NOTE: This was written about a decade ago, so some of the information might be outdated. I thought some of you might be interested in reading it. — Lamar Thames

BY LAMAR THAMES

I used to envy people who took vacations to exotic-sounding places. Ask them where they were going and they would pause dramatically before making the big pronouncement:

”Hawaiiiii!” ”Cancuuun!” ”The south of France, dahling!”

And where are you going?

”Uh, well, we haven’t made any major plans yet,” I’d answer. ”Probably just visit family, maybe a side trip to Wally World.”

This year was different. We finally had some place to go, and I couldn’t wait for the first person to pop the question.

”Going on vacation, huh? Where to?”

A pause for affect.

”ARUBA!” I would practically shout, making sure as many people heard me as possible.

“Aruba, Jamaica, oooo, I wanna take ya.

Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go?”

A street scene in Aruba, where cleanliness is a hallmark. (Photo by Lamar Thames

I’ve been fascinated with the sound of the word Aruba since the Beach Boys recorded Kokomo, their major comeback hit, in 1988.

When my brother-in-law Ron Johnson asked my wife and me if we would like to share a two-bedroom condo with him and his wife, Judi, for a week in Aruba, I said,  ”Are you kidding us? Of course, we would.”

To be truthful, we didn’t even know where Aruba was. I was vaguely aware it was in the Caribbean and after consulting a couple of atlases, we found it about 15 miles north of Venezuela.

An island formerly belonging to Holland, Aruba is 77 square miles of mostly desert, with one major exception. It has about 8 miles of one of the most beautiful, uninterrupted coastlines in the world.

If long stretches of clean, white sandy beaches and an ocean of turquoise salt water are your thing, stop right now and book the next passage to Aruba. You won’t be disappointed.

Contrastingly, most of Aruba is covered with large cactus strands, huge boulders

Aruba is mostly desert with cactus and rocky outcroppings dominating the landscape. (Photo by Lamar Thames)

and divi-divi trees, emblematic of the island’s casual approach to life.

”Don’t worry about getting lost on the island,” residents told us. ”Just follow the bend of the divi-divi trees and you will always know how to get home.”

Indeed, the trees all bend to the southwest, in the direction o the prevailing gusts that are propelled by the southern trade winds. As long as you know the direction to your accommodations, you’ll be fine.

Divi-divi trees are all bent toward the southwest because of the constant 20-mph trade winds that prevails throughout the island.

That I would be this excited over a trip to a beach resort is ironic. I am the original recluse when it comes to sun worship.Give me a hat, towel, umbrella, several layers of T-shirts and a factor 175 sunscreen and I’ll sit, literally, for minutes in thehot sun at the beach. Heat and sun are just not my thing. Of course, neither is cold weather, but that’s another story.

What we found during our seven-day stay in Aruba, however, was an island with an 85-degree year-round average temperature very low humidity and the almostconstant 15- to 20-mph wind that keeps ocean waves and mosquitoes to a minimum. And get this! Even at the height of the noonday sun, you can walk for miles barefooted on the beach sand. It just doesn’t get hot.

ACTIVITIES

Sailing ships like this are available to take tourists on snorkeling excursions off the coast of Aruba. (Photo by Lamar Thames)

As you might expect, there are plenty of things to do on an island dedicated to the proposition that all tourists are good tourists. With 650,000 people making extended visits annually, and another 300,000 docking aboard cruise ships, tourism is Aruba’s No. 1 industry.

Because of the number of options available, gambling is apparently the most popular activity among visitors. There are 12 casinos scattered among the island’s 29 major hotel and timeshare facilities along the southwest coast of the island, where all the development is.

On the night before we departed, my sister-in-law pocketed $125 after just three pulls of the quarter slot machine. Her sensible husband said, ”OK, that’s it. Let’s quit.” He didn’t tell her until later he dropped $80 at the blackjack table.

While the gamblers in your party are doing their thing, the rest of you can browse the endless variety of gift shops, offering wares from the Delft ceramic collection of Holland to T-shirts and hats and native arts and crafts. Shop around. Bargains can be found. But don’t haggle over posted prices. The islanders consider it an insult.

Other entertainment options include scuba diving, snorkeling windsurfing, personal water craft riding, golf, musical variety shows and a crazy experience you won’t want to miss called Kukoo Kunuku. More about that later.

SNORKELING

For around $60 per person, the snorkeling trip aboard one of the two commercial sailboats sounds expensive, but we considered it worthwhile. The one we chose was a 4 1/2 -hour trip on an 80-foot, two-masted sailboat named the Mi Dushi, built in 1925. The venture included lunch, an open bar and two snorkeling stops. The first stop was over shallow coral reefs and the view was spectacular. You could see all the way to the bottom, about 15 feet deep, and it looked like you could reach out and touch the sand.

I was warned, as were the others with beards, that I might have difficulty keeping the water out of my mask because of the hair. They were right. I had to empty the mask frequently, which was tiring, and that made snorkeling a less-than-satisfying experienc for me. The others said they loved it and my wife said she saw a large eel, a squid and an octopus. I didn’t see them because I couldn’t get the mask on over my glasses, and I don’t wear contacts.

The next stop — near the wreck of a World War ll German cargo ship called the Antilla — was better, and worse. The wind had picked up, making it more difficult to navigate near the dangerous wreck, but I got a different mask and it didn’t leak as badly.

You can bring your own equipment, but the price is the same. In fact, you can go snorkeling by yourself, but you won’t have the experience of sailing aboard a 75-year-old ketch or watching the crew members expertly handle the sails and masts.

The crew consisted of Mario the captain, Ziggy the first mate, Ester the sailor and Evangeline the bartender. At the time, Ester was one of the few female sailors on the island. She was born in Aruba, but spent most of her life in Holland.

”I only meant to stay for six months, visiting relatives,” Ester said. ”I’ve been here two years now.” Who could blame her.

KUKOO KUNUKU

An alternative spelling would be to substitute the Ks with Cs. Either way it was an experience none of us will forget. The name literally means crazy country. And crazy it was. It helped if you were not opposed to a little [or a lot] of drinking and dancing. The trip started when a Rastafarian-looking, Cat-in-the-Hat wearing bus driver named Richard picked us and some 40 others up in an open-air bus that had a funny-sounding horn.

My sister-in-law Judi (left) and my wife Barbara pose with our Kukoo Kunuku tour guide Richard, who was from Brooklyn. (Photo by Lamar Thames)

We proceeded to the California Lighthouse atop the highest point on the island for a sunset champagne toast. Richard’s timing was perfect and the sun slipped below the horizon as the last bit of sparking champagne drained from our glasses.

Then it was on to the house of the island’s minister of Port of Call where we had a dinner of sweet and sour chicken, beef tips, rice and vegetables on a huge outdoor deck at the rear of the marbled-floor home. The first generous drink was free (well, it was included in the $55-per-person price) and the others were only $2 each.

I took this opportunity to try to talk to a ”real Aruban,” which I thought Richard was. With his dreadlocks (actually a wig) and island demeanor (easy-going, laid back) he certainly looked the part.

”Came here from Brooklyn 18 years ago,” Richard said. ”Don’t plan to go back.”

‘”We will get there fast, then we’ll take it slow,

That’s where we want to go.”

Then it was back on the bus, more horn blowing, some music (Hot, Hot, Hot) and shaking of maracas. The maracas were part of the ambiance and the more vocal ones in the crowd finally shamed the timid ones into participating.

The next two stops were at interesting, local drinking establishments, where the music blared and the drinks flowed. To my wife’s surprise, I displayed my line-dancing expertise (yeah, right) and made friends with a couple from Erie, Pa., who said they found their vacation package on the Internet for $600, which included air fare and hotel accommodations for a week. She looked like Marie Osmond. He didn’t look like Donny. I was a little miffed because I was sure we had paid more than than for our air fare.

The last stop was a tourist nightclub for more drinks and dancing and where everyone got to know everyone else a lot better. All too soon the night was over and we were loaded (literally) onto the bus for the trip to our hotels, shaking our booties and waving our maracas. A little side trip to the hot tub when we got back to the condo and the night was done.

RESTAURANTS

Any discussion of Aruba would be incomplete without mentioning dining.

Aruban restaurants pride themselves on their culinary expertise and boast several awards in a Caribbean cooking competition. Our collective experience was that the overall quality of the food was above average, but you wouldn’t want to make it the focus of your itinerary. Chez Mathilde, an expensive-looking French restaurant, was not on our itinerary so that opinion might be a little biased.

The usual fare is available — steak, lobster, seafood and chicken — at prices you would expect to find in resort areas. There didn’t seem to be an Aruban cuisine, except sweet and sour chicken, rice and beef tips.

For those on a more frugal budget (and diet), there was the usual variety of American-grown fast-food and full-service restaurants. A lot of restaurants have open-air dining and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one particularly interesting establishment, Senor Frog, in downtown Oranjestad, the capital city. We were dumb-founded when our waiter, Umberto, delivered our order of two Margaritas and two beers balanced on three fingers. A gust of wind added to the drama. His showmanship garnered him a hefty tip, naturally.

PEOPLE

A couple we met from Oregon who own a timeshare condo in Hawaii said they prefer coming to Aruba.

”There is more to do in Hawaii, but the people are so much more friendly here,” the man said. That was our experience, too. Happy, smiling faces greeted us almost everywhere we went. I asked the manager of an Aruban department store if he knew where the local Rotary Club met, and he spent half an hour trying to help me and apologized when he was unsuccessful.

The residents speak Papiamento, a combination of Spanish, Portuguese and

Signs like these all over the island let tourists know that Arubans are very concerned about keeping their island clean. (Photo by Lamar Thames)

Dutch, as well as Spanish and English. The island is very clean, and even in some of the more remote areas, you don’t see trash-ridden streets. An official with the island’s marketing division told me the government stages seminars

at schools to emphasize the need to keep the island tidy.

IGUANAS

Iguanas are a protected species on Aruba, and as a consequence they are prevalent all over the island, even at poolside of the resorts. (Photo by Lamar Thames)

An intriguing part of our experience was the presence of iguanas, some very large, around the pool in the resort where we stayed. Startling at first, they soon became part of the landscape. We watched them nibble on the pungent vegetation, take sips of water from the hot tub and occasionally swim to an island in the middle of the pool. Some of the smaller ones were even brave enough to walk across our feet as we sunbathed.

The iguana is a protected species on the environmentally friendly island and anyone caught harming them is subject to a fine. That apparently didn’t include the many pre-teens who tried to catch them by the tail. Some of them partially succeeded, as evidenced by the short-tailed iguanas we saw.

PASSPORTS

One precaution before you go to Aruba. You must, and I repeat, must get a passport. Some of the airlines and travel agencies will tell you all you need is a raised-seal birth certificate from the vital statistics bureau of the state where you were born. But don’t believe them. GET A PASSPORT.

One member of our party, I’m not revealing who it was, showed up with a certificate of live birth from the hospital. It wasn’t good enough, even though it had been accepted in the Bahamas a year earlier.

The clerk at Air Aruba in Miami was adamant. ”You aren’t going anywhere with that! Aruba will fine the airlines $3,000 if you show up without proper documentation and you’ll be on the next plane back here.”

And I, uh, we weren’t the only ones affected. At least three

other couples had the same problem, even though all of them seemed to have the type of birth certificate the airlines said they needed.

The answer to our problem was an exasperating trip to the passport office in downtown Miami, a $20 cab ride one way. We also had to pony up $15 for two passport photos and $95 for a rush job on a passport, expenses we weren’t counting on. But at least we got the passport and we were on our way to Aruba on a 5:45 p.m. Air Aruba flight that had been twice delayed from its original 1:30 p.m. planned departure. Thank goodness for that! A weekend stay in Miami wasn’t on my agenda, especially with the wonderful Aruban beach beckoning.

IF YOU GO

Aruba is 990 miles from Miami and that’s where we found the best air fares, from Air Aruba at $425 a person. That was an average savings of about $150 apiece over the average fares we were being quoted from American Airlines and ALM Antillean Airlines.

Plan ahead to give yourself lots of wiggle room in making transportation arrangements. When we first called, American gave us a price of $495, which we thought was too high. We waited a few days and called Air Aruba and ALM, thinking they would be cheaper. Not so. In fact, they were considerably higher, with ALM at $605. It didn’t take us long to realize that our initial quote from American was the best, so we called them back. But it was too late. That was a special rate just for that weekend, we were told.

But why didn’t you tell us that then, we asked? They said theynever know when the reduced fares will be lifted. We tried a couple of on-line services, like Priceline, where you bid for plane fares and that didn’t work. We tried to underbid the $495 quote from American, but didn’t get any takers. Finally, a month before our vacation, we found on the Internet at www.previewtravel.com an Air Aruba fare out of Miami for $425. We didn’t hesitate making a reservation this time.

Air Aruba: 1-800-882-7822

American Airlines: 1-800-433-7300

ALM Antillean Airlines: 1-800-327-7230

Prices: You’ll find items in Aruba priced somewhat higher than the local discount store, but not priced so high you can’t bring back some souvenirs. We found some reasonable, quality T-shirts at the typical three for $10 bargain.

The price of beer surprised me, however. I paid $25 for a case of 10-ounce Coors Light at a grocery store. Here you can get a case of 12-ounce cans for about $14.

Most of what is consumed on the island has to be imported since there is very little agriculture or manufacturing there.

Accommodations: There are 29 hotel and/or condominiums on the island, ranging from more than $300 per night to less than $150 during the busy season from December to April. The rest of the year is the off-season and prices are often discounted up to 40 percent, according to Fodor’s travel guide. We even saw ads in the Aruba Today newspaper featuring $55 per night rooms. Fodor’s suggests there are money-saving packages through airlines and travel agencies.

Transportation: Car rentals are available, but it is a good idea to reserve a car ahead. We didn’t do that and had to take what was left when we arrived at 8:15 p.m. on a Friday night — a $270 per week Mitsubishi Lancer. Smaller cars are available for less if you book ahead. The major discount car-rental companies such as Economy and Thrifty have offices at the Beatrix airport.

Taxis are easily found, but the fares can mount quickly, especially if you want to do any sightseeing. One couple we encountered said it cost them almost as much to take a taxi as it would have to rent a car.