100 Days…

Actually, it has now been 105 days since we moved to Aruba, but the title of 100 days sounded better:)  There has been a lot of talk in the news lately about what President Obama will do with his last 100 days in office and what whoever-is-elected  will do their first 100 days as President of the U.S.  So what have we done with our first 100 days in Aruba?  A lot!

The best part is still appreciating the beauty of the blue water every time I see it.  We’ve been told that will get old and we will get to the point of not even noticing it, not going to the beach, blah, blah, blah.  I honestly don’t think it’s ever going to happen.  Every single time we drive to a point where we see it, I say, “Hello blue water” just so it knows how beautiful it still is and always will be and how much I truly appreciate being so close.

We have discovered that it’s pretty easy to make friends here.  Going back, once again, to one of the main reasons we wanted to move here, the people.  Everyone is happy here!  Still trying to find that grumpy person on the island – still haven’t found them.  What we have discovered in these first 100 days is that people genuinely want to help you.  They want to hear your story and they want to do everything they can to help you succeed.  It’s awe-inspiring, it’s refreshing, and that will never, ever get old.  And while we definitely miss our friends back in Arizona, it’s nice to be having people over, meeting for dinner or a beach day, and just some really great conversations.

We still don’t speak Papiamento or Dutch.  There is Bon Dia for good morning, Bon Tardi for good afternoon, and Danki for thank you, but that’s as far as it goes.   Trying to read the Dutch labels at the grocery store has become just plain entertainment!

We do have somewhat of a routine with our weeks, which is good and bad at the same time.  The girls are busy doing online school and I am busy doing my work-at-home transcription job, and Jay is keeping himself busy establishing a business plan and getting all of our ducks in a row for Full Throttle Tours.  There is laundry day once a week, many trips to the grocery store and regular errands, etc.  See what I mean about the bad?  But then there is the good – BEACH DAYS!  At least one of the weekend days is set aside for a beach day, and usually Eagle Beach.  I guess we are creatures of habit as we have “our spot” we always go to at Eagle Beach.  We park under the same tree and set the chairs up in the sand in the same place, but this is awesome!  And then on the other weekend day, we try to do something different, explore a new place, go to a different part of the island, or a different beach.  There really is a lot to see and do and we haven’t even scratched the surface in these first 100 days.

All in all, the first 100 days have been pretty awesome.  Is it perfect?  No.  Our residency still isn’t finalized (yes, it’s almost a year), those contract jobs didn’t come through for Jay, our business isn’t off the ground yet, but we wouldn’t change it for anything.  There is something so refreshing about living on an island.  Although there are still stressful situations, they are looked at differently now.  Everything will always be okay.  And if it ever gets to the point where the stress starts to take over, there’s that blue water again:)

Below the Hurricane Belt – Not!

First off, I want to say that as I write this blog post, my heart goes out to everyone affected by Hurricane Matthew, especially those in Haiti, the Bahamas, and the East Coast of the U.S.  Although, we did not suffer any real damage here in Aruba, we definitely are still feeling the effects, however, nothing compared to loss of life.

One of the main reasons for choosing Aruba as our island home was because of the fact that it is below the hurricane belt and the last major hurricane to hit the island was in 1956!  Every once in a while, a storm will pass close and give a good scare, but all in all, it’s quite safe.  This year just happened to be one of those “close calls”!

About a week before the storm brushed across Aruba, we began hearing rumblings that it might be headed our way.  At first, we chose to ignore the stories because we had seen similar storms brewing and nothing ever developed.  However, as the warnings became more frequent and the weather models were showing it truly could happen, we began to take things a bit more serious.  Now, there are two sides to the story of how Aruba handled being prepared for this storm.  As a local, I thought they did an excellent job of keeping everyone informed of the path, what we could expect, what to do, etc.  There were updates posted on Facebook pages, news conferences twice a day, and everyone seemed to be passing on very good information.  On the other hand, if you were a tourist staying in the typical high-rise district of the island, it was business as usual and no one peeped a word about the storm that was coming our way.  I guess they didn’t want the guests to panic, which is understandable, or also book earlier flights home, or even, God forbid, stop drinking at the beach bars and hiding in their rooms to watch the TV!

That being said, eventually we found out that Matthew really was going to be heading our way and we should prepare for the worst.  We saw storefronts covered in plywood, people buying extra water and food, and filling their cars with gas.  What we did to prepare was move all of the furniture from the pool area onto a small covered area and even anchored it down in case the winds got too crazy.  Anything small that usually stays outside, was moved to a safe place inside.   That really was about all we could do.  And then we waited…

We were told we would see Matthew between Thursday, September 29 and Friday, September 30.  Thursday afternoon, we headed to the west side of the island to check out the waves.  Silly, huh?  There’s a huge storm coming, so what do we do?  Head to the water!  This is normally the rough side of the island, which means there are crashing waves, but that day, the waves were CRAZY!!!  There were many locals there as well taking photos and checking everything out.  Here are some photos:

It was pretty incredible to see, yet really did make me nervous.  I just didn’t know what to expect having never been truly in a hurricane before.  We have experienced hurricanes in the past on several cruises where we would be rerouted to a different port, and we even had to back off from one on our very first cruise which gave us an extra two days at sea!  But we’ve never actually been IN one…

Didn’t really sleep a whole lot Thursday night as I was waiting to hear the torrential rains or damaging winds.  But none of that happened.  Woke up on Friday to find the extremely dark skies and a couple rain showers here and there.  Actually kind of disappointing…

Friday night was a different story.  We were told we would be hit by the tail now that the storm passed to the north of us, and from what I’ve heard, it was some pretty crazy thunder and lightning going on throughout the night Friday.  I say “from what I’ve heard” because I slept like a baby that night!  Basically, I missed the worst of what Aruba experienced from Hurricane Matthew.

The next day, we headed to the other side of the island to see what the beaches looked like and it was pretty incredible to see the seas so rough once again where it was normally super calm and crystal clear blue water.  The sea weed and the debris was all over the beaches.  The sun did not shine for about five days straight, which is quite incredible here where it’s usually ALWAYS sunny.  For those of you who know me, this was pretty torturous:)

The first picture above shows what “flooding” our street experienced (basically none), and then the beach cleanup that was going on just two days after the storm hit.

What we didn’t expect from the storm was that the waters would remain VERY rough for several days after.  We went to the beach for sunset about five days after the storm and found the palapas were still blowing over, the sand was totally different than it used to be, and the sea grass and sea weed was still washing in.  There was an incredible effort to get everything cleaned up and back to normal, and I cannot say enough thanks to all of the crews who worked so hard to get the beaches looking good again.

We’ve been to the beach a few times since then, and it’s still not the same but getting better little by little.  What used to be just a gradual walk through the soft sand into the blue water is now almost like going down a hill, walking over some crushed coral, and into the water where the sand isn’t smooth until pretty far out.

Again, I know that having some rough water, a few palapas overturned, and the beaches being slightly different is NOTHING compared to losing a loved one, your home, your business, and several other catastrophic things that this monster hurricane caused.  I can’t imagine what those who truly went through the hurricane must be feeling.  This was enough of a storm for me!