{"id":722,"date":"2011-12-17T20:30:28","date_gmt":"2011-12-18T02:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=722"},"modified":"2011-12-17T20:30:28","modified_gmt":"2011-12-18T02:30:28","slug":"oooo-i-wanna-take-you-to-aruba-12172011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=722","title":{"rendered":"Oooo I wanna take you to\u2026.Aruba \u2013 [12\/17\/2011]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I was extremely disappointed to find that Kokomo did not exist, but Aruba? Definitely the next best thing.<\/p>\n

It was also a fitting end to this particularly cruise. Last port of the Panama Relocation, one of the other crew members who is staying the long haul with me looked at me, shrugged, took a sip of her Aruba Arriba (don\u2019t ask what was in it, just know that I didn\u2019t dare finish mine) and said,<\/p>\n

Well, only three more cruises left\u2026we can do that\u2026that\u2019s nothing\u2026we\u2019ll just, ignore the fact that one of them is four months long!<\/em><\/p>\n

The day was overcast, because every so often even paradise has to get a little rain (otherwise how would it stay green!) but rain in Aruba is the complete opposite from rain on the west coast. This isn\u2019t cold rain, this is rain you want to stand out in, turn your face to the sky and spin \u2018round and \u2018round in. \u00a0It was warm, just cool enough to be refreshing, but still warm, and it made curly-que ringlets in my now almost ridiculously-long hair (I don\u2019t trust the spa to cut it, so it\u2019s been left to its own devices since June\u2026I figure I\u2019ll be doing a good impression of Rapunzel\u00a0 by the time May finally rolls around).<\/p>\n

It was decidedly surreal to walk into the cruise ship terminal, in this wonderful tropical rain, and see Christmas trees. It\u2019s very easy to forget that it\u2019s December when you\u2019re in ports like this, and often times the decorations look oddly out-of-sync with the rest of the environment. But there it was, towering in the middle of the terminal, surrounded by little hanging stars, and there were giant Christmas stockings hanging from all the lampposts in town, and giant nativity set on the lawn of one of the resorts. Next to a Christmas tree that was decorated with giant tropical flowers..<\/p>\n

Nope, not kidding\u2026big red tropical flowers.<\/p>\n

But once we got to De Palm Island, there wasn\u2019t a Christmas reference to be seen. Stepping off the catamaran that serves as a ferry between the island and the mainland, you walked directly into everything you would expect Aruba to be. Pure white sand, pure blue water and everything from a free bar to free snorkel gear. Me of course, took about five minutes to shed my outer wear\u00a0 (I don\u2019t remember the last time I actually had to change into my swimsuit, why waste time? Just wear it under your clothes! ), tossed my things in a locker and dived straight into the ocean. By the time my fellow crew members even made it in up to their knees I was already submerged up to my neck\u2026<\/p>\n

Geeze, are you crazy woman! It\u2019s freezing!<\/em><\/p>\n

Is not, you\u2019re just a coward!<\/em><\/p>\n

No, I\u2019m not, you\u2019re just Canadian, you\u2019re used to the damn cold!<\/em><\/p>\n

About the only time I pulled myself out of the water was when it started raining again. Since I was snorkeling at the time, I honestly didn\u2019t notice at first. You can\u2019t really hear the rain under the water, and because the rain was so warm, you honestly don\u2019t feel it at first \u2013 and even then it doesn\u2019t really drive<\/em> you out of the water, it\u2019s more a case of \u201coh, it\u2019s raining, I guess I\u2019ll go in now\u201d. So for about twenty minutes I shed my snorkeling gear and laid on a beach chair under a thatched roof and read my book.<\/p>\n

The snorkeling was amazing. While they don\u2019t have a lot of colourful coral around here, the aquatic life is amazing<\/em>. Not only are the fish huge, but they\u2019re crazy bright colours, mostly blue, but also rainbow, black, yellow and even a few that are so white that they\u2019re nearly transparent. This is the first time I really put my underwater camera through it\u2019s paces, and I\u2019m so happy it passed the test.<\/p>\n

Alongside the snorkeling and the sheltered coves and the wooden deck that doubled as both dining room and dance floor, there was also a very small waterpark. At first, it didn\u2019t look like much of anything, and most of us were willing to give it a miss in order to spend more time in the waves\u2026but eventually the lure of an even half-decent waterslide proved too much for most of us, and small though they were they were actually a lot of fun. Until of course, I got set up for a picture that features me standing in the middle of what amounts to a massive waterfall\u2026but I was already soaked so it didn\u2019t really matter all that much\u2026<\/p>\n

In short\u2026not a half bad way to spend a December afternoon..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was extremely disappointed to find that Kokomo did not exist, but Aruba? Definitely the next best thing. It was also a fitting end to this particularly cruise. Last port of the Panama Relocation, one of the other crew members … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[14,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-panama-relocation-cruise","category-ports-of-call"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-bE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}