Turista Ariba Mi Isla
Every once in a while, it’s great to wear a visitor’s visor and drive around for a look-see, and that is why we took a mini-island-tour last Saturday.
First stop, a random Chinese market for carrots and dogfood. We were heading to the Donkey Sanctuary as the first attraction, hence carrots, and the kibbles were in anticipation of hungry strays along the way – we found none, this time.
The donkeys were grateful for the treats, and we checked on the studs arrived here from Bonaire, not too long ago, entrusted with the task of improving the local gene pool. We were told that a few females, Jennets, are expecting.
Aruba has had a love affair with donkeys for four hundred years, but when automobiles took them out of business, they were no longer needed. In walks Desiree Eldering, in 1997, and changes their destiny, establishing Fundacion Salba Nos Burico and building a sanctuary.
If you recall the male donkeys came by boat from Bonaire to introduce a controlled breeding program, so that donkeys don’t just die off on Aruba, but produce a new promising generation, with improved DNA borrowed from Bonarian neighbors. That will hopefully end the in-breeding challenges such as ear infections, overbite, or under-bite, which affect donkeys’ ability to feed themselves and live long.
The sanctuary needs volunteers, so sign up, it also lives off donations. For more information visit www.arubandonkey.org or call +(297) 5841063 or +(297) 5932933. Visiting hours: Monday through Friday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM, and Saturday and Sunday, 10 AM – 3 PM.
We continued our trip and drove up to Colorado Point. That was a good opportunity to reminisce about the time Sanchez Motorsports Group was encouraged to help build an F1 race course, on the land below, in 1999, an aborted adventure that cost the island over $20 million in penalties.
Was it a mistake to nix the project?
Would the island’s economy have prospered with the project?
Twenty-five years later we were looking at the new 600 room All Inclusive, Secrets Resorts, towering over Baby Beach. The project broke-ground in 2019 started building in 2021, halted construction in 2022 and resumed in 2023.
Will that be an economic savior for the town of St Nicolas? We were divided about it.
Some said the resort will have a substantially positive impact on the economic and social situation of San Nicolas. The others thought that it would severely cripple the Palm Beach resorts because of workers’ drain, and that encouraging development while cracking down on foreign permits, will torpedo the project.
We all agreed that the environment will be affected, yet the island doesn’t have enough environmental protection laws.
The White Star rum shop was open on the main street, the last surviving one, after Essoville closed. It is still intact, just the way it was the day it opened, almost one hundred years ago. That road in front is ripped out, for improvements. The beer was super cold. The proprietor reports he opens every day for a few hours, customers still like to hang out with him, just the way it was in the good ol’ days.
Lunch at O’Neil was perfect!
Tempest in a teacup
The lights in parliament were on until 2am, just recently, when a supplementary budget was discussed. With the interest rate on the Corona loans going down, money will be saved, and our venerated representative met for hours long, on the issue of dividing the spoils.
Who will get a small increase, where will the money go? I am not an expert on the goings-on, I was sleeping, but from the following day’s reporting avalanche I understood that in the heat of the moment, under severe criticism, MinPres lost her cool, and asked a member of the opposition party if she was on drugs, feasting on “white substance.”
I agree, it was rude, but making this the focus of reporting only comes to show that we sweat the small stuff and let the big stuff slide. We bicker over silly sound bites, and almost ignore the fact that the island of Aruba did not have an audited annual financial report, since 2019.
Besides, whose idea was it to drag the meeting on until after 2am. How can anyone think straight at that time.
