Jan 10 - Aruba 2

Our day started with a 7am tour of Aruba. Sunny was there right on time and introduced us to Ricardo Thomas, our driver guide. Ethel, Sharon and I were in charge of the 4 little girls and 2 little boys. The other “boys” along with Mei had booked themselves a Mariokarting excursion around the island.

First up was a quick drive through the streets of Oranjestad, the capital of Aruba. This didn’t take long! We soon hit the “countryside”. Aruba was a lot drier than I expected. There were Cactus and Khwi trees everywhere. Our first stop was the natural bridge. Because we left so early, we were the first ones there! Baby Beach was next. It was a beautiful beach with turquoise waters that was calm and shallow. Although it was great for children, with 6 of them, it was extremely hard work! The sand was a royal pain in the behind! Ricardo-Thomas was fabulous with his run down on Aruba, he covered biology, history, geography, culture, politics, education and more right through our dive. We were taken around nearly the whole island. We returned to the ship via Eagle and Palm Beach where most of the big hotels were. There were four ships in port that day and I was glad that we were returning to the Disney Wonder for it was by far the most beautiful!!!

The markets outside the port in daylight and open!

Being whisked away for Mario Karting

A Mario Kart...

The Convoy

Mal and Elliot's kart

The rugged coastline of Aruba

Baby Beach

Jonah chose to smolder from afar

If you're wondering what Khwi tree is, they are the ones that are not cacti

wild goats

wild donkeys

By 1140, we were back on ship! We forgo the chance of shopping, even for diamonds. Ethel had attended the diamond shopping talk on the previous day. Aruba was meant to be the place to go! We have had enough of the kids. We posted our SOS message on our dry erase board. We attempted to go lunch but all the restaurants were still closed!!! We had to wait until 12pm for BBB to open. Luckily for us, we didn’t have to wait too long before re-enforcements came.

We bathed the children to rid them of all the mud and sand, and then attended to the highly stimulating task of doing the laundry. After a failed attempt at board games on account of Jonah, we retreated to the pool deck to join Ethel and her girls. We fed the little ones while we waited for the ship to set sail. The children really enjoyed waving to the crowds who had gathered to send the ship off. And how could anyone not be impressed by that horn!?!?!

The adults then dressed for their dinner at PALO. It was of course, another fabulous evening of fine dining with friends! Our entertainment that evening was ”Once upon a Song”, a show based upon the great Disney tunes. The musical arrangement was great with the orchestral backup recorded by the San Francisco Philharmonic recorded at Skywalker Ranch.

The ladies dressed for fine dining

We scored the private room and Cornelia again

Once upon a song

It was getting my materials ready for this post that I realised we had lost 4 days worth of photos from the cruise! It took me a while to get over this...We shall not name the culprit! But thank you to all my photographer friends who have been kindly letting me use their photos to plug my “gaps”.