Thursday, March 22, 2018- Cruise Day 58; Aruba

Thursday, March 22, 2018- Cruise Day 58; Aruba

Our alarm went off before sunrise.  It was dark, humid and a warm 78 degrees outside on the balcony.  The ship was within sight of shore, and still heading towards the dock in Aruba.  We had a quick breakfast and had to do an emergency back up of Janet’s iPhone because it had run out of memory to take new pictures.  That finished up just after breakfast, but then Ben’s laptop was complaining that it was running out of hard drive space as well.  To complicate matters, the SD card reader on his laptop wasn’t working reliably, making transferring files off the hard drive cumbersome, but enough space was cleared that he could also back up his iPhone.  Once all of Janet’s old pictures were backed up, she could go through and delete old photos and videos to make space on her phone.  

We had booked a UTV tour, a new one for Princess.  3 years ago, we did a UTV tour that hit all the tourist sites on the north and west end of Aruba including the California light house, chapel and gold smelting ruins.  This tour visits a natural pool in addition to the chapel and gold smelting ruins, so we were looking forward to seeing something a little different.  

When we boarded our bus, there were only 6 of us on board for this new tour in a 40 passenger bus.  That was a refreshing change.  We were dropped off at the UTV rental company, which was a few miles from the cruise ship dock towards Hotel row.  There were two other large Royal Caribbean Cruise ships docked on the waterfront.  We received a brief safety briefing and signed waivers before climbing into our UTV.  We drove follow the leader style through the streets of Orangestad to the windward side of the island, where we gradually encountered narrower and then gravel roads.  

The entrance to the National Park was unmanned when we arrived before 8:30AM.  We then drove through the rough off-road tracks across the park to the location of the Natural Pool, which required a climb down a steep hill to the water from where we parked the UTV’s.  The Natural Pool is actually like a giant tide pool.  It is rimmed by huge volcanic rocks.  It is partially open to the water on one side, but protected from the dramatic and pounding surf and wind by a wall of rocks shaped like a “C”.  As waves crashed into the rocks, water would spray over the top, showering the pool and causing water to cascade over the rocks like a waterfall.  The pool itself is only about 40’ in diameter and about 10 feet deep in the middle.  We had to climb around a rocky ledge to access the pool.  We had dressed in our swim suits, so we went for a dip in the refreshing 82 degree water.  Even though it was just 9:00AM when we arrived at the pool, the air temperature was probably in the mid to upper 80’s and it was quite humid.  We were the first to arrive at the pool and had it pretty much to ourselves for 20-30 minutes.  There were interesting spider crabs climbing around on the rocks.  Then we could see at the top of the hill, a hoard of tourists piling out of safari jeeps, and a long line of ATV’s and UTV’s begin to descend the hill.  That was our cue to get moving.  

Ben had taken his iPhone in it’s LifeProof case into the pool to take pictures, and had stuffed it into his swim trunks while swimming so it wouldn’t get lost.  As we were drying off and getting ready to leave the natural pool area, Ben notices a little water had seeped into the case between the display and case.  He took the phone out of the case and dried it with a towel.  Fortunately, it still seemed to work.  Although the iPhone 6S is not waterproof, it does have some waterproof featured, but not enough to earn a waterproof rating.  The next iPhone, the iPhone 7 was IP-68 water resistant rated.  That was a close call, and probably caused by the case being flexed underwater while Ben was swimming with it in his trunks.

It was something else to see the huge convoys of safari styled 4x4’s carrying 8-12 passengers like troop carriers, and long lines of ATV’s and UTV’s in caravans of 8-12 vehicles, compared to our 4 vehicles.  

We were nimble and made a run through the hard scrabble around the other caravans and made our next stop at the old gold smelter ruins.  After having seen the handywork of the Incas at Machu Picchu, this stone work as absolutely primitive.  It was no wonder it had largely crumbled to the ground.  It is still an impressive ruin to wander around.  On the nearby beach, 3 years ago, the entire beach was covered by rock carrens- stacks of rocks that totally changed the character of the beach, making it look a silly as the bridges around the world that are now covered with padlocks to mimic the one in Paris.  This time, it appeared that weather, or other forces had leveled most of the carrens, leaving a more natural looking beach.  

We drove west along the rugged waterfront. Waves crash against the rocky shoreline making for a spectacular scene.  The windward side of Aruba is desert, with cactus and sage brush.  There is quite a contrast between the sea and desert.  We came to the chapel, which was over run with tourists when we arrived.  There must have been 6 tour buses, but they soon loaded up and we were able to tour the chapel after the throng had moved on.  

From there, we headed back to the protected and sunny leeward side of the Island and Eagle beach, which has sparkling blue water and beautiful white sand beaches.  The hotel resorts are situated in a row on this side of the island.  It is very developed, looking a bit like Waikiki, but perhaps just a little less crowded. 

We dropped off our UTV’s and hopped the bus back to the ship, which got us back to our rooms just in time for lunch, after showers to get the saltwater off.  

We attended the 4:00PM afternoon trivia.  Princess is introducing Discovery at Sea branded trivia quizzes that are linked to Discovery Channel TV shows.  This one was called the Discovery At Sea Ship Shape Challenge, and appears to have been inspired by the “How it’s Made” TV series.  It had lots of questions specific to the Princess fleet of ships, and was quite challenging, even though all the answers were multiple choice.  We ended up scoring 15 points and came in our usual second place behind the winning teams (2) that had 16 points. The prize was water bottles, which we don’t care for because they take up a lot of room in our luggage, aren’t insulated, and dent easily.  

We watched the early Showtime performance of Troy Thirdgill, who is a new comedian who came on the ship today.  He was actually very funny, and had a lot of new material that had nothing to do with the worn jokes that all the other cruise ship circuit comedians keep recycling.  He was by far the most entertaining of the comedian’s we have seen on this 60 day cruise.  

We participated in a “Finish the Lyrics” trivia game at 7:30PM.  It was suprizingly hard to pick out the missing lyrics because most boiled down to just a word or two that could have rhymed out several different ways, and nobody pays that close attention to lyrics embedded in the songs beside the chorus or refrains.  We scored 25, but the winning teams had a 2 way tie with 30 points each. They had to answer a tie breaker of what year did Lionel Richie and Diana Ross release “Endless Love” in.  FYI, it was 1981.  One team got it spot on.  

We then picked up some glasses of wine from our stateroom while Ben changed into long pants and shoes for a late dinner.  We opened the Argentinian Malbec that we got in Buenos Aires at the Tango Show, and it was quite tasty.  The main course was filet mignon brochetets which were very tender and tasty.  They had a delicious citrus sorbet intermezzo that was so good that Janet ordered it for dessert as well.  

After dinner, we headed up to the Lido deck where the ship was hosting a Love Boat party, featuring the ship’s bands, singers and dancers.  It was actually fun to watch the people we have met and come to know on this cruise busting out disco moves on the dance floor with the dancers and cruise director’s staff.  One of the onboard activities has been a flash mob dance class, and the mob did break out into dance at the party.  It was a bit muggy, but breezy on the open deck, while the wind and ship’s wake did create a fine mist of salt water.  

It’s hard to believe our 60 day cruise is nearly at it’s end.  We received disembarkation instructions and luggage tags tonight.  This was our last port of call, and everyone is a little sad about that.  We just have two sea days as we beeline to Fort Lauderdale.