American in Spain

We had little to no plans for Sunday, other than to head to the mall for some more lobster with our friends. Marga and I spent some time by the side of the pool, me typing away the events of the previous day on my laptop, Marga trying with all her power to part the clouds and let the sun through. Eventually we met our mates and caught two taxis to the mall. Once in the mall, a few people had errands to run, so we split up and decided to meet back at 1:30. Marga and I had no intention of buying anything, but what else is there to do at a mall but look at stuff on sale? I noticed a polo shirt that I liked and it turned out to only cost 9€, so I bought one of each color. While I was trying them on, Marga found some nice trousers that looked good on me, so I had to buy that too. As I was paying for my clothes, Marga found some nice underwear for a really low price, so I had to go and buy that too! After I signed the receipt, we got the heck out of there, so we wouldn’t spend any more money.
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We had a relaxed cloudy morning by the pool. We got up at 9:45, way later than any other morning of our honeymoon. Breakfast was crap, as usual. Marga was feeling a little ill, so lying down for a bit was good for her. We took a little walk down a street we haven’t been to yet and found some more garbage-filled poverty. For lunch, we found a secret lid covering some slices of pizza. As in school cafeterias growing up, the pizza is by far the best thing that the chefs can manage to make for a large number of people. It was way better than anything else we’ve eaten here, the previous evening excluded. At 1:15, we were waiting for the van to take us to swim with the dolphins.
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The available excursion on Friday was to drive tiny little two-person speed boats. From what we heard from people that did it, it wasn’t very fun. The boats were hard to drive, had two speeds: full staring-at-the-sky throttle or stopped. We chose that excursion as the one to pass and take a day easily at our own pace. After breakfast, we headed for the beach.
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The planned excursion was one similar to the catamaran one we did from the cruise ship. Alejandro described it as, “Like the jeep thing, but with a lot more water.” We took 45 minute bus ride to a dock where there was a large non-catamaran sail boat named Isa Isa with a pirate standing on board welcoming us. He welcomed everyone in Spanish, until he got to me and said, “Welcome!” in English. I said, in Spanish, “What? I don’t look Spanish enough for you?” And he said, “Not at all, not at all.” Oh well. Later he said, “You don’t have a drop of Moor blood in you, do you?” I responded as he had earlier. Once all aboard, we headed for the island. We were served a little spinach pie thingy and some juice, and then the beer came out. With the music blasting, the atmosphere was festive and reminiscent of earlier excursions.
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The organized excursion was “Shoppingâ€. It cost 12€ each to be taken on a bus to several shopping centers. When we got there in the morning, all the slots had been taken. Luckily some of our friends were in the same situation, so we decided to share a cab. Alejandro told us the name of the mall and how much the taxi should cost, so we went for it. The taxi to the Sambil Mall cost 25,000 Bolivars. That sounds like a lot, but get this. The sly cabbie didn’t have a 5k note on him, change for a payment of 30k. But instead he accepted 20,000 B plus a one dollar bill. That’s how much a Bolivar is worth. My hypothesis from the day before that the country didn’t have any coins was shattered when I saw some 100 B coins in the cab, each worth roughly 2 US pennies.
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When I woke up, the sun was already up (remember it comes up at 6:00 AM), and I looked at my watch. For our excursion, we had to be ready to go at 9:00 AM. My watch said 8:15, so I kind of freaked out and got Marga up. We showered and ran down to breakfast, ate a quick breakfast, and were in the lobby by 9:05. I figured that’d be fine considering the quantity of Spaniards involved. We had left something in the room, so I went running up to the room to get it. While I was there, I hid my computer in the closet, since the hotel specifically said, “We are not responsible for anything that you leave in your room that you don’t put in the safe provided [for pretty expensive rent]“. While I was still in the room, Marga came in and looked at me with disappointment and said, “They’ve already left. We had to be there at 9:00 and it’s too late.”
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We were told to have our luggage packed and leave it outside our cabin in the hallway before going to bed the night before. This seemed rather ridiculous when we woke up the next day and realized that we didn’t hit land until noon. But oh well. We had breakfast and spent some time out on deck lying on chairs. At 1:30 PM we had to meet in the main lounge to go through Venezuelan immigration and get grouped by hotel for our further stay. There was a lot of bored waiting, and we were finally loading our suitcases onto a bus by 2:15 PM.
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Like Aruba, Curaçao is Dutch, and the population speaks four languages. We went with our internet-informed friends onto shore and quickly found a taxi driver, Franklin A. Concepcion, who wanted to take us to a few notable places. We negotiated him down from $20/person to $25/couple and off we rode.
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After a full day at sea, we finally arrived to the Dutch island of Aruba.
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After a photo-heavy day 3, we left the camera in the cabin and explored the ship during our full day at sea.
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