On The One Happy Island!

I'n not in Venezuela, yay! anymore as you can see, but in Aruba, yay! But first things first - Irene and I finally left Merida on Tuesday with the night bus to Coro, in the north just under Peninsula de Paraguana on the north-west part of the country. Didn't sleep too well as the bus was full and we only got one seat each, but we arrived early, at 6.15 in the morning. A bit too early to look for somewhere to stay, but at 7 we arrived at a nice posada where we booked ourselves in.

We had a walk around Coro which was quite pretty although there wasn't much to do, but not to worry, we took a bus out of town and visited the national park of Medanos de Coro which is basically a desert. Very strange to suddenly see so much sand, although there were some bushes around, but some of the dunes were really high. We had some fun taking some silly photos there, as always ;)

After that we went further north onto the pensinsula itself, to the small town of Adicora. Just a little north of that was Laguna de Tiraya where you could see flamingos. At first they were too far away to see properly, but finally we managed to see some close up. A lot of shrimp in the water because they were very pink! Not far away was also the Salina de Cumaranguas, where they mine salt. The water there was a very unusual colour, light purply-pink in places, very pretty. Well then we thought we might as well carry on further north (the peninsula is quite small) and we visited the most northern point of Venezuela at the tip of the peninsula, Cabo de San Roman, where there's a lighthouse. From there we could see Aruba! It was so close, you almost felt like you could swim there, which was very annoying because there are no ferries going there from Venezuela, only (expensive!) flights.

Anyway that filled up the day, and the next day we set off for Punto Fijo on the pensinsula, where we booked our flight to Aruba. Unfortunately it took ages to arrange for various reasons, and we didn't get the chance to do anything else, which was a shame because we wanted to visit a biological reserve which was a forest where lots of interesting birds live and you can take guided tours there, but because it was difficult to reach we didn't have time. Apart from that, Punto Fijo was a bit of a dump so we didn't do much, apart from eat pizza (I've never eaten so much pizza as I have in Venezuela) in a very strange restaurant that doubled as a karaoke bar. One guy was there bellowing dreadful Spanish songs all evening in our ears while we tried to eat, but I was laughing too much :)

Finally on Friday we set off for Aruba. We had a tiny little aeroplane which we shared with about 10 other people, and the flight only took 15 minutes!! We reached the coast, and then 5 minutes later there was Aruba. We were smelled thoroughly by the sniffer dogs at customs (a lot of drug smuggling goes on between the two countries) and then we were picked up by Kim, who most of you reading this will know or at least have heard of, but she's my friend from university whose family lives here and who we're staying with for 10 days. They have a lovely big house and garden, it's so nice to be able to put my bags down in one place for more than 2 nights! On Friday evening we went out for a drink and a dance, although not for too long as we were all tired (Kim arrived from Holland the day before) so we saved our strength for Saturday.

On Saturday we visited a factory that produces shampoo, face cream and that kind of thing from aloe vera, which grows here. They had an open day where you could get a free tour round the factory which was very interesting. It's so fantastic to be able to speak Dutch or English to everyone here instead of bloody Spanish!!! Most of the signs here are in English, and others in Dutch, Spanish or Papiamento (the unofficial language of the island). We also went to the supermarket and Irene and I went a bit crazy, all the food is imported from the USA or Holland, it was so funny to see all the food from home! Including wonderful Dutch cheese which we missed so much! In the afternoon we visited the California Lighthouse on the island and Eagle Beach where we had a swim and worked on our tan, and in the evening we went to Carlos & Charlie's, the most famous nightclub on the island where we all had a wild night and therefore spent most of Sunday in bed ;) When we did get up we went to the Natural Bridge which was a tourist highlight of the island, until it collapsed into the sea a few months ago :( It's a beautiful spot, the sea is so blue here, especially there, it's a real shame the bridge collapsed. We also went to an ostrich farm except then we left because they tried to charge us $10 each for a tour (!!) and to a park filled with huge rocks which was very pretty.

But it's not all holiday, we're here to do some work too - this morning we visited one of the two veterinary clinics on the island where we're working this week, doing some more castrations and sterilisations. We got a tour of the clinic, which is very nice, a lot better than Venezuela (although that's not saying much!) and met everyone who were all really nice. Today we spent the morning just watching, and from tomorrow we can operate ourselves, on the dogs and cats in the animal shelter that belongs to the clinic. We have the afternoons free so it's not too much hard work ;) we are on holiday after all!