ARUBA WITH A VIEW


zoom....

I was there for 7 Nights 8 days during June. It was a windsurfing vacation, went with about 31 people from the Tackle Shack(All shred heads,

and my girlfriend).


Aruba impressions:

  • Aruba is a rock.(No really, it's a rock) There is nothing but scrub brush, cactus and rocks on the island.(Really consistent in that manner). Goats on the side of the road. One house I saw had a fence made out of cactus.

  • If you don't snorkle/dive/windsurf/gamble you will most likely be bored. There isn't much else to do.

  • Locals are friendly. They don't hate tourists.

  • There were low to no good looking women on the island. I saw more good looking women in 5 min of San Juan Airport than in 8 days of Aruba.

  • Awesome steak house on the island El Gaucho, Try it !!! Argentinian beef(Get the sangria).

  • Good climate. ~85 degrees, dry with a constant wind(15-30 mph) It blows all the time.

  • For lunch some day go to the Plaza(in the main Oranjansted drag) and get the shoarma with fries, reccommended by a local and it was excellent.

  • Clear water, a couple of my friends got too beat up windsurfing and did a dive on a wreck off of the coast. They said it was AWESOME !(Locals advised that if you're going to do just 1 dive, do the wreck).

  • Wimpy beers, Amstel and Heiniken are the primary beers on the island, (Great you say?) NO ! All beers are served in 9 oz. bottles !

  • The natural bridge(Aruba's #1 toursist attraction) Isn't that great. The food place there sucks too.

  • The big hotels are nice. I walked through the Hyatt(sp) and it was impressive, multi-leveled pools, fish ponds with black swans, palm trees on the beach, thatched roof bars.. BTW. The sand is more or less unique to the hotels in the playa-linda area, the rest of the coast is rock and coral.

  • You might enjoy the horse tour that marches up and down the coast.

  • Seawater is really salty. Takes some getting used to.

  • I got tanned to a golden brown putting on SPF 45+ waterproof 3 times a day. (You're only a few degrees off of the equator). Be warned, or be burned. One of the guys got a great burn through a tee shirt without sunscreen under it.

  • Water is really clear, couldn't tell if I was sailing in 2ft or 20 ft of water.(until I hit a reef, then it became more obvious).

    Frank Mueller's shred-head Windsurfing homepage with a guide to FL sailing


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