof phone case)
Friday evening was the farewell cocktail party and hors d'oeuvres.
The sunset was stunning.
We ended up going to dinner after with Logan and Mandy and chatting for a couple of hours.
I always buy an ornament on vacation to hang on our memory tree. This one is definitely one of my favorites.
Brian and I had a wonderful time. Life can quickly get us bogged down with the day to day, but when we have time to get away and reconnect like this, it always confirms that he's my best buddy and there's nobody I'd rather be with. :)
