We got up and headed out for our morning walk. Our goal today was to make it to the end of the Radisson before we turned around. It is another beautiful day in paradise and there are many people out walking today. We met our goal and head back for coffee and to get ready for our explorations. Aruba is 15 miles off the coast of Venezuela. It is 19.6 miles long and 6 miles across at its widest point with an average year round temperature of 82 degrees. With an island this size how can you get lost right? Wrong. We quickly found that most streets off the main roads have no street names and are dirt with huge ruts, holes and rocks.
We wanted to find Baby Beach and a place we read about in a local magazine called Frenchman's Pass.
The history is during the Spanish period Gaspeti a tribal head of sorts who was like a missionary to the indians was attacked by French pirates who invaded Aruba. Gaspeti and his indians fled to the caves nearby but a barking dog gave away their location and the French set a fire at the cave entrance killing Gaspeti and the indians. Their ghosts are said to preside over this beautiful area. Before leaving the Divi we asked the doorman if he knew how to get there and he said "no". We told him it was in the book in the lobby and he said "could be". It was in the general area on the map of the national park so we decided to find it on our own. This plan did not work well. We were on dirt roads and dead ends and passed these goats twice in two different directions before coming upon a road crew triming trees who told us how to find it as you can see from the sign above. After telling us how to get there the man said "Welcome to Aruba". After leaving there we are trying to find our way to the beaches. We are off the main road again and on dirt roads when I see lights in the distance. I look on the map and tell Debbie that it must be the Aruba Raceway that I see listed on the map. As we get closer Debbie notes that it is not a raceway but a prison! By gosh it was too complete with barbed wire fences and guard towers. We decided that prisoners should not have a view that beautiful.
We did it so now we are off the find Baby Beach. It is supposed to be one of the most beautiful beaches in the world and is showing on the map at southern tip of the island. Currently we are on the opposite side of the island and slightly north. We try to drive along the coast but it's hopeless trying to figure out where we are. We head through San Nicholas (again) and all roads there lead to the Valero refinery and we seem to keep going in circles trying to find the way past the refinery to where the beach appears to be. We kept missing it because it looked like another entrance to the refinery but we followed some other cars into what looks like another entrance into the refinery and lo and behold we find it. It is a breath taking scene and we stood there taking photos for probably a half hour. After this we headed back to Playa Linda to visit with Lois but she was visiting in another unit her roommate told us so we got an order of ribs at Smokey Joe's and headed back to the Divi and had dinner and stayed in for the night. Another fun day.
And on the way back through San Nicholas, Debbie spotted this...
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