Strictly speaking, Aruba isn't a desert island, although it may appear close to that at a casual glance. Early Spanish explorers labelled it as a "useless" island, but that certainly doesn't tell the whole story either.
Although Aruba and Curaçao are very near neighbours, and share a similar mix of nationalities and cultures, there are some significant differences between them -- as I discovered during our one-day stop in Aruba. I admit that I may be selling Aruba short due to limited experience, but during my visit I saw no sign of the playfulness which kept bubbling to the surface in Curaçao. Aruba seemed, by contrast, to be business, through and through.
I first sensed that when I came off the ship. We were on a utilitarian concrete dock, a fair distance from the centre of Oranjestad, the capital. The dock gave every appearance of being easily adaptable to cargo service, and it probably is. You have to go some distance outside the dock area to hit the first shop. In Curaçao, the shopping district begins inside the security perimeter of the cruise terminal! Here's the view of the dock area and the city from the ship's decks.
The tour which I took didn't go into Oranjestad, but as far as I could see from my ship's upper decks, Oranjestad had only one or two examples of the colourful old architecture which so characterizes the centre of Willemstad in Curaçao. Instead, Oranjestad has ample examples of modern glass-and-concrete business architecture.
As we were leaving the port and driving northwest along the shore road, our guide pointed out, at great length and in detail, each of the many resorts along this beach stretch. I understand that tourism is the mainstay of Aruba's economy, especially since the oil refinery has been mothballed, but our guide's endless emphasis on it certainly reinforced my impression that Aruba is all about business! It's not hard to see that these resorts would have to use a lot of desalinated water in irrigating their beautiful lawns and lovely gardens.
Since my tour in Curaçao focused on cultural features, it seemed appropriate to pick a tour directed at the nature lover here in Aruba. So I did that, and here's what I found.This island isn't nearly as large as its near neighbour, but within that small area there are significantly different natural regions. The southwest side, in and around Oranjestad, is largely flat and, in landscape terms, monotonous.
The northeast side, which we visited during our tour, is rugged and hilly, although not rising to very high altitudes. The hilly region is formed of volcanic deposits of great age, but there is no other or more recent sign of volcanic activity here. Much of the remainder of the island is formed primarily out of limestone, a pale grey colour, covered with broad stretches of light brown sand. If the rocks were red sandstone instead, the whole place would begin to look like it belonged in the American desert southwest.
While the Hooiberg looks like a perfect volcano shape, it's not volcanic. It's a noticeable and prominent feature in the middle of Aruba's flat region, but that's all. There is a trail climbing to the top of the Hooiberg which has 587 steps, according to one account I read on line. I didn't propose to check that particular detail myself.
Aruba will appear to most visitors as being, for practical purposes, nearly a desert, even though its climate is officially defined as semi-arid. Large clusters of cacti and scrubby bushes dot the landscape, and tree growth is limited to barely three percent of the island's land area. On average, Aruba receives only 16-18 inches (406-457 mm) of rain annually -- and it shows. The aridity is believed to have been caused largely by deforestation during the Spanish era of the colonial period. The aloe vera is another plant which makes itself right at home here, its economic significance attested by the choice of the plant to appear in stylized form on the Aruban coat of arms.
Our first of three stops was at a butterfly farm. Here we got a detailed explanation of the complex biological mechanisms which dictate the life cycles of butterflies and moths. During his talk, our guide was able to find caterpillars hiding under leaves, and spot a female butterfly in the process of laying one of her eggs. He even spotted a pair of butterflies mating. With so many butterflies whizzing around inside the large netted enclosure, it seemed pretty difficult to take a picture that didn't have butterflies. The challenge was to find one where the butterflies would sit still long enough to pose. The brilliant blue ones were especially difficult to capture sitting still. But I did my best.
This is a rack of pupae or cocoons, some of them in the process of breaking open to release the adult butterflies. The butterfly will have to sit and allow its wings to unfold and dry for 24 hours before trying to fly on them. That glorious specimen in the middle was the only one of its kind which I saw.
From here we drove on to Casibari Park, a site of sizable and startling natural rock formations. Like many amateur travel writers, I've been known to crack jokes about the Amazing Scenic Boulder Tour. This place was of another order, though. I had trouble guessing whether the rocks had been thrown together here by force of nature, or if they were eroded into these fantastic shapes where they sat. I didn't climb the stairs of the main hill as the rocky steps were uneven and there were no handrails except at the top. But there were plenty of intriguing formations to be seen down at ground level, in the area around the highest rocks.
Casibari was also the place where I tried to make friends with this little Aruba whiptail. It's an endemic species. This one was, at a rough guess, about 100 mm long (4 inches).
We then drove northeastwards, up into the hill country and over to the northeastern shore. Here we were just at the edge of Arikok National Park, which encompasses most of the Aruban lava beds.
This is a shore where the ocean, driven by the northeasterly trade winds, is busily engaged in carving and remaking the landscape. Here we saw the Natural Bridge.
You might wonder how that convenient open space on the landward side of the bridge came to be. Here's a photo of a new one, just beginning to form. It's usually a matter of the water eating its way in through crack and crevices in the rocks, and then eroding the sides of the openings until the land above collapses into the vacant space underneath.
Our guide told us that this was the "little" bridge. The bigger one collapsed one night in 2005. Even this one, he told us, has gotten noticeably longer since then as the ocean keeps gnawing away at the foundations at sea level. As with ocean-carved natural bridges everywhere, it's only a matter of time.
This coastal lookout point is also a great place to watch and try to catch the "big one" smashing into the rocks. This is a place where you really need video to depict the violence of the cross-currents as the waves pile into the shore from different directions, no doubt redirected and distorted by crumbled rocks hidden below the surface.
Despite the reddish appearance of the rocks, due to the sand overlay, these are actually beds of the same limestone variants which form so much of the island.
For a single morning outing, this tour gave a quick cross-section view of several different landscapes in Aruba. This island is a very interesting place in its own right, and certainly not typical of what most people imagine a Caribbean island as being.
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