Aruba!!!
Read this while listening to this.
The first week of January, Luke and I went to Aruba for five days. Flying standby is hard so we flew from Calgary to Toronto the day before to make sure we were there for our flight in the morning. My lovely friend Xavier let us stay with him that night, thank goodness. Our flight to Aruba was at 8am and we got the last row all to ourselves. The flight attendants were amazing and we had a great flight.
We walked to our first AirBnb, couldn't find it, took a $6 taxi ride for two minutes just to get there. It was pretty cool - a bunch of places surrounding a pool. We went for dinner that night and my lovely, thoughtful, caring boo told me that his birthday gift for me was for me to go skydiving!!! He's the best.
The next day we went early to rent the car, and drove to all the sites. The gold mine, the natural pools, natural bridge and the caves.
We went to Fontein cave, which was pretty cool, but the second one we went to, the Quadirikiri cave, was absolutely amazing. There were open rooms with light shining in, and we had at least 5 minutes all alone in there.
All of those sites were in the national park on the north side of the island. We got to our second AirBnB that day at 4:00pm and met our awesome host, George. He was awesome. He showed us around that first day, and then we got some groceries and made some dinner.
The next day was my birthday, and the shuttle for the skydiving picked us up in the morning. Once we got to the "General Aviation," they put me in my harness and we got in the tiny little aircraft, and up to 10,000 ft we flew. And then down 10,000ft I flew.
It was absolutely amazing. What a great boyfriend I have. That afternoon, Luke and I went to Mangel Halto beach to go snorkelling and look for a small shipwreck. We couldn't find it, but had a great time snorkelling and looking at the fishies. That night we had dinner at possibly the only restaurant in Aruba with vegetarian and gluten free options on the menu. It was pretty darn good!
The next day, we went back to Mangel Halto to look again for the boat wreck. Again , we couldn't find it, but we found even water with extremely diverse, beautiful reefs. We looked at some other beaches and sat playing crib, watching the sunset. That night we had dinner at the AirBnB and then checked out the parade that was put on for the first night of carnival in Aruba. The next day, we got up early, had breakfast, had a nice hour at the beach, returned our rental car and then hopped on the flight back home.
Other than my burn (my butt is still peeling), I am so happy with the trip. It was a great way to start the new year. I hope you enjoy this little video I put together! It's also on my Instagram.
Song: Yuna - Places To Go
