*post continued*
After we left Leroy and his charges, we went back to the Ayo Rock Formation. We trekked through some of the boulders and concrete steps that went under B-I-G boulders, and since I haven’t mentioned this until now, I was in search of hugeousis, overly large, iguana. Last year, when I left my hotel room without a camera, I saw one eating the flowers at the Wyndham. This iguana made all the other ones look like minnows compared to a whale. It wasn’t overly long, just thicker in the middle and had spines down it’s back that were the size of my little finger. Although I’ve looked everywhere, I’ve never found one that was that big…I want a picture. DAMN IT!
Jim was punishing me verbally, “Maybe we can find that 15 foot iguana.”
“Stop it!”
“Or maybe there’s a 20 foot one here.”
The nuisance noise went on and on. We found relatively small ones as we walked through the park and finally I gave up and headed for the bathroom. A park guide had been lying out – literally sprawled out – when we arrived. He jumped up to talk to Jim in my absence and pointed out two large iguanas on the rocks about 40 yards away. When I arrived, Jim proceeded to punish me some more, “So are there any 20 foot iguanas? Or maybe any giant alligators?” he questioned the park guide.
I interjected, describing the one I’d seen to the park guide. The park guide exclaimed, “Macho iguana!” as he nodded. He went on to say there were very few like that on the island but there were a few. Damn…it was nice to get THE MONKEY off my back. I didn’t just dream it up.
Our next move was to head for the Natural Bridge. I had heard it collapsed. Since I’d been there last year when it was still a bridge, I wanted to see the ‘after’. And as we wheeled down one road, this fence caught my eye…don’t try jumping over this baby and missing your stride:
We found the Natural Bridge without a problem…other than Jim. He was convinced the Daihatsu would just fall apart at any second and we would be stranded. And he came up with unclever sayings that he persisted on using. Like…I asked a redundant question that really required no answer. His reply, “There’s no tellin’ Magellan.”
It was funny the first three or four times but after too many repeats, I told him to stop. He said something like, “Ok, when I’m silent, you’ll know that’s what I said.”
P-f-h-h-h-t! He’s like a little pesky kid – natter, natter, natter, repeat natter. But don’t think I don’t love the hell out of him because I do. And he puts up with a lot from me too because I never cut him any slack…on any subject.
But back to the Natural Bridge – this is what it looked like last year:
This is what it looks like now:
There’s still a small natural bridge off to one side and a pit stop where they serve alcoholic beverages, some kind of food, a gift shop, and they charge you 25c to use the bathroom. I talked to a couple of guys that work there. One of them is totally hooked on poker…what else is there to get hooked on? He was thrilled when I told him I was there dealing the Ultimate Bet Tournament. The other guy spent a few minutes explaining what had happened to the bridge. They thought it was a tremor that took it down and luckily it happened around 6 a.m. – otherwise there could have been 15 to 20 people on it when it collapsed.
Our next stop was the ruins of the gold processing plant. It resembles an old fortress or castle – made of stone – that’s fallen into ruin and left to weather in the face of time.
There are a zillion rock Cairns up and down the beach and a lot of them in the ruins. That is one exceptionally kewl thing about Aruba…people build Cairns to say they were there instead of defacing everything. Jim built one inside the ruins:
We left that behind us, heading back across the island to who the hell knows where. One of my goals was to climb the Hooiberg AKA The Haystack. We could see the Haystack ahead of us and with a few turns on those crazy roads with no name, we drove right to it. I had previously approached Wayne and Jim about climbing it but thought we should do it in the early a.m. as it would be a little cooler. Well…Wayne had already deserted us, it was a cloudy afternoon, and Jim was pretty game for whatever I suggested, so we climbed the damn thing.
It was a mass of scary, straight up stairs. Jim beat me up by about 10 minutes. I was dragging. Every 50 steps or so I had to stop and try to breath in the moisture that contained the oxygen my granny body badly needed. Someone had written the number on the stairs every so often. It was easy to see when you’d climbed 150 steps, then 300, then…the word is 600. My calves felt like I’d climbed to heaven the next day. Shee-it! Aging is a bitch. On the trip down, my legs had the shakes…and the sun was starting to come out. Where the hell is that Daihatsu with the air conditioning? Definitely inner core meltdown was taking place.
We were done exploring for the day. I was dragging ass. I took a nap while Jim watched a movie. We ended up having dinner at the Wyndham and we ordered three deserts. I managed to consume almost two of them. I can’t even remember most of the rest of the events of the night…I know I posted, had about three brews, and that’s all the memory bank I have for that particular time slot. Hard drive crash.
October 4th. We raced out across the island again…of course I was driving. We were heading for the Arikok National Wildlife Park and the caves. The first cave we stopped at was unbelievably beautiful. The Quadirikiri is in this mass of coral…and that’s our trusty Daihatsu.
The entrance is quite dark and slightly intimidating, it leads to a cavern that has a hole in top that allows one to view the beauty of the interior.
That cavern, in turn, leads through another dark tunnel into a spectacular array of color and beauty, again viewable because of holes in the ceiling.
This cave did not have a park agent on hand. There is a sign at the far cavern that asks people to protect the bats by not going further into the darkened recesses. Who would want to? We didn’t have a flashlight and it was as dark as the Black Hole in my brain when I can’t win a hand in a poker game for three or four weeks. That’s pretty damn dark!
We moved on to the Fontein. I was there last year. The Fontein and the Quadirikiri have rusty gates at the entrance that are locked at night. The Fontein has drawings dated from the 1400’s on the ceiling left by the Arikok and signatures by the Dutch in the 1800’s. And yes, I have pictures I took last year and this year of those drawings and signatures. As someone once said about me, I have a propensity to document…thanks, Amy. Several park agents are there at all times. We were escorted by one of them as he explained the markings left years ago.
There are glass cases with snakes in them at the entrance to the cave. A rattlesnake, a harmless snake like a garter snake, a python and a boa. Snakes are everywhere according to the park agent. Ugh! S-n-a-k-e! I can live without them. The python was in a continual state of agitation, coiled and striking at the glass. Of course the park agent and everybody else except Jim and me kept rapping on the glass. Then Jim came up with this brilliant conclusion, “That snake just doesn’t like you!” referring to me. Thanks…I didn’t care too much for it either.
If I’m remembering correctly, the agent said this cave goes back 1,800 feet and the first person to go clear to the end of it, did it in 1909. Visitors are only allowed entrance to about 30 to 40 feet of the cave for protection of the bats. We weren’t there very long, as I had seen most of it last year and the park agent kept trying to hustle us along. Irritating as hell when I’m snapping pictures. I pretty much ignored him and Jim followed him around as he explained everything.
Our next stop was the Tunnel of Love. *post-poned*