Ramblings

My first blog - inspired by Bryce Little's blog created for his first UK trip in September/October 2007. Bryce is an old school chum from RMIT computer science days and lives in Armidale, NSW.
I've just returned from Aruba with Gail and Madeline - nice trip, relaxing and busy at the same time. The weather was hot, but not too humid, probably in the 90s every day and with a steady, tropical wind blowing all day. The sea was turquoise and very warm - no trouble in taking that first dip.
We started out on the last Monday in August from Boston via Puerto Rico which looked nice and civilized from the plane. It even boasts one large freeway, no doubt courtesy of the American Govt. After three hours at the airport, we flew to Aruba and took a bus to the hotel on the tourist strip consisting of about 10 multi-story hotels, a main road and restaurants to cater for the visitors.
The room had two kingsize beds and a flat screen TV hooked into the satellite to give us New York city TV including local NY advertisements. The first night we went to "happy hour", free drinks for guests. I rashly had two drinks instead of my standard limit of one. After some hokey entertainments involving the audience getting up on stage, we stumbled into what seemed the only place to eat. We ate a largely meat buffet and then another hokey audience participation show started, so we got the bill asap. Shock, horror, the bill was $105! And this for a few greasy pieces of meat! This proved to be our worst ripoff of the whole trip. Lesson learned!
These hotels all have casinos and are isolated from the rest of Aruba. It's a tourist isle within an island where everything is priced for the tourist. Aruba seems to have two cultures - the tourist culture and the relatively poor local inhabitants.