Aruba, On the other side Part 1.

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Aruba. Town of Savaneta. This was the first capital of this desert island I affectionately refer to as the rock. The island is a rock, a wierd combination of brittle granite and worn coral and sand. There are tall cactus and scrub brush like the American West but also divi trees blown to the west by the reliable trade winds that brought Europeans here (and to the rest of this side of the world) all those years ago.

Savaneta would be considered a small town somewhere in the United States. There are no buildings taller than a couple of stories. There are small groceries, a couple of gas stations, a bank branch, and a bunch of lottery shacks. In terms of commercial enterprise, you'll find a bakery, an auto parts store, a strip of retail outlets selling a couple of hundred miscellaneous items, rental videos, and cellular phones. There are several good restaurants: Flying Fishbone; Brisas del Mar; Golden Dragon. The housing is a nice mix of dwellings in both the Cunucu style and modern blocks. One guy built his house out of glossy brick and surrounded it by iron fence to remind everyone his pile of bricks is off limits. Hurts to look at it. Lucky there are plenty of Meditteranean style homes to keep the eye busy, and lots of bright colors.

I stay in a place called the Aruba Beach Chalets. I don't know where the term chalet comes from because my small mind thinks a chalet is something in the Swiss Alps but I may be challenged in this definition by better scholars. The place has five units to rent in a single, connected row. Number 1 is twice the size of the others and has it's own private pool for use only by guests in Number 1. Not in the budget for this voyage. The other units are fine for my purposes. Each has two bedrooms/two bathrooms upstairs and little kitchenette, bathroom and salon downstairs. You pass through a sliding door, across a few feet of deck and walk directly into the ocean. This is very therapuetic. But the coral is close to the surface here so you may want to walk a hundred yards up the road and splash in the sea via a cove there. The sand is soft. The place is frequented by a few locals but not many during the week.

This is the setting. Now a little story:
Island of Aruba. Town of Savaneta. Dawn. I roll out of the rack and check to make sure the sun is going to come up. Colors to the east indicate another day is on the way. I fuel up on scrambled eggs and toast. I'm out the door before a solid ray breaks the horizon. First stop: The beach. I check on the waves. Nearly flat calm which is the miracle of this place. In the lee of the island the winds can't pick up the water and make big rollers like hit the other side. I think about a quick swim but just ate. Better not. Walking is just as well. The breeze keeps the mosquitoes off the skin. I walk up the beach as far as I can, about half a mile, then turn to the road and go a little further. I come upon a guy standing under a divi tree with a machete and a big fish on his wooden table. He flakes off a bunch of scales which pile up around his feet. Then he filets the thing in seven or eight flicks of the knife. People show up with plastic bags of ice for their cut. They chat him up in the local language, papiemento. I listen, learn, and marvel at the joys of basic living.

Far enough from base, I walk back toward A-B-C. I go past it in the other direction. There are Charlie's Apartments along the beach. Six or eight rooms for rent with an outdoor bar. The place looks a little beat up but there are some guys relaxing on the porch nursing hangovers so it can't be all bad. We have a little talk and I'm on my way. I get down to Zee Rovers which is a little dock set up for fishermen. They're in from a night of fishing. They toss the fish up on the dock where they are bought and sold by everyone including buyers from the hotels. This place has a bar, a pool table, and a stereo blasting for those who spend the night working so the morning is their evening. They drink and shoot pool and go home sometime later.

I trot back toward A-B-C and find an large divi tree surrounded by a ship's rope linking posts. There's a bench under the tree that faces out to the sea. I'm thinking about having a seat, maybe taking a few notes. Up walks an old man who smiles at me with five teeth. He greets me and asks me if I know about this tree. I tell him I don't. He says that it is a gravesite. I say that it's awful close to the ocean for a grave. He says it was a small grave since it only holds a cat. A cat? I ask. He says, yes, a cat and the cat's name was Gimlet. Gimlet? Good name for I cat I reply. He says Gimlet belonged to an old sea captain from the Northeast United States, somewhere in Maine or maybe it was New York, he can't remember. He tells me that the captain's name was Quincy. I tell him there were lots of Quincy's in early American History. He says he knows because he reads a lot but this captain wasn't one of those Quincy's. He says that Captain Quincy sailed the entire world over the course of half a century at sea. Captain Quincy got to feeling that he saw it all, did most of what could be done, and wanted to die before he got old and feeble. So he was going to give away all his possessions and then kill himself. He was in the process of giving everything away, actually writing out letters and checks and instructions to his lawyer. His cat interrupted him by scrating at the window. Quincy looked out the window thinking the cat was after a bird or something and saw a ship smoking heavily and a tug headed out to lend assistance. He was so intrigue by the timing of this incident that he plopped his cat into a satchel and set off for the harbor to see what was happening. The ship, not surprisingly, had engine trouble. Quincy signed on that instant and sailed three days later. Well, Gimlet lived with him for a couple of more years at sea but, sadly, died. Quincy reasoned it was only right the cat was buried on dry land, not among the fishes which cats were so fond of eating. So he buried his cat at the next stop of the ship, which was the commerical harbor here in Aruba. He brought the cat down to this spot so if the ship ever passed again the companions could wave to each other one more time.

A nice little story, I thought. And all this before noon. I headed back to A-B-C to get ready for a day of imbibing.

More to come.

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