Friday, May 19, 1995 - Aruba

Roy and I paddled to the beach and walked to town. Tried to find a self-service copy place, but all we found were places where they do the copying, at 25 cents a page. Fortunately, I only had three pages to copy. We found the post office and mailed Roy's postcards and my letter. Also found out about having mail sent to General Delivery, or Poste Restante as it is known internationally. We ate lunch at McDonald's. McDonald's and Pepsi Cola have taken over the world. Then we rode a bus to San Nicolas just to see what it was like. They have remarkably good bus service on this little island. There are six routes, and the buses run fairly frequently. The fare is $1 or 1.75 florins. The buses are a step above those in Mexico and a step below those in the U.S. San Nicolas is strictly an oil town. Esso has a huge refinery there, and there are one or two other refineries. They were booming thirty years ago but have cut way back. We wandered around for a couple of hours. There wasn't much to see. When we got tired and thirsty, we stopped at Burger King for something to drink. Roy had a Sprite, and I had orange juice. Coming back, we stopped at Savaneta to try to find Eddie's house. We asked at a government office, but they didn't know anything. We walked to the waterfront and wandered around but didn't see anything that resembled Eddie's place. We concluded it's not at Savaneta, but closer to Oranjestad. Tomorrow, we'll paddle along the shore and try to see it. The cabin cruiser and the black ketch have moved to the marina.