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...the next morning.
Friday, January 23rd
Alex was
supposed to wake up for work at 9am (keep in mind we didn't get
to her place until like, 7:45), but her alarm didn't
go off, and her windows were
totally
blacked
out - so we were awoken around 11:30 by Scott barging into her
room freaked out because he was awoken from his slumber in the
living room by someone pounding on the door to Alex's apartment
(we were both convinced it was some local boys coming to kill
us). Turns out it was just her locked-out roommate. While I was
showering, Scott was explaining to Alex where we'd parked our
car. She was like "On the median?? Oh, no! Your car totally got
towed. The tow guys will steal everything that was in your car
and then say that it had already been broken into when they towed
it - I hope you didn't have anything valuable in there." Keep
in mind, because we didn't have a hotel yet, EVERYTHING WE'D
BROUGHT to Aruba (all of our clothes, cash, a few cameras, Scott's
birth certificate, etc) was locked in the trunk of our rental
car.
Our hearts in our throats, we left Alex's place to go see about
our car. I managed to fire my cam up for one pic of us leaving
Alexandra's place before the batteries died and it crapped out
for good.
We arrived back in Oranjestad to find our car still parked on
the median. As we neared the vehicle, our temporary relief turned
to panic as we noticed that the driver-side door lock had been
jimmied open and the glove compartment was open. Scared shitless,
we popped the trunk of the car to find...ALL OF OUR STUFF INTACT!
All we could figure was that whoever broke into the car was either
in a hurry or got spooked, but they missed out on the mother
load. We bid Alexandra and awkward farewell (apparently she was
late for work often and couldn't wait to get rid of us so she
could go find out if she still had a job) and hopped in our car.
Not sure what to do with ourselves, we decided to go check out
the resort we'd be able to check into the next morning. After
we saw how nice it was, we said fuck it, and decided to start
pretending that we were already guests there.
First we lounged pool-side for a bit (where I managed to plug my camera charger
in and freshen up the batteries, awwww yeah).
Then we decided to check out the resort's beach. Oh, hello there
bath-warm, turquoise water. How are you doing today? Me, I'm
now fine as well. Thank you for asking.
After the swim, we had ourselves a (classy) lunch at Hooters
of Aruba. (Then my camera died again. Fast forward to....)
Friday night. We headed back into Oranjestad. It
was early evening when we arrived and the town was still dead.
I decided to nap in the car while Scott set out to explore. We
agreed that we'd meet up back over at the Paddock at 9pm. I got
there to find he'd already made some new friends.
After The Paddock we headed over to another bar called Carlos
& Charlies. We'd been told by the locals guys that this was the
place that the cruise ships brought all of their guests to and
that if we were looking to touch drunk, slutty girls on vacation,
this is where we should go. Who wants that? We went there for
the um, wings. Yeah, the wings. Delicious.
This was a really funny drunk couple we met. I don't remember
the girl's name, but I remember that her boyfriend's name was
Brad - because every 30 seconds, for no apparent reason, his
girlfriend would scream "BRAAAAAAAAAAAD!" at the top of her lungs
and then start hysterically laughing. Charming really.
A little later on while walking around, we ran into Inge (who
we'd met the night before) and she took us back over to...
...THE PADDOCK. To meet up with some more local friends of hers.
The bartender definitely remembered us and brought the cordless
mic out from around the bar for a little three-man, late night
"Dead or Alive" Jovi action.
Dance party.
After the Paddock closed up for the night, we popped into some
casino for a...
...quick emergency shit (note wet willy
grenade on the door. Ha!)...
And then headed
to an different afterhours club we'd been told about called Grammies.
While we were there, we ran into Orioles pitcher (and Aruba native),
Sydney Ponson. After leaving Grammies (around 4:30am) we decided
to head back over the the ECHO afterhours club we were at the
night before and see if we could meet up with some of the crazy
ass locals we'd met the night before.
We got to ECHO and found it filled with drunk, crazy-ass locals,
unfortunately, none that we knew. On the first night, we showed
up with a posse of locals so everyone was cool with us, when
we showed up solo on the second night (and no one there knew
us) we were treated with outright suspicion. In the middle of
our first drink, an tiny drunk guy in his late fifties came and
sat down at our table. What started out as polite conversation
quickly turned into him screaming at us about "Imperialist America."
We managed to set a record for "drink finishing" and escape without
incident.
With no definitive housing prospects, we decided to
kill some time getting a late night bite to eat at some totally
sketchy 24-hour diner in the middle of nowhere. After our food,
we decided to park the car in our resort's parking lot
and
sleep
there,
knowing that we'd be able to check in at 9am the next morning.
Here's us in our bed/car at 6:30am drunk and sweating debating
whether or not we'd risk carbon monoxide asphyxiation by sleeping
with the A/C on. In the end, we decided to crank the A/C, crack
the windows and promptly conked the fuck out.
Saturday, January 24th
After several sweaty hours of (non) sleep in the car, we hit
our resort's beach around 9am, had a light breakfast on the beach
and then at noon we were finally allowed to check into our room!
Yay! We immediately took solid two-hour naps and then hit the
beach. No sooner had we set foot back on the beach when some
guy offered to sell us a bag of this weird local type of green
tobacco.
Not knowing the local customs, we didn't want to risk offending
him and decided to buy what he was offering us.
For whatever reason, his strange cigarettes made doing 80's style
WWF flexdowns so funny that we almost pissed our pants.
OH YEEEEEAH! IT'S MACHO MAN RANDY SAVAGE! OH YEEEEAH!
We worked up a thirst sumptin fierce with all of our flexdowns
and decided that we needed delicious frozen drinks to remedy
our strangely dry mouths. While waiting in line for frozen drinks,
we were launched into another fit of hysterics after I remarked
how the woman in front of us in line look liked she'd asked her
hair stylist to give her "What Ozzy had back during his 1983
Bark At the Moon tour."
Too bad you thought, we were just really high. Check out that
resemblance.
After we were done laughing at Ozzy, we found this guy
crashed the fuck out sleeping like a little baby and stopped
to not-so-sneakily snap a bunch of photos of him. We were laughing
so hard I have no idea how we didn't wake him up.
Then time for a swim. Who knew water could feel so nice?
Here's a pic I took of Scott trying to fix his contact lens in
the elevator on our way to dinner. Soooo funny. We found this
amazing rib joint called "King Rib," but right after I snapped
this pic, my camera died again. So we took the elevator back
up to the room and I left my cam to recharge. Don't you worry,
they'll be plenty more King Rib pics later.
Here's us later on in the evening, showered, changed and ready
to head back into town for a night of who-knows-what. We figured
if drinking and driving wasn't frowned up, that'd it probably
also be ok to use other peoples' rental cars as bottle openers. Hahah.
Who knew driving could be so much fun (and ecomonical)! Quote
of the night goes to Scott: "I know I probably shouldn't even
say this, but I'm going to be honest with you: I'm pretty excited
to do some experimenting with drunk driving! Not that it's going
to compare with the drunk scootering I'm going to do." Hahahaha.
We got to the Paddock to discover it was "2-for-1" night on every
drink in the house. Here's us with Corro (and some stranger who
barged in on our photo last second).
That's the thing about 2-for-1 night, somewhere along the course
of the night someone will say "Hey, you should take your shirt
off!" and you totally end up thinking "My shirt off? That's
a great idea!" I should also point out that around this
point in the night, Scott had given himself the condition known
as "DogVoice" from trying to talk over the loud music in the
club.
Corro and Inge.
Corro and another supercute local girl (whose name I forget).
In the unlikely event you ever see this, sorry!
Here's a bunch of us posing with the Raptor outside at the end
of the night. After this pic was taken, we all went to a club
called TANTRA and danced until 5am. At some point during the
night, we asked Corro if he thought more local girls would make
out with us and he said "Hey, remember your first night? Good,
keep those memories. Because you're probably not going to have
another one like it while you're here." Hehe. After we left
TANTRA, Scott tried to chat up some cute girls that were hanging
around, but ended up scaring them away with his raspy DOGVOICE!
So instead we got delicious chicken sandwiches and headed home.
What's up, too tired to unfold his fold out bed! Who's a tired
little guy? Who is? Who is?
That's right! Scott is!
Sunday, January 25th
Scott Bic-ing his head in the morning.
I took a few pics of our condo for prosperity's sake. Here's
the living room taken from the door.
And here's our view from the balcony. (More pics of the other
rooms later.)
After showering and getting dressed, we decided to go grocery
shopping so we could save money. (Don't forget, we were only
in Aruba because my totally awesome Uncle Bruce hooked us up
with a free place to stay. We put ourselves on a super-tight
budget and in order to stay within our limits, eating every meal
at restaurants totally wasn't an option. Don't forget, I was
unemployed at the time of the trip).
Before I get onto the excitement of our grocery excursion, I
just wanted to take a second to point out that in Aruba, even
the grocery store parking lot had an incredibly scenic view.
I mean look at the color of that water. Holy moly!
Onto the shopping. Mmmmmm, food. (Tastes like delicious savings!)
Mmmmmmm. Snacksaus.
After grocery shopping,
Look at the little convenience store tropical cottages! So rad.
After dropping off the groceries at our condo, we returned our
rental car to the airport (our budget didn't allow for us to
keep a car for the whole week) and then took a taxi back out
to our resort.
Me and Scott.
And then back at the condo, Scott cooked up a delicious meal.
Soooo tasty.
And then later on in the eveing Kristen came over to our place
for a beers before heading out into town with us. Kristen is
a girl we'd met earlier that afternoon on the beach. A fellow
New Jerseyan, she'd been there on vacation with her grandparents for
an entire week and had yet to go out for a night.
Yeah, we've got a bit of a buzz on.
We hopped a cab and met up with Eric over at the Paddock.
Dance party Scott.
Scott and Kristen.
When I asked this (Dutch) girl why she was drinking her wine
with a straw - she explained to me that a few months back she'd
contracted oral herpes by drinking from a bar glass (suuuuuure,
a bar glass) and since then, only used straws in public. Needless
to say, I left her alone. (So girls, if you're looking to not
get bugged by boys, straws at bars is the way to go!)
Scott, some stranger, Kristen and me.
With the raptor.
Kristen, raptor, stranger.
And then Scott suggested that Kristen climb the raptor (which,
as can be seen in the picture, was likely only so that he could
"help her up there" with a hand on her ass. Smooooooth.)
So awesome.
Back at the resort. Nice to meetchoo, Kristen!
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