Thursday, May 18, 1995 - Aruba

Two big cruise ships came in this morning. The others had left. This is a pretty busy port. A container ship came in last night, unloaded, and left early this afternoon. We also saw a small Netherlands naval vessel going out with a crowd of civilians, presumably dignitaries of some sort. A few hours later, it returned, let the civilians off, and then headed out to sea. A British million- dollar cabin cruiser came in and anchored near us. In the evening, a loooong, beautiful, expensive black ketch came in and anchored on the other side of the cabin cruiser. We'd been marveling that there were so few sailboats here from the U.S. and other countries. We saw three or four at the marina, and that was it. Now some more are finally coming in. I paddled to the beach this morning and walked around, trying to find the laundromat, supermarket, and shopping plaza the man at the hotel had told me about. I was disappointed to see piles of trash; apparently only the tourist area is clean. The sidewalks out here are broken, and cars park on the sidewalks. I went out to where I thought the guy had told me to go but didn't find anything, so I asked a couple of passersby and eventually found the supermarket and the laundromat. In fact, I found two laundromats. They looked okay. They were clean and had modern equipment, but no change machines and no signs saying how much money to deposit. The slots looked like quarter slots, but they probably take some Aruban coins. The supermarket was large but dark and unattractive. I was going to go in and get some vegetables, but the manager wanted me to leave my backpack at the door. I refused and left. Roy wrote some postcards while I was gone. After lunch, he paddled ashore, and I stayed on the boat.