Aruba

Aruba ?? Island of smiles & tourism. It’s the main industry here. Great beaches & diving here. The island has 112,000 people & is Dutch. The children go to school here till the age of 12. High schoolers are sent to the Netherlands for their secondary education. 500 children a year. The landscape is one of white sandy beaches, turquoise waters & one of desert sandy soil scattered with huge cacti fields. We were told by a local that it had only rained twice here in the last few years. No fruit trees grow here due to its desert climate & no water. All produce & meat are imported to the island. The divi divi tree is a natural dry weather tree here that is a natural compass as it points in a southwesterly direction due to the trade winds that blow always in the same direction. Having a divi divi tree on your property or at your home is seen as having good luck. Our taxi driver told us the only animals here are cats, dogs & iguana. Of which, they make iguana soup….which we did not try ? we saw the Aruba port boardwalk, the casibari rock formations which are in Hooiberg (central inland Aruba) & are tonalite or quartz diorite rock clusters that our driver said were shot out of the nearby dormant Hooiberg volcano. The Dutch word Hooiberg translates to haystack. Other locals said the rock formations are of a mysterious origin…after hiking the casibari rocks we visited the California lighthouse & then went swimming at Arashi beach which was an idyllic white sand, warm water, playful wave beach said to be perfect for snorkeling but the water was not clear due to high winds & waves the day we were there.