Hello again from Aruba!
Sharing a few more images, as well as a few stories, from the happy island. I only have one more full day here before heading home to a half foot of snow on the ground….
Aruba is known for it’s Iguana population, and here at the hotel they let the kids feed them lettuce every day at Noon. It’s incredible how the Iguanas know that it’s lunch time and come charging as soon as they see them coming. Thanks to this week my daughters are getting an Iguana who will live with them at their Dad’s house (Chris is on the trip with me and the girls)…..and have decided to name it Rebecca. Libby said that it has to be Rebecca because every house needs to have a Rebecca there. Sweet, yes….but Chris was way too happy to name a scaly, green, monstrous looking creature after me. 
And of course there has been tons of time at the beach. I could share photos taken there with you for days and days.
After a long and exciting drive around the island in a rented Rav4, we saw some wild donkeys walking on the side of the road a ways ahead of us. Of course, being a animal lover and photographer I make Chris pull over. After walking down the road to get closer to them and getting a few shots, one started coming my way. When he started getting close I made a break for the car…and he followed. Fast. After a few moments we had four wild donkeys surrounding the car, one eating a Burger King Chicken Sandwich out of my hand (just the bun), and sticking their heads in the car. I got a few very fun shots of them, but this one shows how close they were. To my photographer readers out there, you’ll get it when I tell you that I was shooting with my 85mm f1.2L fixed lens and couldn’t get back far enough to focus on him. This was what I got when I backed into the middle of the car….
The drive around the island was….eventful. The 3 and 5 year olds in the backseat were cranky and we were driving on Jeep and ATV trails in the Rav4. It’s incredible, really, that as touristy as Aruba has become there is one entire side of the island that does not have a paved road. Or a nice gravel one, for that matter. There were several times when we were forced with making the decision to either turn back or go through LARGE ‘puddles’ which were of unkown depth. The Rav4 did great on the first couple, which were deep enough to come near the bottom of the doors. Unfortunately, we weren’t as lucky when trying to get through a flooded spot that was very large, and as we learned the hard way, deep and slick. We got stuck and started to slide sideways. Chris stopped, told the kids to hold on, backed up a couple of inches and gunned it. We made it out, but the car didn’t sound exactly the same for the rest of the ride. When we kept having people honk and wave and point, we discovered that it was because we were dragging part of the car. Nothing really, just the thingie that protects the gas tank. Anyway, it was fine because it finally fell off entirely on a particularly rough patch of ‘road’. So you can get an idea of what the actual ‘roads’ (not the Jeep trails, the actual road on the map) look like….
There was a very cool isolated beach that we stopped at to hunt for shells and sea glass that was surrounded by handmade crosses. Looking at the names painted on them, we figure that it was actually an unofficial pet cemetary. It was really beautiful in an odd way…this is just one photo of the area–I have others which show how many there really were.
Have a great day and see you in the US soon!
