Most people go to tropical islands for vacation. I go for work, which admittedly makes me one of the luckiest people in the world. It’s not all glamour, though; I often end up spending a lot of time in my room on my computer while real vacationers take advantage of the water and the sunshine.
But I’m far from complaining. If you’ve never been to Aruba, it really is tropical paradise. It’s located outside the hurricane belt and has a good breeze and sunshine year-round, which means that even when humidity hits 40˚F, it’s not suffocating – unlike Barbados, for example. The island is coral, so the water is naturally filtered, and there’s a calm side (the west) for playing in the water, windsurfing and snorkelling and a rougher side (the east) for hardcore surfers and (less hardcore) wave watchers.
The only non-tropical quirk is that the food is mostly imported. Because it doesn’t get much rain, and the earth isn’t all lush soil, not much grows. There are lots of cacti and palm trees (so coconut palms, yes, but not tons of them), but most fruit and vegetables come from Venezuela, the US and even Holland, because Aruba is a Dutch island. The selection of cheese at the Superfood market is impressive. The prices are not.
All this importing means food is expensive, and not always great quality. And because it’s an island, Aruba has to wait for shipments to arrive. After Hurricane Matthew blew by (hauling a bunch of seaweed and dirty sand up onto the beach and making the water choppy, but otherwise leaving the island relatively unscathed), it took about a week to restock shore shelves. The result was that I got better mangoes and papaya in Montreal the week before I left. And I sorely missed my garden fresh tomatoes and arugula.
But the fish. Most of it is tropical. Only wahoo, mahi mahi and a local grouper come from Aruban fishing boats. They’re generally line-caught, says the chef of Hadicurari restaurant, which buys its fish for daily specials fresh each morning from the duck at the tip of the restaurant’s beach seating. The big boats for tuna have to head further afield. The shrimp and lobster might come from the Caribbean. But catches are inconsistent, so Quinta del Carmen chef Jordi Klomp says most restaurants order from suppliers. His wild caught salmon comes fresh from Canada on KLM airlines and they freeze it at the restaurant for future use.
And the sushi isn’t local. It’s all frozen, imported salmon, tuna, shrimp and all the usualy suspects from your so-so sushi bars in North America. The unagi is frozen, the wasabi is powder with colour added or that preservative-laden paste, and you’re better off with tempura maki rolls than a purist sushi meal of nigiri.
Interestingly (to me at least), the best things I’ve ever eaten on the island were an Argentinian 38 oz porterhouse steak from El Gaucho restaurant in Oranjestad and a pan-fried grouper fillet with creole sauce from the casual beach shack called the Rum Reef Café on Baby Beach. The steak was grass-fed Argentinian beef, grilled slowly on charcoal like the owner’s father taught them. The tenderloin part of the porterhouse was silken and buttery (even though it was seasoned with absolutely nothing but salt) and the strip section had a more meaty, flavourful chewiness (though it was a long way from being tough). I want to tell every meat-lover about this place. My dad would love it. My brother – Michelin Star-lover that he is – would nod his approval. It’s enough to make me book a return trip, since it was actually the best steak I’ve ever eaten in my life. I will now dream of this meat.
The grouper was freshly caught that morning, and when I arrived at 10:45 a.m., it hadn’t even had the chance to think about being tough. It was served translucent and fell apart at the touch of a fork. It beat out the grouper I ate at any number of Aruba’s top restaurants that trip.
The same problems with food imports apply to alcohol. Only large exporters can fill whole cargo bins with supplies that merit the expense of shipping. So thing Kim Crawford and Beringer. You’ll see all the same brands at all the top restaurants. You can find lots of high-end wines, but not many of them. I’ve seen one (very good) Brunello del Montalcino and one (pretty good) Barolo. You can get the whole line of Macallan whisky but not the same variety as you’ll find in North America, and the prices are usually higher.
But you can get some fun Dutch and German liqueurs (like Jagermeister but better). And there’s a brand of Amaretto I haven’t seen before.
Portions are huge, to cater to American tourists. And while prices are higher than places like Peru or Mexico, they’re not as astronomical as Barbados. And if you’re okay with the local (headache-inducing) Palmera rum, the cheap version of ponche crema (the better quality version is called Aruba ponche crema but is made in Curaçao, another Dutch Island nearby), or the corn syrup and high fructose-heavy bar mixes used in almost every happy hour drink, you can balance the budget just fine.
But just about every restaurant comes with a sunset view. Many let you eat directly on the beach. There are prom fonds, happy people, and perfectly acceptable (though non-spicy) ceviches everywhere. Complaining would be deserving of a slap in the face.
Sure sounds like I’m complaining, doesn’t it? I mean, I really, really love juicy mangoes. So why can I get better, cheaper, juicier, and more diverse options in Montreal? Yes, I know, shipping hub, bigger population, bigger distribution network – all these things make it more economical to ship to Canada than a little island in the middle of the Caribbean where Air Canada only flies once a week and American Airlines makes all U.S. bound flights go through a second security check (re-take out your computer, re-take off your shoes, drop off and re-pick up your luggage) before leaving, which on my first trip would have been enough to make me never want to come back – except I was paid to go again. And I did, happily, giving myself the necessary three hours to check in on my second time leaving.
The people who come to Aruba aren’t the affluent Bahamas and St. Kits and St. Maarten crowds, though those are probably becoming less affluent since the world economy started slumping. Downtown Oranjestad is half deserted and dilapidated. And only the resorts seem to be able to afford renovations.
How do I feel about Aruba?
I feel like it was a break from life. I only thought about work at home when I got an email or phone call and had to answer. I wrote down the things I’d have to do when I got back. Yet I was more relaxed on the first few days than on the last four. I slept better at first, but maybe that was because I was incredibly sleep-deprived and exhausted. I got into the habit of trying to nap around 3pm, but that might also have been from the hot sauce or sweet potatoes that I kept eating and were maybe giving me a funny coma-inducing reaction.
I was the happiest on the third day when I forced myself to get in the ocean for a few minutes in the giant post-hurricane waves and let myself be beaten by then. I laughed and smiled uncontrollably as I tried to jump over each wave as it crashed near the shore where I was starting in water up to my shoulders.
I drank too much. I ate too much rich food. I didn’t get drunk, and I didn’t feel stomach sick, but I’m starting to look more like the majority of the tourists on the island and the women sitting next to me in the airplane to North Carolina, my connection on my way back to Montreal.
I feel bad for feeling happy when my flight was canceled and I was automatically rebooked for the following day. Even though I had to cancel my Canadian Thanksgiving dinner, I felt like I’d won the vacation lottery, especially since I didn’t have to pay for an extra day for my accommodations or rental car.
I went out one night. I danced until 3 a.m. with Venezuelans, Arubans, Italians and Colombians. They thought it was cool to see a white girl who could dance like a latina. I like bachata. What can I say? Most other nights, though, I went home after dinner and transcribed interviews, wrote and edited articles, and then rewarded myself by watching a couple episodes of something fun on Netflix. I should have gone to happy hours, sat at pool-side bars, had a second and third drink on the house, I thought. But I’d rather not. I’d rather get up at 7 and go for a run to work off the amazing steak and try to stay in shape to pull myself up a wall at my local rock climbing gym when I get home.
I also need to work on not lying to my doctor about the number of drinks I have per week. While some weeks it’s 0-2, lately it’s been 5-7, and this week…I don’t want to think about it. 2 or 3 drinks a night adds up. I guess I’m thinking about it. 14-21? What would my doctor say about that?
But I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. Like seeing Xian again, the beer master at Madame Janette who’s about to take off for Melbourne, Australia. Or Mike of Bingo’s Restaurant, whose food I finally got to try and whose ceviche is the only one I’ve tasted that uses vinegar instead of lime. The fish was tender. Or the chef of Ricardo’s Restaurant who went home to Italy and got married to a Venezuelan woman between my last trip and this one.
Mostly I loved how comfortable I was. I didn’t need GPS to get from the airport to my hotel. I didn’t need it to get to any of the restaurants I visited except Madame Janette and El Gaucho. I didn’t have to worry about driving on the wrong side of the road, getting ridiculously lost. I even had people to call to show me around the island. I have friends and acquaintances. Well, acquaintances mostly…for now. With each time I visit, those acquaintances become more like friends.
And I think what makes me the most happy, is seeing the people I wrote about last time and hearing that they liked the article I wrote about them. I did a good job. I met interesting people and showed other people how interesting they are.
My last morning in Aruba, I ran on the beach and after ten minutes gave up from heat exhaustion and jumped, as planned, into the ocean. When I got back to my room, I drank a leftover mango smoothie for breakfast, worked for an hour and then called it brunch time and ate the two-serving-sized leftovers of my 32 oz heavenly steak. As I said to my colleague later at the airport, “I wasn’t going to let that beautiful thing go to waste!”
I also took a couple sips of the leftover mango-jalapeno mojito from Iguana Cantina. The drink is one I’m writing up for a recipe article, and after the bartender made it, and I tried, and told him there was no way I could finish it if I was planning to drive myself back to my accommodations (there are four shots of white rum in there!), he asked me if I wanted to take it to go.
You can take a drink to go here? Sure! The Palm Beach high-rise resort area is a bit like Vegas in that you can walk around with a plastic cup of booze just about anywhere, apparently. So I did. I strolled for awhile, and then realized that I’d be strolling for three hours if I didn’t take it in my car for later. While it’s legal to walk with booze, I’m pretty sure it’s not legal to drive with open booze. There was also the issue of spilling it, as when I asked for a lid, the bartender didn’t have one.
So I drove the 8 minutes nice and slow, making sure not to hit any big speed bumps. I didn’t spill a drop. Turns out gravity is pretty great. My own body jostled and hopped when I hit a bump, but the liquid in the glass was more flexible.
I stuck the mojito in my fridge when I got home and figured there’d be a time in the next few days (or several times) when I’d want a couple sips. It was tasty! A little spicy, a little sweet, a little minty. But that (those) time(s) never came. And so here I was on my last morning in Aruba with about 3 ounces of white rum in a mango mojito in my fridge. A had a couple sips with my steaks, but realized the steak was better off without it. It wasn’t nearly as symbiotic as the Argentinian Lodi Malbec I’d had with the meat the night before.
Sorry, mojito. At least I tried. I tossed it, did my dishes and packed up.
Chasing Matthew
But I know how lucky I am to have been in Aruba, to have escaped Matthew’s path, not once, but twice (descending through the three layers of ominous clouds as we landed in North Carolina was incredible; red sunset shone through the cumulonimbus and others whose names I don’t remember from the weather chapter in my grade 9 science class). I got my extra day by missing Miami, which went into emergency alert. And I flew over battered Haiti, feeling nothing as the storm had already moved on, leaving yet more devastation for that country.
I came back to Montreal, to fall weather with red-leafed trees. There’s no ocean here. My hands turned to ice as the water from the hose soaked through my wool gloves while I watered my waning garden. They burned when I got in the shower to warm up after harvesting the last of my stunted carrots.
Because while I wait for the next trip, all I can do is remember – the place, the people, and how lucky I am.
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