Day 5: After spending a day in Charlotte, NC it was time to kick this trip up a notch – on to Aruba in the Dutch West Indies! Saturday was more or less a travel day, leaving North Carolina at 6am and arriving in Aruba at 5pm.

Aruba!

Getting off the airplane, one thing was apparent – the island was HOT and HUMID! Before my Aruba flight I met up with a few people during my layover in New York. One person, Mark, was going to be my roommate in Aruba. The other, Phil, was someone I met in LA a few days prior to the trip. When we landed, the 3 of us split a rental car. It ended up being the same price as a taxi so we figured why not.

I was staying at a Marriott in the tourist town of Palm Beach, Aruba. Thank you Priceline for the super cheap hotel room. My initial impression was…well, not good. Across from the hotel was a slew of American chain restaurants: Subway, Wendy’s, Sbarro, Duncan Donuts, Pizza Hut, TGI Fridays, Tony Roma’s and a slew of others. There were even high end places like Behihana and Texas de Brazil! I flew across the caribbean for some local fare, not food from home. In addition to that, Aruba has their own currency, AFL (Aruba Florens) yet almost no store or restaurant would accept it, they only accepted the US dollar. In case you care, 1 USD = 1.75 AFL. The more you know.

While walking around the hotel, someone recognized me from the JetBlue Facebook page, which I thought was pretty neat. We all decided to head to dinner, as a group. We found this local place right up the road called MoomBas, which had awesome cheap local food. We would eventually spend every night there.

MoomBa's Aruba! Our dinner spot!

Day 6: Got up early and headed to the beach. The water was insanely blue and incredibly warm. There were some storms in the distance, and a waterspout appeared right off the coast! If you know anything about me, then you’ll know how excited I was!

Waterspout next to the Hotel in Aruba

Later in the day, I played Bingo by the pool, $1 a card, reminded me of the ranch. I bought 5 cards cause I’m just that much of a Bingo fiend and wouldn’t you know it, on the final game I won! Since there were only like 4 people playing, I only win $10. Such is life.

Dinner was actually a meetup put together buy another JetBlue pass holder. A few more people arrived during the day, so we all met up for drinks at a local bar called Buster’s followed by dinner at a place called Cafe Rembrandt. I have to say, meeting all these people were really the highlight of my trip. No one knew each other before Aruba and it was so awesome hearing everyones stories of how this came about. I have a feeling this element is what I will like the most about the entire month.

Day 7: Got up much later today partly due to an amazing thunderstorm that kept my awake until 4am. More lightning and thunder then I’ve seen in years. Anywho, when I got up, Mark, Philip and I decided to explore the island. It’s only 22 miles by 7 miles so we couldn’t go too far, but we ended up on the complete opposite of where we were staying, called Baby Beach.

When we first got to Baby Beach, a few donkeys were blocking the road. We got out to take some pictures and they came right up to us, but got bored when they found out we had no food.

Aruba Donkeys! Don't they look like aliens?

We then headed over to the “cactus forrest”. It was a little difficult to navigate the dirt roads with a little 2 wheel drive car, but we managed.

Baby Beach in Aruba

On the way back to the hotel we went through a town called St. Nicholas. This was a severely rundown town that was seemingly deserted in the middle of a Monday, something I didn’t expect. We were also told after the fact that prostitution was legal in that town and that its often referred to as Aruba’s Red Light District. None of us stuck around enough to see for ourselves.

We got back to the hotel to get ready for another JetBlue dinner at MoomBas. We lost some people, but gained a few more, almost a dozen in all for dinner. This was where I started understanding the human connections this pass has created. Here were people of all ages from all walks of life all sharing an experience together, and who probably would have never crossed paths otherwise. I could talk about this all day if you let me, but I’ll leave it at that. We sat and talked for a few hours before an incoming thunderstorm ended the night early.

Day 8: Today was a travel day, but before we headed to the airport I wanted to check out a lighthouse that I could see from my hotel room.

Aruba Lighthouse

After checking it out, it was just a lighthouse, nothing special. It looked cool, but that’s it. On the way to the lighthouse, however I saw a shipwreck right off shore. I have no idea of the back story behind this ship, but it was pretty neat nonetheless.

Aruba Shipwreck

Finally it was time to fly out. When the plane arrived to New York from the Aruba, the pilot announced “Welcome back to reality” as everyone sighed. So true. One last flight today to Los Angeles will make 10 total hours in the sky for the day. Tomorrow is a recoup day, or should I say “laundry day”.

Next stop: San Juan, Puerto Rico! I’m excited to check out Bioluminescence Bay. Who knows, maybe some paragliding is in my future as well.