Aruba was paradise, pure and simple. Here it is as seen from the plane on arrival:

P.S. If you can, open your browser to a width sufficient to display both pictures above side-by-side. Unfortunately, most of these images were screwed up slightly during development, and have a thin white line across them. Oh well!

The weather in Aruba was awesome -- a near constant 31 degrees Celsius (and that was warm -- the rest of the year it's only about 28). Between that, the water, and the excellent hotel, we couldn't have had a better time. The hotel is pictured below.

Upon check-in, they upgraded us (free of charge, although I was expecting the upgrade) to a suite. This was basically the best room on the entire island, we later concluded. The door to the room basically opened out onto the beach, which without question was the best beach on the island. Here I am with the complimentary champagne and fruit basket, sitting at a table in front of the sliding glass door to the porch.

And here's the beach, the one right outside our room. An almost constant wind blows on Aruba, as you can see from the palm trees.

and now, looking back at the hotel from the beach:

In all respects, the hotel was fantastic. If we went again, we would stay at the same place and in fact do the all-inclusive (where you are mostly constrained to eat at your hotel's restaurant) because we liked their restaurant best of all, too. One thing that Yvonne didn't like very much, though, was the lizards. They were everywhere, and in all shapes and colors! One morning, we woke up to three on our front porch. She was not amused :-)

When we weren't in bed or on the beach, we were often eating in one of the incredible restaurants on the island. For example, here we are at the "Buccaneer," a fish place with individual tanks (filled with fish and stuff) by each of the tables in half of the restaurant. The other half had one giant tank aside them all, filled with sea turtles and sharks and lobster. Cool! The food was excellent, as it was most places we visited.

And when we weren't in restaurants, we were doing activities on the island -- shopping, touring, snorkeling, that sort of thing.

First, a four-hour jeep tour of the entire island. This was taken near the northwest tip, looking southwest. The tip of island you see on the left contains our hotel. The island bows inwards to the left (off-picture) and there are the high-rise hotels and the main touristy area (which we mostly avoided). The houses in the fore are basically right in front of a good snorkel area, which you'll see again later.

At the northernmost tip is the California lighthouse (seen later from boat). Then we started down the rougher, eastern (Atlantic) side. They told us they feed the sharks on this side daily, to keep them away from the tourist side. I don't know if that's true, but the ocean was so rough you wouldn't have wanted to swim here anyway. The whole east half of the island looks a lot like this.

Here we are, further along in the jeep tour. The beach you see here was where we stopped (in a few minutes) for lunch and a quick swim. No sharks, though :-)

And here is the "natural bridge," formed from the natural action of erosion by the ocean. There were actually two bridges, and we got shots of one of us by each of them.

At the southern tip of the island was the "natural pool." This was cool beyond words, although we had heard it described before and didn't think much of it -- until we swam in it. It's basically a big pool (big enough to dive into) that is completely sheltered by high rocks on all sides. Waves crash against one side and sometimes spill over into the tide pool (which had fish and fire coral in it), and then spill out over the other side. Amazing place.

This photo might be of some fish in the pool, I'm not sure:

Anyway, enough of the jeep tour. It ended the day on a beach at the southwestern tip of the island, where we went snorkeling for the first time. It was really cool. But I'll save all the underwater photos for the next page (besides, I'm not sure which were taken where).

There were some other non-underwater things we did, such as a sunset sail, and a snorkel-sail tour. Some of these were free (compliments of the hotel) and others were discounted. In all, it was both a good deal and a whole lot of fun. We'd definitely go again!

Here's our hotel seen from one of the sailing tours:

and the lighthouse, and me (near the end of the trip, so I was a little red but I actually wasn't sunburned). Trying to keep your hair from getting frizzy on Aruba was a losing proposition.

and the sunset of course (it was a sunset tour, after all)

and another shot of the two of us

On the snorkel-sail tour, our guides actually caught an octopus (by hand!!) on one of the dives.

And here we are on our last night, taking a walk on the beach:

And now, it's time for the underwater show!!