One Happy Island – Aruba - Cream Puff

One Happy Island

We haven’t purchased a watch and we decide to visit the health department. Let me explain.

Let’s start with the visit to the health department. Our future sailing plans include visits to Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica in the upcoming year. These countries highly recommend, if not require, Yellow Fever vaccinations. I don’t know about you but I hate getting shots. I knew this day would come and haven’t been looking forward to it. Cindy did a lot of research while on Bonaire about where it would be best to get the vaccination and decided upon Aruba.

Aruba Health Department

We walked to the health department; it is located only about a mile from Cream Puff. The walk took forever since it started to rain and we had to take shelter in doorways twice. When hanging in a doorway to avoid a quick shower, it seems as though the rain is going to go on forever. Have I mentioned lately how hot it is here? After the downpour comes the humidity. By the time we got to the health department, I don’t know what soaked us more, the rain or perspiration. We looked like a couple of drowned rats.

I promise I will not get on an anti-USA healthcare system rant here. However, I am going to say we now have interaction with various health professionals while on Turks and Caicos, Grenada, Martinique and Aruba. We have found the level of care and professionalism to be excellent and very affordable. On Aruba the yellow fever vaccination is administered at the health care department. We walked in without an appointment. Within about 15 minutes we were completely done. Since we are not a part of the Aruba Healthcare System we had to pay full price for the vaccine. It was a total of US$30 for both of us.

Please don’t hurt me

Paying the bill

One in four people get side effects from the yellow fever vaccine. The side effects happen between 5-10 days after the shot and the most common ones include low fever, mild headache, general ill feeling, mild rash, muscle pain, joint pain and body aches. Both of us had most of the side effects. This means the next six people in line for the yellow fever vaccine had better chances than us of no side effects. It’s nice to know we got our money’s worth. But regardless of how bad we felt for a few days, it’s a whole heck of a lot better than getting yellow fever and dying.

Let’s talk watches

Do people on cruise ships not own watches? Are they roaming about unaware of the time? Do these people sail about the world going from port to port always looking for the perfect watch? Aruba has a lot of cruise ships visit, sometimes up to seven in one day. That’s a boatload of tourists (pun intended). One of the things we have noticed on the islands having a lot of visiting cruise ships are the huge number of stores selling watches. This is true on Aruba. I’m sorry but to me, this just doesn’t make any sense. Watches continue to lose market share to cell phones. And, once you have a watch why would you need another one?

I don’t get watches. I hate to have anything on my wrists and haven’t worn a watch for as long back as I can remember. During my time in the corporate world when I needed to keep an eye on time, I had a pocket watch. As cell phones developed and became imbedded permanently into my ear, the pocket watch stayed in the dresser draw. The part I really have a hard time understanding is why someone would pay thousands of dollars on a watch when it does exactly the same thing as a $15 watch. Perhaps not falling prey to the expensive watch phenomenon is why we are out sailing and not still working.

I continue to be perplexed by the sheer number of watch stores. How do all of these stores survive and pay the rent? They have to sell a lot of watches. Who the heck is buying all these watches and why? I just don’t get this. I decided to take the camera with me one day and walk about the area where the tourists from the cruise boat shop so you could see what I mean.