Our Day in Aruba

We have a full 12 hours in Aruba so we had lots of time to lounge around on the ship after taking a nice excursion and doing some shopping.Our first stop was a Butterfly Garden where they raise a large variety of butterflies. do community education, and encourage the residents to plant a variety of host plants to sustain wild butterflies. Check out Mary's photo of this blue butterfly!
After that we visited an aloe factory. Aloe is a major crop and this one factory makes up 3% of the Aruba economy. We about the history of aloe production and how they now strictly make cosmetic products.
Our tour wrapped up with a visit to Mt Ayo, one of the highest places on this island. This is a historic site and also contains some ancient cave drawings that are un-interpretted, but believed to indicate this was some kind of spiritual place.
To celebrate New Year's Eve, Aruban's like to light off these long chains of noisy firecrackers. They lay them out in a street and set them off. The noise is tremendous and goes on for a very long time. We saw one chain that had to be 50' long!
Our day wrapped up with some shopping in downtown Aruba, then back to the ship where we hit up the adults only pool, enjoyed afternoon cookies and milk, and are now getting ready for a lobster dinner.