The Kind of Bug I Prefer

Whatever bug befell me is still with me.  I pretty much kicked my bed’s ass again last night in fitful sleep.  I disemboweled one pillow, flung the bedding to the floor, and managed to once again slide under the mattress sheet instead of on top.

What the hell?

As I sit writing this, the island time is 4:30 in the morning.  A massive clangor of a headache woke me.  Some neighborhood dogs are barking in the distance.

The flu has given me a different conception of what’s inside my head.  As I progress through the night, sleeping, or drag myself about during the day, I have come to appreciate how much changing the position of my head changes everything about how I feel.  When I shift my head, new compartments inside my head fill with headache fluid.  Other fluids leak from different corners of my mouth.  I ache in new places and I’m unbalanced in new ways.

Well, later this morning, at 8:00 island time, I plan to go to a new snorkeling beach with the rest of the team.  If a pillow case is still clinging to me from my night’s battle with the bed, I intend to drag that sumabitch along with.  I’m not ready to snorkel just yet, but I can sit on the beach looking as hapless as the next tourist.

On their outing yesterday, the rest of the crew saw a giant centipede while I lay in bed at the villa, sniffling.  A giant centipede is the kind of bug I prefer to battle today.

-- Mitchell Hegman

Disorderly Sleeping

Last night, because I am still battling with the flu, I slept alone in the spare bedroom here at the villa.  I am not sure exactly how it went down, but somewhere in the night, I got into a series of brawls with the bedding.  I woke several times and found myself hopelessly entangled in the sheets and pillows.  I quickly kicked myself free and fell back to sleep.

This morning, I woke and found that two of the four pillows had been peeled free from their covers.  One of the pillow covers was on the floor.   The other was balled up beside me. The blanket was clumped into a heap at my feet and the cover sheet was wadded up nearby.  Somehow, I had managed to find my way underneath the mattress sheet.  The elastic corner of that was pulled tightly over my head.  The pillows were all pushed against the headboard. 

-- Mitchell Hegman

Sunset from Kamay 77

Somehow, I managed to catch the flu down here.  It hit me pretty hard yesterday afternoon.  I went to bed at 7:00 yesterday evening and did not get up until about 9:00 this morning.  The rest of the group—at my request—left me here at the villa today while they went swimming and snorkeling near the California lighthouse at the end of the island.

Posted today are some photographs of last night’s sunset.

-- Mitchell Hegman

Baby Beach Reef

Yesterday, we drove the island from end to end.  This is no great feat, mind you.   The island of Aruba is a bit under 20 miles long.  The lack of proper road signage made for some interesting side adventures along the way.

We were all struck, for one thing, by the fairly regular appearance of lemon yellow houses along the narrow neighborhood streets.  These houses positively glow.  The other drivers on the road are also noticeable.  By noticeable, I mean they tend to pull out in front of you on a regular basis.

I am personally impressed by the lizards.  I have seen several iguanas.  One was at least three feet long.  I have also seen a gazillion little whiptail lizards.  The whiptails appear everywhere on the ground, on buildings, across the pool deck.  They are like living punctuation marks required to interrupt our own movements from point to point.

We ended up spending most of our day at the southernmost tip of the island.  We swam and snorkeled at Baby Beach Reef and then watched kiteboarders at Spanish Lagoon Reef.

-- Mitchell Hegman

Aruba, Day Two

We spent part of the day lounging around and swimming in our private swimming pool. We also went on a shopping spree at Super Food so we could fill our refrigerator for the week. Super Food is something of an equivalent to Costco at home.  With the current exchange rate for the Aruban florin to the dollar (1 dollar is equivalent to something near 1.79 florin), the prices are very reasonable.

They sell some strange flavors of potato chips at Super Food: maple bacon, barbeque ham, paprika, Bolognese, etc.  Another difference?   The store is filled with entry and exit gates to control the swirling floods of people into and out of various points in the store.

The store is crazy busy, which is odd, because the island is not all that busy.  A map we picked up at the airport noted the island of Aruba has a population of only 102,000 people.  The beaches we stopped at were beautiful and not really all that populated.  Not busy at all.  There was plenty of room for pelicans and other sea birds to dive in alongside swimmers to catch fish. 

We swam at one beach, snorkeled at another, and then walked along a third near sunset last night.  The water was perfectly warm.

So far, I am greatly impressed.

And my buddy Bill—perhaps a leading expert in mispronouncing words from foreign tongues—is just getting started.

I managed only a few photographs yesterday.  Today, we intend to cover the entire island and I will try to capture photographs.

-- Mitchell Hegman

Villa Kamay Hills, Aruba

My first thought when I woke this morning was this: the sun is on the wrong side.  East is not east.  My north is south.

I have been upended!

When I flung back the curtains at the sliding glass door of our room and looked outside, I saw Aruba for the first time in daylight.  My thought then: Wow!

We are on something of a rise above and away from a row of hotels and white sand beaches.  Behind and slightly above us, tall cactus have grown into a forest.  When I stepped outside, I was bathed immediately in warm humid air.  I retrieved my camera and tried to snap a picture, but the lens instantly fogged.  I heard strange birds singing sharply, beautifully from the cactus and heard a rooster “cock-a-doodle-doo” from a small house below.

We have rented a villa for ten days.  No, a castle!  Our villa is stunning.

We had a bit of trouble finding our way here for three reasons.  First, we did not leave the airport until almost 10:30 at night.   Second, Google Maps is very confused here.  Third, street signs are not high on anyone’s priority on this particular island.

If you ask locals for directions, which we did, you are told something like this: “Follow the row of hotels until you get to a streetlight with a Wendy’s on one side and a Texaco station of the other.  Turn right onto that street and drive until you see a Chinese restaurant…”

We had a grand time getting lost (not kidding) on the way to our villa.  We finally arrived at our house after midnight.  Posted today are a few photographs from last night and this morning.

-- Mitchell Hegman

Aruba

That girl and I are in Miami, Florida, this morning.  Later this afternoon, we will collect at the Miami airport with three other couples and fly off to the island of Aruba.  The island is not all that far from the equator and resides in constant summer weather.

Aruba was called the “the island of giants” by the Spanish explorers who first struck its shores in 1499.  The natives inhabiting the island at that time were notably larger than the European explorers.  The Spanish considered the island “valueless” because they did not find gold there.

Aruba was acquired by the Dutch in 1636 and today remains an independent part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  The island lies something a bit under 20 miles off the coast of Venezuela in the southern extent of the Caribbean.  Today, the island thrives by catering to tourists from both North America and Europe.

The island is small: 20 miles long and a mere 6 miles wide at the widest point.  The landmass is fairly flat and without a river.   The climate is dry and enjoys a fairly low humidity.  Most importantly, the island sits outside the hurricane belt.  Aruba only rarely sees the weaker tails of hurricane events and was spared entirely from the storms that devastated many northerly Caribbean islands earlier this year.

The temperature on Aruba, thanks to the presence of constant trade winds, remains at a near constant 82 degrees.  A variety of cactus flourish on the island and the divi-divi trees there grow leaning away from the trade winds.  Mostly, the island is known for expansive beaches of white sand, aquamarine oceans, and the good fortune of being home to four species of sea turtles.   

We hope to be swimming with the turtles soon!

-- Mitchell Hegman

Photo: Aruba.com