The ABC islands are upon us!  First stop, Aruba, where we have visited previously, but it was a long, long time ago.  We utilize our suite special walk off through the crew areas with Gian and are easily one of the first people outside.  Boy has this place changed!  We don’t remember all these high dollar stores and fake architectural storefronts!  Ed remembers a little divey sort of bar right outside the pier, but there isn’t anywhere like that now!  Wow – what a couple of decades will do to a place.

For now, we pretty much have the place to ourselves as we walk the 15 minutes to the Renaissance for the car rental, making a quick pit stop for a photo opp with a cuddly bovine (Gaby and Sigis – thinking of you!!!).

Once at the rental agency, we get a complimentary upgrade to a Kia Rio (don’t know what we would have had otherwise! What’s smaller than a Rio?), check out the dents and scratches and are on our way before 8:30, navigating our way out of the parking lot and heading toward Arikok Park where we plan to spend time hiking and wandering.  Navigation is a little tense though as we have no data here!  What?  First time ever Google Fi has failed us – and what a colossal fail it is!  We’re having a hard time getting our other GPS program to work, so we are sort of seat of the pants driving – basing our directions from the printed paper map and a less than detailed map from the rental agency.  It’s amazing – and sad – how dependent we are on electronics today.  What did we do 10 or 15 years ago with only paper maps? 

Between all our devices we manage to make our way across the island to the park entrance, driving on small narrow lanes that cut through the dry cactus strewn landscape.  I didn’t realize how desert-like this island is – I only remember the natural bridge from our previous visit.  All around us are scrub brush covered hills and towering cactus – the vast majority of vegetation looking like acacia trees – those thorny bush like trees that cut you to shreds if you aren’t careful.

After passing the donkey sanctuary (not on our tour today and we think it might be too early to stop for a visit anyway), we finally get to the park where there are tons of cars parked everywhere, we barely find a space for our little car. Turns out every Saturday morning through April there is a hiking challenge in the northern section of the park where competitors hike a total of 100KM, progressively.  Phew, at least we know all these people aren’t in the park where we are going – we were getting a little worried about the crowds! 

While the hikers/runners are in the far north area, we will be heading more easterly, toward the coast. Even so, we are only visiting a sliver of the park ‘s 7900 acres today. There are a ton of hiking trails, 4×4 paths and gravel roads that lead through the park to all sorts of different little biospheres. Located on the North Coast, Arikok takes up almost 20% of the land mass of the island and is designated as a National Park to preserve and maintain the vast array of flora and fauna in this area. There are quite a few large lava rock hills (that we are definitely not hiking up), rocky wind-whipped beaches, sand dunes and caves to explore. Our plan is to take a circular route – out over the darn drainage ditches to Boca Prins, one of the prettiest non-swimming beach outlooks, then visit a couple caves and exit out through the Southern gate at the Vader Piet windfarm.

In the Visitor Center, the park ranger chats with us a bit, we tell her our plans and she asks what type of car we are driving.  Hmmm….a Kia Rio?   She approves us, but tells us to drive really slowly over the “bumps” or we will go sliding (she makes a motion with her hands to describe what will happen).  Ok.  We can do that.  We pay our fee, she gives us wristbands as our entry pass and we are off on our park adventure.

And what an adventure it turns out to be!  We take off on the paved road that winds through more scrub brush and barren landscape, quickly understanding what the park ranger meant about the “bumps.”  Every 150 feet or so there is a rough cobblestone ditch that runs across the road – obviously for drainage.  Some are narrow and shallow – but many are really wide and deep on unbelievable angles. Thank God we have experience from our steep driveway and Ed knows to take them on an angle or we’ll be stuck or destroy the car – neither of which is in our game plan today. 

It’s a little less than 3 miles to our first stop at Boca Prins, and all told there are 41 drainage ditches between the entry gate and the beach outlook. It is slow going, but nonetheless spectacular scenery interspersed with strategic driving. Hard to believe yesterday we were in the Rainforest and today we are virtually in the desert!

Boca Prins is as advertised – gorgeous, wind-whipped and definitely NOT suitable for swimming. But it makes for an excellent walk along the lava coast line with the waves smashing into the rocks, the wind whipping and the surf surging in past a little carved out beach area. As opposed to the crowd at the visitor center, there is absolutely no one here. It is just the two of us, and our trust little Kia Rio parked in the dirt lot that is divided by rocks used as space markers. Fabulous!

Ten or fifteen minutes are all we need here, it would be great to stay longer and walk up the coast a bit, but hiking isn’t really an option because the lava rock is fairly dangerous to walk on – we’re in constant fear of tripping and twisting an ankle. Plus it is really windy and hot, pushing us to move along our planned route. The next stop is the Fontein Cave literally right across the road from the beach area. There is also a shuttered restaurant sitting on the corner of the asphalt and dirt roads leading to the cave. We had thought that maybe this would be open for a quick snack or coffee, but it looks like it has been closed for a while, and while I had read about it online, it isn’t even mentioned on any of the park printed materials. No worries – we’re set with our water and electrolytes.

Navigating down the dirt lane, we pull up and park at a gazebo outside the cave where a couple of rangers are working the paths. Crossing between two huge limestone boulders, we reach the entrance to the caves and peek in to see incredible stalagmites and stalactites as far as the eye can see. There is a little stone lined path that we walk down, taking us further and further into the darkness. Definitely need to use our phone flash lights here! It is a little scary, but also totally cool to walk through these dark, low little caves, thinking about civilizations that have come before us who lived inside here. There are pictographs on the cave ceilings dating from over 1000 years ago, but they are hard to see in the gloom, even with our flashlights – and impossible to capture in photos. No matter, we have the vague memory of it to keep with us!

Exiting the caves, Ed goes to the porta potty, while I hang out at the car watching the rangers who are all excited about something they’ve found. They keep motioning me over to the gazebo, where it turns out they have found this huge Boa Constrictor! Oh jeez – it was out on one of the paths behind the gazebo (where I am now very glad we were not walking!). They had it on a huge stick, but now they’ve placed it up in the rafters. And one of the rangers is sitting right under it, talking to it. (That is the picture I really should have taken to give you an idea of the size and how close the guy was….maybe next time…LOL.)

After that excitement, we hop in the car and head off toward the Quadirikiri Cave, which is famous for its 2 chambers that are lit by sunlight coming through holes in the roof, driving through the arid landscape, on a two track little road that cuts through the dirt and sand dunes. Ed’s definitely getting his driving workout today!

It’s only a mile to the Quadirikiri caves but it sure seems like longer, following the little tracks and turning at the small directional sign pointing off into the dirt. We’re on an adventure for sure. There is another car parked at the caves, but we don’t see anyone around, so we climb up the rock stairs to the first chamber and make our way inside. This cave is much less “organized” I guess we’d say, than Fontein. There is no set pathway, and you are free to sort of wander all over, swiveling your attention between bending low to get by the limestone arches and watching the ground for stalagmites waiting to trip you up. This place is spooky too, with the initial darkness, and bright light up ahead viewed in between the limestone formations. We traipse around for a while, enjoying the changing lighting and listening to disembodied voices that add to the spookiness – are they spirits of ancient natives? No, it is only a ranger on a tour with another visitor giving him details of the caves! Funny.

After meandering all the way to the last chamber and soaking up all the sunlight there, we duck walk back to the entrance, noticing for the first time that we have airborne company in here – bats! They are flitting around all over the place – funny we hadn’t noticed them on our way in. But here they are whooshing in and out of limestone pockets in the cave ceiling. Totally cool (I love bats, weirdly enough). And yes, it may be cool, but no, we are not telling anyone we had an encounter with bats since that’s allegedly what started the whole Coronavirus thing!

Continuing on, we retrace our drive down the sandy dirt track to meet back up with the somewhat better 2 track “main” road on our way to the Vader Piet wind-farm. The wind-farm isn’t actually inside the park, but just outside it, as the park road skirts its boundary. But it is definitely something worth visiting, the 10 turbines rising like huge futuristic windmills out of the desert-like terrain. Aruba has a lofty goal of 100% renewable energy by 2020 (I’m not quite sure they’ve accomplished that – but hey – it’s a worthy ambition) – and these wind turbines on the east coast certainly can harness the plentiful wind resources here.

Immediately after the wind-farm we arrive at the Vader Piet exit, a mere 5.2 miles from the visitor center, but it sure seems like farther away than that! Wow. It is a world away and in between such amazing sights and adventures. Exiting the gate we are immediately immersed in goat-land. Holy cow – the goats are EVERYWHERE! In the road, on the side of the run, running all over the desert dunes and, well, just everywhere you look. They scamper about, running past us and away from us as we drive slowly through the barren landscape on our way to San Nicolas for the next segment of our off the beaten track Aruba day tour.