Aruba

We woke up around 6:30am to find ourselves docked in Oranjestad, the capital of Aruba. The forecast for today was partly cloudy and in the mid-80s. The size of this island is approximately 74 square miles with a population of 34,000 people. The language on this beautiful island is primarily Dutch though English is spoken here.

We met our excursion group in the terminal around 8:20am and waited to get our wristbands. The wristband was our “ticket” for entry into DePalm Island and includes meals, drinks, and snorkel gear. We boarded a bus and was taken to the DePalm docks about 15 minutes away. We boarded a water taxi and headed out to DePalm Island a short ride away.





Once we arrived on the small island, we were "debriefed” on the use of the facilities, what was included during our stay, and when to meet to get back. We had 3 hours of non-stop fun here.

Here is the water park:

We dropped our snorkel bags and towels on the beach chairs and went to the edge of the water to stick our big toes in the water to see how cold it was. Not too bad for Caribbean waters.

We borrowed a snorkeling vest and headed down the steps into the blue water. We saw a lot of blue parrotfish, red snapper, and angelfish. They were everywhere.

I tried to follow my hubby, but ran into a problem with my Olympus camera. I was getting error messages. Hmmmm…looks like some water got into my camera. So, I decided to get out of the water and put my camera away. I’ll deal with it later.

I decided to just swim around and look at all the beautiful fish. The water was a bit rough here and every now and then I had to “drain” my mask. No biggie. I just had to be careful not to get slammed by a large wave and run into the coral.

Darling hubby eventually gave me the Canon camera to play with, so he could swim out to edge of “don’t go beyond the buoys” and look at the large fish. This was my chance to test out the camera under water. I have to say, it did a beautiful job:

The blue parrotfish were everywhere and even can close to the surface near the stairs:

After 1-1/2 hours of snorkeling we got out of the water to dry off and wander around the tiny island.








A storm front came through and dumped a lot of rain within 10 minutes. Everything was nicely drenched:

Once the sun came back out, we headed over to the food pavilion to see what was cooking. They had set up a terrific Caribbean buffet for us: BBQ chicken, rice and peas, fried plantains, macaroni & potato salads, fruit salad, and regular salad. The food was fantastic:

After lunch, we gathered our personal belongings and headed to the dock to take the water taxi back to the main island.

Back on the ship, we quickly changed and I grabbed my Nikon camera. We headed out to downtown to do some walking and burn more calories.





These are common here:

A view of the ships in port from the Renaissance:

We are walking around the Renaissance beach property:







It's beautiful here:






We left Aruba around 5pm.



We're approaching the Renaissance beach area. Earlier, we had walked around here (pictures above):



We passed by the Aruba airport:



Here, we passed the Renaissance Island:




The Captain announced that we had to sail 1100 nautical miles to get back to Ft Lauderdale. Yes, you could feel the ship rocking and rolling a bit. Life is good!