Travelling to Aruba

We caught a cab from South Beach to the Miami airport. In case you are interested, it is a $38 flat fee to the airport from South Beach. They won’t turn the meter on.

We were flying on Surinam Airways. To be honest I had never heard of the airline and only had a vague idea that the country of Suriname was in South America… somewhere… I was also puzzled by the language the flight attendants were speaking (they did also speak English, but with a very unusual accent). Turns out the main language in Suriname is Dutch, but many people also speak Sranan (an English-based Creole language). Another burning question answered!

The flight was absolutely fine, on a regular oldish, but safe plane, and they even gave us free food! They did not have entertainment provided, but I think most people bring their own nowadays. (I bring Steve for my own personal entertainment. Ha ha ha!)

The flight was scheduled to be 3 hours, but only took 2.5, and we arrived early in Aruba. Only about 1/3 of the people got off the plane, as the rest were continuing on to Paramaribo, Suriname. (I kind of want to go there just because the name is so cool!) This made getting our baggage and customs quick and painless!

Important Travel Tip: They give you an immigration card when you enter, and you need it to leave. Don’t lose it! (Unless you want to stay in Aruba forever... hmmm... I just had an idea! 😉 )

The terminal was almost deserted (maybe because it was 8:00 at night?) but there was a taxi stand with a guy working there. When you tell him where you are going, he writes on a piece of paper what the cab fare will be. There weren’t many cabs there, so we did end up sharing with another guy. Our cab driver had no idea where this other guy was supposed to be staying. We drove around for a bit, asked directions, and then finally stopped at the police station to figure out where it is. To be fair, it was a hole in the wall down a deserted alleyway. I expect he’ll probably never be asked to take anyone to this street again 😀 The guy who was going to this destination reminded me of the drifter brother from the show Bloodline. If you’ve watched it, you get what I mean. Enough said.

After we dropped him off we headed off to our condo which he found with no problem.

When we arrived we approached the door of our condo and put in the key code that we had received from Sally (the lady we rented from). It didn’t work. We tried again. It still didn’t work. Long story short we spent an hour trying various methods to contact Sally (who lives in San Diego) and her local agent Noortje. Luckily, we had very nice neighbours who went above and beyond and helped us the best they could.

Just when I had resigned myself to heading down to the hotels for the night (at approximately $600 CAD per night if you can imagine!!!!) Steve got a hold of Noortje on the phone. She quickly popped over and let us in. Sally had given us the wrong code. I was quite thankful that it wasn’t just me writing it down wrong 😀

At this point we were exhausted and hungry. The grocery store was already closed so Steve headed over to the gas station and picked up some snacks to hold us over until the morning! With a little chips and chocolate in me I felt much better and all was forgotten!