Aruba: Jolly Pirates and Barefoot Restaurant

We woke up bright and early as we wanted to have time to find Eduardo's Beach Shack, which had great reviews on TripAdvisor), for acai bowls and smoothies for breakfast. We kept asking people but no one seemed to be familiar with the name of the place. We eventually were ran out of time to hunt it down and settled for some Starbucks. 

It was pouring the night we arrived, and still drizzling the next morning, but luckily cleared up to a beautiful day.

We then went to check in at the Jolly Pirates gift shop and were on our way waiting to board the pirate ship on the pier. We also did a crappy job applying the spray sunscreen as we all got weird tans today (except Betty...).

By the time we boarded the little boat to take us to the pirate ship it was already past 9:20am (tour was supposed to begin at 9am) and I had lowered my expectations of the tour since I had read some reviews about the tour being tardy among other complaints. 

 Waiting around to board the pirate ship - we saw many hugeeee pelicans flying around the pier  

Once we got on, we were up for a pleasant surprise, the crew was lively, fun, and super friendly ;). Well at least to us, we definitely got special treatment being that we were a group of 4 girls. Abroad the ship and as we were sailing, we laid on the net near the tip of the ship and snapped some pics. It was a little scary at first but we got comfortable after a while. 

Our first stop was at the WW2 German shipwreck Antilla where we strapped on our life vests and snorkel gear and saw some fish and a sunken shipwreck. It was so cool - I felt like I was looking at a mini version of the Titanic....!! The water near this site was rockier than the others so we were advised not to bring our cameras which is a total bummer because the view of the sunken ship was just unreal. Since the water was choppy, it was definitely harder for us to adjust to the snorkeling - Betty and Erica didn't end up staying in the water for too long at this first stop. The next snorkeling site was Boca Catalina - the water was much more clear and light blue in this area and water much more calm. We all went in and had a great time snorkeling around and we saw so many fish! The last stop was Malmok and it was just as nice - clear waters and a lot of fish. After we were done snorkeling here, we went back on the ship and did the famous rope swing. I was so hesitant at first since I'm not comfortable in open water without a life vest, but the water was so clear and calm that it made me feel a lot more comfortable. We each did the rope swing at least 2x. Erica and Betty even did a flip while on the back of the guides. It was so much fun! The crew was definitely a little flirty flirty with us.

 

  

After the rope swing, we were served a nice BBQ lunch with chicken, ribs, potato salad, rice, and a slice of melon. Since it was open bar, we also tried the famous pirate poison drink which was so delish - you couldn't even taste the alcohol!

 

After we were done, we sailed back to the pier and the tour was already over - this was around 1ish. We had such a blast on this tour. I highly recommend it if you're in Aruba. Definitely really good value and the crew was so much fun! Betty was blowing kisses back at the guides as they were leaving and they were catching them- it was hilarious. Eunice got a little creeped out from one of the guides, Johan, as he was really trying to hit her up lol he even offered to drive us around the island! Lol free taxi anyone??

We went back to the hotel to freshen up and got a couple of chairs to chill at the beach right in front of the hotel (Palm beach). We went into the water as well and noticed how amazing it felt - it was seriously the perfect temperature. Just cool enough to play in. The water was also really shallow which we loved since we were able to walk out at least 50 feet away from shore and it was only up to our shoulders! We even went to touch the divider between the beach area and where the boats roam.

Chilling beachside

Facetiming with the bae 

We had plans to head downtown to Oranjestad to explore a little as well as for dinner at Barefoot restaurant which I knew was relatively close to downtown. Unfortunately I didn't know that most/all shops are closed on Sundays! We found out as soon as we got into the taxi and it was already too late. We tried to make the best of it and scoped out the area. When we asked the taxi driver whether the restaurant was a walking distance from downtown, he seemed shocked that we plan to walk - it turns out that it was only a 15-20 min walk at most and it was such a pleasant walk along the water with picture worthy backdrops. We would have been crazy not to walk!

 

We got to the Barefoot restaurant way ahead of our reservation (almost an hour) since we didn't spend as much time in the downtown area. We were seated right away on the beach and it was just incredible. There's nothing better than eating outside with your feet in the sand and the sun setting right in front of you. I'm so glad we got there at 6:30pm rather than 7pm because we actually got to watch the sun set during dinner! It was so romantic!

 

After dinner, our server ordered a taxi for us and we needed to stop by a grocery store to pack lunch for tomorrow's adventure. We got dropped off at the same deli own by a Chinese family in the Palm Beach area and they totally remembered us and made a comment about how dark we got (after 1 day!). We walked past Moomba Beach Bar and it was totally happening there! Apparently Sunday nights are the best there - we wanted to party but we had to get up at 5am the next day to be picked up at 5:45am for our sunrise tour at Arikok National Park so we decided against it. 

Making sandwiches for our National Park tour tomorrow! We had to work with what we had lol