Some Good News

...just got off the phone with the boss. My Friday trip has been delayed till Tuesday Apr. 21. He said not to even bother to come into the office [I'm going home Thursday] until I get back from New Orleans. So, I have Friday and Monday off and the boss and me will meet up in NOLA Tuesday.

I'm attaching a pic of my neighbor's backyard where I was yesterday with the Dutch Marines. He lives on the next street...the street between my house and the beach. That back gate that you can barely see on the left opens to a stairway that hugs about a 20-foot cliff down to the beach.

And speaking of streets, I thought I found my garbage iguana [on the street in front of my house] although this is too small. Plus he was real green when he came out of the garbage can but I'm not sure if they change colors. This one is gray.

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Tidbits...

I thought about doing the "3rd thing I've learned about Aruba" but I'm not in the mood to develop anything...so I'm going to do a few short subjects about things that are on my alleged mind...most of them are just gripes...
1-The people in the grocery stores don't know how to handle bread. They just crush it when they pick it up and then throw a bunch of stuff on top of it. Haven't brought one home yet that wasn't mauled.

2-Going home Thursday but I have to change planes in Miami and Dallas. I can go thru Atlanta and change once but I won't get home until 10 p.m. No one in my family likes me enuff to lose that much sleep and pick me up at that time of night.

3-I've noticed four types of Chevrolets on this rock that you won't see in the States...the Corsa, the Optica, the Spark, and the Epica. None of 'em are any bigger than a Jetta or a say a Sentra.

4-Lots of local wildlife around this weekend...since the burro ran over me. I went out the other night to take out my trash right at dusk and there was a huge iguana in the garbage can who was not pleased when I threw that sack on him. Musta been 16 feet long...well, okay, maybe 4 feet, but he was the biggest one I've seen here.


Last night I went outside and a crab was ready to fight me on the front step. Maybe I should quit feeding the lizards out there. They eat all the veggie scraps but will fight over a banana. I really don't know how many types of lizards are out there. But the iggys are the biggest. There's one pretty big type that is an irridescent blue. Really pretty.
5-I would give my left, uh, leg for some decent milk. All the milk here tastes weird. You buy it off the shelf...almost none is refrigerated when you buy it. It's pretty bad.
6-There a lot of street legal 4-wheelers [ATVs] on the streets and even the highway. I'd like to have one. Some of them are really tricked out.
7-Gotta be in New Orleans Friday for a meeting with a new client. The boss wanted me to just stop in New Orleans on the way home Thursday. I told him that I can't be positive where I'm going to be Friday but I know without a doubt where I'm going to sleep Thursday night. Of course, he's in Bahrain and can't exactly influence me much from there. The worse he can do is fire me. The last time I looked, they don't eat people for having different priorities than the boss.

8-There is a contingent of Dutch Marines on this rock. I just came back from a friend's house down the street where two of them are there who just got in (Thursday) from the jungles of Surinam where they just spent 6 weeks literally living off the land in a survival exercise. They are still a little intense. One of them was thinking of a way to eat a lizard that he caught in the yard. I thought he was going to eat it raw. I left.

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The Fourth Thing I've Learned About Aruba...

Even the seedy places have pretty good food...

Went with three other ex-pats (expatriates) from the "neighborhood" to a place in San Nicholas. One of the guys has been here for a long time so he knows of a lot more places than I do. He'll also go IN places I wouldn't normally go into. He drove to a pretty dark part of town where there are several really friendly women just hanging out on the "sidewalks". I guess those girls must just be bored with the club they all hang out in (it kinda looks like a club from outside) so they stand around outside and start conversations with people walking by...I guess.

So this cafe (La Paradilla) is on top of a rather seedy building a couple of doors down from that club. We went in a door and there were stairs up to roof. The cafe occupies the roof and it reminded me of the place where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their Maker at the end of the movie.

We had a table that gave us a view of the street. I saw a couple of those bored women talk to some men and invite them into the club. (Maybe those girls are in marketing). There is a second story on that club that we could see into. I was a little confused by what was going on in there. Must be a wrestling school or something. Couldn't see too clearly because the lighting was bad.

But I digress...

So we sit down at one of the homemade tables with homemade chairs and a young pregnant girl comes up with a menu written in the local popiamento. So Rick, the guy from Louisiana who has lived here for a while, orders something in popiamento and they all order beer...I got bottled water because someone needs to drive home.

A few minutes later all the employees in the place show up with a huge platter of grilled meats and corn on the cob (flank steak, chicken breast, shrimp, pork ribs, sausage, and something else that was part of an animal). They also had some potatoes, arepas (a flat bread) with lots of white cheese, yucca root, some sort of pancake made of plantains mixed with other veggies, and a cole slaw like cabbage dish they called a salad.

So we just started eating family style. Everything I took a bite of (including the unknown animal) was better than the last bite. They also brought some salsas and chimichurris that were excellent (albeit a little warmish...one in particular made of cucumbers, jalapenos, and onions).

We literally sat there and ate and told refinery stories for 2 hours. It was great. And I'm still okay. I actually found the place this afternoon in the daylight and took pictures from the street.

I also found out that the club is called Club Monaco...and some of those girls were still standing around outside today. You'd think that if a club was that boring that it wouldn't be very popular but it appears to be. I saw a lot of ex-pats coming and going last night.

I wonder why all those women just don't go home.

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Four Days

Well, it's a 4-day holiday here on the island and I'm stuck here until April 16. But, some of the other Americans and Canadians here are doing some things and they have invited me. On top of that when I started whining to my boss in the refinery about languishing for 4 days, she gave me enuff work to keep me occupied...D-OH!!!!

There is a vacant "lot" behind my bungelow that slopes severely down to a street. It's heavily packed with briars, cactus, and all manner of stuff that keeps explorers out. A couple of days ago, I was driving down the street back there and right directly behind my house was a dead boa constrictor. I'm generally not afraid of snakes but this was the biggest snake I've ever seen outside of a cage...probably 823 feet long. ok, maybe 8 feet.

Speaking of wildlife, I was heading to town this morning and I saw 5 wild burros trotting parallel with the road...and there's a lot of traffic because it's the road to the beach and this is a big beach weekend in Aruba. Any way, the road has a curve and the burros get to it a little ahead of me and the cross the road at the curve. All I had to do was slow to a crawl to let them by but a car coming the other way had to stop. So I keep my eye on the burros because I'm still slow-rolling. The burros are still trotting after they clear the road and I'm watching them and I suddenly realize there only 4 of them. A quick math calculation and I realize that one has not crossed yet. I'm still rolling and I see it out of the corner of my eye...and then I felt it. That burro collided with my rent car right at the left front tire. There wasn't any damage but if I had hit him instead of the other way around I probably would have been calling for my third rent car for this trip.

While I was looking at the car I noticed something odd about my license plate...it has a piece of another license plate attached over the top of the original. Oddly enough, the small piece is the part the has "2009" stamped into it (and the "V" that identifies it as a rental car and, of course, me as a foreigner). The part under it has an "A" with 2008. (The "A", of course, stand for "Aruba"). I'm trying to decide if I'm worried about that.

Actually considering running down the street to the beach. A bunch of Canadians dropped by and invited me. I know my chicken legs aren't any whiter than those Canadians so I'll probably do it...

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I Got Kicked out of Aruba

Yep. I got kicked out of Aruba... and boy was it a trip.

I had to apply for an extension till April 16 since my original plan was to leave on April 10. Somewhere in that process [I hesitate to give the details in this forum], I was "asked" to leave the country until some "things" get straightened out with my visa. After some negotiations on my behalf [i don't really know who did what to whom with which or where], it was decided that if I leave the country and come back in, I can sort of reset the clock by re-submitting my immigration papers on entry. So I went to the next island...Curacao [koo-rah-sow, like a girl pig] for the day and came back that evening.

The trip was an experience. For most of the day I sat in an outdoor coffee shop in the hotel district and read a book. I walked around a little and took a few pictures [nothing worth showing].

But the highlight was when I went to a casino. It was a DIVE. It reminded me of one of the casinos in the Chevy Chase movie, Las Vegas Vacation, where they were betting on all kinds of things like Rock, Paper, Scissors and things like that. The security guy [this is no joke] wore and old plaid western shirt with the word "SECURITY" on the back with misaligned iron-on letters. The felt on the blackjack tables was completely worn thru where the dealer plays. There were only 4 tables counting the single roulette wheel. The bathroom was so small that you had to turn sideways to get past the sink and urinals.

When it opened at 10 a.m., there were about 20 locals waiting at the door to play the slots. The whole thing reminded me of one of those semi-legal 8-liner "game rooms" in Alvin.

Any way, at about 3:30, I grabbed a taxi to get to the airport. It was an old mini-van that hadn't been vaccumed or cleaned up in years, and there was no headliner and. Now get this...I sat in the second row seats that had two captain's chairs. When we went around the first corner, the seat tipped because it wasn't bolted down!! So I moved to the next seat and it didn't have a seat belt and was loose but at least bolted down. On top of that, the van kept dying on us. He must have restarted that thing half a dozen times while driving about 70 around blind curves. But we got to the airport.

When I checked in, they said we would leave at "about" 5:00 from gate 6 or 7. Kinda loose arrangements. At about 4:15 I hear this loud announcement paging "Des-hom Ramon" or something like that to report to Gate 8. Didn't pay much attention. Heard that announcement 3 more times. However, when they said "Last call..." I heard them mention my flight number and "Aruba". It suddenly occured to me that they saying my name, only backwards [my passport uses my real first name-"Raymond"]. I jumped up and showed 'em my passport and they said to hurry because "the plane is going to leave without you." No, no, no, no, no!!!

So I get escorted across the tarmac to the plane [a 17-seat prop number] for the 20 minute flight back to Aruba. That morning, coming over, there were only 3 people on that plane. Going back, I'm number 17...it was packed...literally. It was full of huge Aruban guys who actually spilled over into both sides of the aisle because the seats were so small.

Right before we start to taxi, the co-pilot turns around in his seat to give the announcements. It goes like this "Life preservers are under seats, emergency exits over wings. Okay? We go, now."

They didn't turn on the air conditioning until after the take off because we were so loaded they needed the power. But first, we had to wait on the tarmac for about 30 minutes. Let me just say that the air in that plane was plenty thick and damp by the time we got to 2000 ft.

The flight was uneventful, thankfully, until we started to land. The plane was just getting hammered by cross-winds and was really jostling us around [at least those seats were bolted down]. All of a sudden, the biggest guy on the plane [and that's saying something] starts freaking out and tries to get up...to go somewhere...not sure where!! His buddies get him to sit down just in time to hear a LOUD alarm from the cockpit. I could see thru the windshield that we were about on the ground so I figured it was gonna be okay. Never did find out what the alarm was because it stopped by the time we stopped rolling. I'm thinking fuel...

To top all that off, I get to my car and it won't start...dead as a hammer. Fortunately, I'm parked right outside the Budget kiosk so I go inside and get a new car. In my haste, I forgot to get my parking ticket out of the old one so I can't get out of the parking lot.

Now here's the deal...THEY TOLD ME THE CODE TO PUNCH IN TO GET THE ARM TO COME UP. I'm going to share it with you so that any time you're in the Aruba Airport parking lot all you have to do is punch in 2354 at the exit. Then you can get free parking!!! Don't bother to thank me. I'm just paying it forward.

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