Aruba is the 2nd largest of the ABC islands, with 69 square miles of land. Surprisingly it has a more dry, arid climate compared to the other islands.  Its population is about 107,000 with the capital, Oranjestad, having a population of about 28,000.

Our family was in Aruba briefly in 1992 and I recall it was sandy and windy! I doubt that has changed much. Again, because we are past the “beach” phase of our life we looked for a cultural tour rather than one that offered, swimming, snorkeling or diving which is a common reason why people visit Aruba and it is the focus of most of the tours offered here and in the other ABC islands. I did not find anything of interest on Viator but the ship was offering a downtown walking tour that sounded interesting. As I mentioned earlier there is a postscript on each of the ship offered tours saying that tours would be offered in Spanish, HOWEVER, if you needed an English speaking tour guide you should check with the on board staff to see if it could be arranged. OK, I did that and the excursion desk said that we would have an English spoken tour, so I did not cancel the previous reservation made before we joined the ship. Due to the 90 degree heat and humidity Yvonne decided not to go so I went alone and found myself with 13 other members who only spoke Spanish and so our tour guide spent the next 2.5 hours speaking Spanish as we walked through the town with an occasional English translation for me. Needless to say, I was peeved and complained to the ship excursion staff.  Eventually the RCCL corporate offices did the right thing and refunded my money.

Besides our normal afternoon activities we started going to the trivia contest held in the Schooner Lounge at 5 PM a few days ago. The first couple of times we tried doing it ourselves as most of the other contestants worked as a two person team. The rules, however, said you could have a four person team and we all know, four heads are better than two! And we saw that the four person teams were having a better win rate.  We had causally talked to another two person team who happened to be a mother/daughter team from Australia. They also were not having any luck winning.  So today we suggested we team up to see if we could finally win! Well we had a good time talking to them but our combined four heads still put us in second place for today’s competition. We vowed to get together tomorrow to see if we can final reach the winner’s podium.

The main entertainment tonight was the production staff putting on a show that had a country theme. After their show we wandered over to the atrium because there was going to be a “Name That Tune” contest.  We were not going to compete but we did see our newly made Australian friends (Suzanne and daughter Ambrosia) planning to compete so we stayed and watched. They were super competitive, knowing a lot of the mostly US songs. The staff would play a few bars of a song and you had to race to the microphone and yell out the answer. Later in the competition you not only needed the song name/singer, you had to sing part of the song. What amazed us was how many of the songs were known (and could be sung) by the Spanish speaking passengers. Even the youngsters knew the songs! We later talked to some people who said that these people really do know and love to sing these songs. It was a fun competition to watch.

Tomorrow is last day of the cruise and it will again is be spent at sea.