We got off the Eclipse and took a bus out to the famed California lighthouse on the far Aruban shore. It was built between 1914-1916. Topping out at 100 feet, the stone was quarried on the island. The lighthouse is named after this part of the island, which was named after a 1910 shipwreck. The SS California was traveling from Liverpool to Central America and people on board were having a party when the ship ran aground at midnight. The next day the locals saw the damage and waded out to pick up the vessel’s cargo: merchandise, furniture, clothes and other provisions. They took it all down to Oranjestad to sell it. And now there’s the famous lighthouse:
Anybody can show you the sharp, focused picture. It seems more daring to take a fuzzy shot as iconography.
The bus didn’t come back to pick us up. A different, entirely random bus, with the business model of picking up stranded tourists, did the job.
We got back to the cruise ship, hired Lisette, a wonderful and sweet taxi driver:
And she gave us a great tour with views of the island we otherwise would have never, ever seen. Lisette told us all about the demographics and much of the history and the current government and even the natural remedies that Arubans use. She took us to her brother’s house so we could see iguanas. Our 90-minute tour turned into an almost three-hour experience. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who loves their home more than she does. It was a treat to see it with her.
She showed us all the good spots, like this inlet:
That’s between the Bushiribana ruins — once a gold smelter used to extract gold from the nearby hills — and what was formerly the premiere tourist attraction, the now-fallen Natural Bridge, which collapsed in 2005.
Just down from there was a rock beach where people build miniature rock cairns. It is a long, wide stretch of shoreline filled with the hopes and dreams and whimsy of a great many people. I built one, the first one I’ve ever made.
Most peaceful, at ease moment you could imagine.
Our day in Aruba:
