i keep a diary

January 23, 2004

Aruba Vacation Part 2: Car Sleeping Drunk Driving

...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).
scott
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.
scott
scott
After the swim, we had ourselves a (classy) lunch at Hooters of Aruba. (Then my camera died again. Fast forward to....)
food ˆ hooters ˆ scott
scott
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.
tongue ˆ travel buddies ˆ scott
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.
bar
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.
kiss ˆ strangers ˆ tongue
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!