Cruise Day 5: Aruba

When we arrived at Aruba, John and I went scuba diving while Mom and Becky went to the Butterfly and Aloe farms.

The Scuba excursion was to two shipwrecks.  The first was the German ship, the Antilla.  During Warld War 2, the Antilla was in Aruba, which was safely away from the war.  That is until Germany invaded The Netherlands, which Aruba was part of.  The Dutch marines in Aruba ordered the Antilla to surrender.  The Captain asked for a 24 hour extension and it was granted.  Since the ship was almost new, the captain did not want to turn it over to the enemy, so he let most of the crew off and then blew up the boiler about a mile off shore in 60 feet of water.  Everyone made it safely to shore and were taken as POWs. After the war, the captain and crew bought the POW camp and made it into a hotel. 

We did not take a camera with us scuba diving, but this is an aerial photograph of the 400 foot long ship that still sticks up partially out of the water.  When we were there, we saw several groups of people snorkeling and also scuba diving.  It is great for both

Mom and Becky went to the Butterfly farm.

Here are some photos of a couple of butterflies.  The one on the bench is a real butterfly.

They also visited an Aloe farm.

They were also close to some nice ocean scenery.

After we all got back to the ship we ate lunch.  We then left the ship and took a local bus a couple of miles up the coast to a nice beach.  The beaches are all public and have beautiful white sand.  Another nice feature of the sand is that it does not burn your feet in the hot sun.  We have the parrot fish to than for that. Parrot fish bite off the coral to get the algae growing on the coral.  They digest the algae and excrete the tiny bits of coral as sand.  One fish can produce over a ton of sand per year from the coral.  The sand results in very pretty beaches.

John went snorkeling.

He found a starfish.

Mom found flat rocks that skipped on the water.

Mom, John and Becky hung out in the water while I took photos.

Becky’s red toenails stand out against the sand.

When it was time to go back to the ship, we went to the bus stop and caught the next bus.

After getting off the bus, Mom and I went shopping close to the ship.