By four-wheel drive and by foot, I had searched for iguanas on this arid desert island of jutting brown rocks, bleached sand and forests of towering cactuses raising prickly green arms to a cloudless sky.
Naturally, when I stopped looking, I almost stepped on one.
Sleek neon green, the 3-foot long iguana stopped on a rock and sized me up as harmless. He allowed me a closeup view of his short muscular legs, the floppy dewlap at his throat and the impressive crest of spiny scales down his back.
I felt bad now about eating one. Actually, I’d only tasted it in a cup of soup served at a stand across from baseball fields near Oranjestad. Iguana meat is popular here; it is believed to make men muy macho.
Aruba is a swaggering kind of place with a wild west history to rival the American Southwest. In 1824, gold was discovered; and over the next 89 years, the rush yielded 3 million pounds. Black gold arrived in 1924 with the building of two oil refineries that processed crude oil from Venezuela.
Aruba was an Exxon and Shell company town about as interested in tourism as Houston. Oil gave Aruba one of the highest standards of living in the Caribbean and a healthy ego. Exxon left the island in 1985, and although a refinery remains, Aruba finally has turned to tourism.
Like the gold and oil booms, the tourist boom has hit the island hard. At last count there were 10 casinos, a dozen Las Vegas-style shows, 20 or so modern high-rise hotels and just as many time-share resorts.
Tourists come here to stroll on some of the most beautiful beaches in the Caribbean, to dive the coral reefs, to gamble and to dine in expensive restaurants.
Aruba is in the bottom of the Caribbean, only 15 miles off the coast of Venezuela, and the rhythms here are definitely Latin.
South American music booms from the bumper-to-bumper traffic and in the stores in downtown Oranjestad. Dozens of upscale shops are in the pastel Dutch colonial buildings downtown and three new downtown malls.
Until 1986 Aruba was part of the Netherlands Antilles, and the Dutch influence is still strong. Dutch is the official language, although most everyone speaks English. The language of the street is Papiamento, a combination of Dutch, Spanish, African, Portuguese and Indian, only spoken in Aruba and nearby Bonaire and Curacao.
There is no shortage of white sand beaches and sophisticated resorts, but the best part of the 75-square-mile island is its rugged western frontier.
The safari tours of the island outback to the ranches that breed the smooth-gaited paso fino horses from south of the border, Aruba is more like Arizona than the tropics.
Sooner or later, everyone hears the call to the desert and rents a Jeep or joins a tour and heads to the barren interior and the harsh northern coast, where huge waves crash on steep cliffs and deep-water sharks cruise the coastline.
You definitely will get lost on the desert trails, but don’t worry about it. You can just look at the flat-topped divi-divi trees, bent by the trade winds so they point southwest to the beach resorts.
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For more information, call 800-TO-ARUBA.
