You Me Aruba 🌞

 To celebrate 23 years of knowing each other, we decided to fly to Aruba. Going to Aruba right before Christmas sounds like a brilliant idea until I had to figure out how to get everything done before we left. I had one little freak out around the beginning of December but then regrouped got everything done. It was amazing. 🌴 🌞

We took the red eye from Vegas to JFK and on to Aruba. One of the first things we saw on the island are these crazy green iguana-looking lizards.

We drove up to the northern side of the island for breakfast the next day.

We found the California lighthouse on the north end.

We climbed a steep, historic, spiral staircase to get to the top.

We went snorkeling that afternoon on a catamaran. We looked around a ship wreck from WW2. It was more interesting than the fish!

We found a little Christmas festival in a town called Savaneta.  We ate some authentic Aruban food from street vendors.

Our first night there, we had dinner at a restaurant and dessert came with a golden berry on top. It's also called a cape gooseberry. They were so yummy that we found a grocery store and bought more of them. Kind of like a blueberry texture but more tart, almost citrusy. 

We found nearest LDS branch and went to church on Sunday.  

Then we rented a motorcycle and headed toward the windward side of the island. It's very windy over there! The plants struggle. We found some caves and an old gold mining building. The waves were crashing really big on that side from the wind. 

Also some turbines on that side. Of course, beautiful sunsets.

Aruba is a Dutch colony and so there's a huge Dutch windmill and we went to go look at it.

The next day, Merril had signed up for a scuba excursion. After I dropped him off, I tried to decide what to do and found a butterfly habitat.  

There were lots of really pretty shells on the beach but you're not allowed to take the shells or the sand home so we just took pictures and then the long flight home through Chicago and into Las Vegas.

We got home at 3:30 a.m. I helped in Mark's class the next day at 10:30 a.m. Now just a few more days until Christmas! I'm really excited!

About Aruba: Aruba is humid but not tropical. The island's native side is covered with tall tube cactus and thorny desert looking bush/trees. The hotel side has lots of palm trees planted and lovely flowering bushes.

 There's an interesting assortment of cultures in Aruba. It has a lot of Dutch influence because it's a Dutch colony but it's so close to Venezuela that there's a lot of Spanish speakers. The native dialect there is Papiamento. Papiamento is a creole language that's a blend of Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch. But everybody learns Dutch in grade school and then I guess everybody learns English because there's so much tourism in Aruba. The mission president's wife said all the kids learn English from YouTube. LOL. 

There's a lot of fish to eat but everything was deep-fried. Fish and all meals seem to come with a side of fries, or deep fried polenta, or deep fried plantains. Where are the veggies on this island? The water is treated at a desalination plant and so all of the water that comes out of the tap tastes like reverse osmosis. It was delicious and very pure. 

Aruba was a great little place to visit and now Merril and I have ticked South America off our continent list! Merril's ahead of me. He only has Antarctica to get! I still need Africa and Antarctica!