Caribbean

It’s a pretty dreary day here today so I am posting the photo that takes me to my happy place–a newly discovered one located in Jost van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. Just a little to the right of that pink roofed house, laying in the sand on a nearly empty beach with the warm waves gently rolling over me. Ahhhhh.

Fact: The band Iron Butterfly wrote an epic musical number called In the Garden of Eden.

Fact: the lead singer, during rehearsal, was intoxicated (shocking, I know) beyond belief and slurred the title, making it sound like In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. In their inebriated state, the band members all thought this was awesome and decided to change the name of the song to this officially.

Present day (well about a month ago): While leisurely boating our way through the British Virgin Islands, we were fortunate to hit great weather. This allowed us the ability to visit the barely touched, remote island of Anegada (see where I am going with this?)

the guys looking for places to dive

Anegada, the furthest north island in the BVI chain, is also known as the drowned island as you don’t really see it until you are nearly right up on it. The tallest point on the island is 27′ and I am pretty sure after exploring the entire island–that that measurement was obtained by one of the only 200 year round residents standing on top of a beach bar with his hands raised in the air.

The island has more goats than people

With nothing to guide an incoming boat by sight, perfect weather is required to visit the island as it is surrounded by AND made up of coral reef and navigating a boat through the coral when the water is not calm and clear can be dangerous. In fact, many charter companies actually forbid their boats to be taken to Anegada because the seas around the island can be so volatile and the reef so damaging if struck.

the boat population viewed from the beach bar

As I mentioned, we had perfect weather and anchored in the harbor for two nights. We explored the island by foot, a rented Datsun truck and by dinghy. It was on Anegada that we felt the most isolated. The beaches were empty and while there were a handful of restaurants on the island, unless you had your dinner order in by 4pm, you didn’t eat.

(note: As with many places in the BVI’s, the menu is caught shortly before it is cooked so the orders had to be in early. The menu choices didn’t vary much from lobster or prawns on any of the islands both are plentiful. The seafood was fresh and delicious for the most part–but by the end of the trip we were ready for some hamburgers).

our waiter/chef/fisherman/restaurant owner

our truck

Anegada is home to the third largest reef in the world: Horseshoe Reef. We spent our days snorkeling and diving off the shore. We swam with sting rays, swam away from barracuda and interacted with very playful turtles. The underwater coral formations were gorgeous with swim through caves and caverns and although I didn’t see as many colorful fish here as I did on the other islands, the stingrays, turtles and bathtub warm water made up for that.

Each night we’d all head back to the boat for happy hour and talk about the day (this was a regular occurrence every night in the BVI’s and I miss it so much now that we are back at home).

Nightly view

And although some may deny it–every member of our party was guilty for at least once humming/signing/doing air guitar along to the song In a gadda da vida when ever the island Anegada was mentioned by name.

When I returned home and once again had access to a steady internet connection, I learned of this Iron Butterfly story and I put two and two together. Anegada the island does have garden of eden qualities: beauty, peacefulness, desolate white sand beaches (Eden had beaches, right?) like the original name of the song that was changed to sound kinda like the island…

Did those guys in Iron Butterfly know something back then? Was their drunken slurring actually insightful musical genius beyond even their own comprehension?

Hmmmmm.

Wow. this is the life. 89F degrees with a very steady breeze. Just when I start feeling a bit warm, I’m suddenly cool.

This was my first journal entry on my first day in Aruba as I sat on the beach just outside my hotel.

The beaches in Aruba are some of the cleanest I have seen and the sand appears to be unnaturally white in contrast to the ocean water that has no less than five varying colors of aqua blue. After moving to the East Coast, my normal tropical vacation destinations of Hawaii and Western Mexico became too far away for long weekend escapes so I was forced to find closer destinations.

Aruba, one of the ABC islands (B and C being Bonaire and Curacao) in the Caribbean has a stigma–everyone is aware of that fact. It is here where a young girl on an school excursion made some bad decisions, chose to hang out with the wrong friends and ended up missing. Tragic yes, of course, but what is also tragic is the negative impression that incident left on Aruba. The bad press made an impression on me–I had very low expectations for my visit and was admittedly drawn there only for the warm weather and 4 hour direct flight from NYC.

I scored a great deal at the Westin in the Palm Beach area of the island, the newer “high rise” section. The view from my room overlooked the Caribbean Sea, the salt water hotel pool and 10 stories below under a canopy of palm trees, a live steel drum band that serenaded the hotel guests most of the day. Have you ever heard ‘Land Down Under’ by Men at Work performed by an Arubian Steel Drum band? It is awesome. Even their version of ‘Kokomo’ sounded good.

Aruba is a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Together, the State of the Netherlands, the State of the Netherlands Antilles and the State of Aruba form a Commonwealth. They all share Dutch citizenship and the Dutch passport. I love the Dutch. In my experience, any place with Dutch influence is clean, friendly and inviting. Dutch and a local pigeon dialect are the national languages here, but Spanish and English are spoken freely. To visit a Caribbean island (although some say Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao are technically considered South American by their longitude and latitude marks) and be able to communicate in English so easily would normally be a turn off for me; but here, I still felt as though I was in a foreign land and much further away from the US than I actually was.

Inevitably, Aruba traded some of their tropical authenticity and fell victim to the thousands of people that visit each morning and then depart each evening on cruise ships– barely straying from the tourist t-shirt shops and chain restaurants just across the street from the port. Luckily, Palm Beach is driving distance from the cruise ship area which spares me (and other residents of the High Rise section) the tacky souvenir shops and the annoying, not at all persuasive, offers from street salesmen to take you fishing, boating, diving, hiking or whatever else you may want to do on the Island.

There is plenty to do on this small island (but do take note–if your kind of fun involves mind altering substances, know that Aruba’s rules on illicit drugs are not nearly as lax as their parent country) and renting a car to drive around the island to see how the locals live is a good first step. My agenda for the week included wreck dives (three ships and a plane) with one of the local PADI shops (note: with the shallowness of the dives, the snorkeling is nearly as good as the diving), kite boarding, or at least watching some crazy kite stunts, at Baby Beach on the windy side of the island, an overnight trip to Venezuela via ferry-only 17 miles away- (which is another story in itself) and of course laying by the pool with a floatie, a book and a cool drink.

baby beach

With its close proximity to major cities on the East Coast, Aruba is definitely a top vacation spot and if all travelers keep in mind that regardless of the destination, any place can be dangerous to visit, places like Aruba wouldn’t get such a bad reputation.

Just last night I saw that Aruba is still making the nightly news, or rather, the unfortunate incident with the missing girl is still making news. I am relieved though that now when I hear Aruba mentioned, I no longer think of an unsafe place– but instead of a place I can’t wait to visit again.