Aruba Review -April 9, 2008

[cruiseapril]

On April 9, we visited Aruba from the HAL Westerdam. We had an organized tour planned- to see as much as we could see in 3 hours! I had been to Aruba before, on land vacations, but my sister had not- so the tour was good.

 

The tour, called the Town and Country Tour, made three stops: The Aruba Aloe Factory, the Casabari Rock Park, and the collapsed Natural Bridge area. We found that the bus tour covered about 2/3 of the island!

 

The Aloe Factory is a small, clean, interesting site where you can view the factory activities from upstairs windows. Of course, the tour ends in a gift shop-this is one had artistic displays of the aloe products.

 

The Casabari Rocks are worth a visit if only for the plants, cacti, and trees in it. Also the gift shop (yup) had a very friendly donkey looking through the back gate at the customers- looking for treats?

 

The collapsed Natural Bridge area (with gift shop!) is a wild North Coast area with all kinds of activities, including ATVs and Jeeps. Those rides looked very dusty!

 

The entire bus ride took us all the way up the Beach Coast, past Eagle & Palm Beaches, to the California Lighthouse, through Noord, past the Ostrich Farm and the Gold Mine Ruins, to the North Coast and round to Santa Cruz-back to Oranjestad.

 

After the tour and after an early Lido dinner on the ship, we took a taxi up to the Radisson at Palm Beach. Although very developed, this beach is still

very beautiful IMO- we walked the 14 acre hotel gardens, had a drink at Gilligan's-the on-site bar, enjoyed the evening beach, and played in the casino there.

 

When we return to Aruba, we plan to stay on Palm Beach for the day. Any questions?