Arikok National Park

3Jan2008 Filed under: off topic

The topic of this site is pretty obvious; however, I don’t want you to miss out on other nicer sites in Aruba. The other day I drove down to Aruba’s National Park.

When people hear “national park” automatically they assume that it refers to some kind of forest. However, if you are familiar with Aruba you might already know that Aruba is an island that has little sub-tropical vegetation. In fact Aruba has little vegetation.

The pictures above show actually some vegetation. The last few weeks it has been raining a lot, consequently the vegetation is in decent shape. For now.

Arikok National Park is was created almost 10 years ago to be an area protected for nature and for us to admire. It covers approximately a quarter of the island and it is managed by park rangers. The park has couple of sites, such as the highest and second highest elevations, spectacular beaches, caves etc. I you are in any luck you might catch a glimpse of a the few animals that live in the park.

Tags: national park

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2 Responses to “Arikok National Park”

Arubalisa
January 10th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

In 16+ visits to the park over the years, I have never seen it as green and lush as it was 10 days ago. Mixed feelings about paving the paths though
Gabriel
January 10th, 2008 at 3:05 pm

Hi there Lisa, I’m glad to hear you were back on the island. A belated Happy New Year to you.

From what I understood the cement pavement belongs to an integral plan to reorganize the park, in order to make it more accessible to regular vehicles.

In the old days, after a short, but heavy rain shower the rain runoffs left road with deep holes and it made the park largely inaccessible to regular vehicles. The park authority then needed to hire people to fix it every time. This became too costly.

For this reason the park presented an integral plan to reorganize the whole park, which includes the fixing of the areas where the water does most damage and put cement pavement. Additionally they plan on setting up a small museum at the entrance of the park, on top of the second highest elevation have a view platform, signs etc.

This plan was approved and accepted by the European Union, which has special funds available for these kinds of projects.

From what I understood they put cement pavement to make it blend more, instead of regular asphalt.

I personally expect the pavement to be less visible when the sand and stones cover it by the runoffs. In certain parts it’s already happening.