Aruba December 2004

A few years ago, my employer reached some profitability objectives that we had been working towards. As a reward, the owners sent the General Manager and me to Aruba with some customers on the Tenneco trip. We flew down on Saturday, through Houston. I found out later that we had very good connctions, since it only took us one plane change. There is a six hour time difference between Tucson and Aruba, so that did take some getting used to. On a funny note (now, but not at the time!) I lost my passport on the plane from Houston to Aruba. I knew I had it with me as we boarded, but midway through the trip I was checking and I could not find it anywhere. After about 45 minutes of panic, I pulled my whole bag out of the overhead bin, and the passport was in the bin, behind the bag. It took the rest of the plane trip for my heart to slow down and for me to stop sweating.

We stayed in the Hyatt. It was nice, but there were areas around the hotel that were a bit rusty.

One thing we noticed immediately is that the wind always blows from east to west. ALWAYS. Sometimes it blows stronger than others, but it is always there. Hence, the trees seem to lean towards the west.

One day we took a bus trip around the island. They fit a bunch of us in a VW bus, and when the normal seats were full, they pulled out some jump seats so that there were no isles on the bus. We went over to the east side of the island, where there is a fairly fameous "natural bridge." Everyone needed to use the bathroom by that time, but they bathrooms were pay only - $.25 to go into the bathroom. Every business does accept US dollars, although the official currency is something else. We also visited a lighthouse on the Northwest tip of the island, and then "Baby Beach" on the South east. It is called Baby Beach, we were told because the water is shallow for quite a ways out into the ocean. We went snorkeling there and it was very good. Some other tourists kept feeding the fish, which sent them into a frenzy and it was a bit scarry, we we swam further out, where the cove meets the ocean. The water was much deeper there, but we were able to see some squid and some different kinds of fish. Another day we took an afternoon snorkeling trip on the West coast of the island. There was calmer water with more reef area to explore. The snorkeling was world class.

We found that we loved to just relax by the ocean a lot. We would take early morning walks on the beach, afternoon walks on the beach, and just sit an relax in the evening to watch the sunsets. The sunsets weren't as spectacular as in Hawaii, but they were just as relaxing.