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Video: To Natural Pool

Natural Pool

I’ve written several posts on Natural Pool and hopefully this way try to offer my contribution to explain how it truly is, perhaps to “un-hype” it. I hope this way to avoid hearing comments such as “I thought it was bigger” or “I hope it’s worth it after that ride”.

The best method to make your way to Natural Pool is signing up for a scheduled trip. Keep in mind that they know what they’re doing, they’ve done it before and if you happen to break the equipment you are not liable for any damages. On the flip side, if you choose to go at it on your own, your rental won’t be insured and if you break something, you’ll have to pay in full before leaving the island.

Despite the difficulty to reach the pool, there are still plenty of people interested in going there on their own. I’ll try to give some directions.

Bear in mind that there aren’t many street names outside the capital. In fact, I’m using points of reference rather than street names.

1. Assuming you’re staying at the low/high rise area resorts the starting point would be the major traffic circle (roundabout) by the resorts.
   Points of reference: Pizza Hut, Texaco, Eagle Bowling Palace.
2. On that traffic circle go east, destination St. Cruz.
3. You reach another traffic circle, continue driving straight ahead.
   Points of reference: Hunny Punny, Dunkin’ Donuts.
4. Yet again you reach another traffic circle and, yet again, continue straight.
   Point of reference: Stern Chevrolet dealer.
5. And yet again another traffic circle, just keep driving straight ahead.
   Points of reference: Hong Kong Chinese grocery store, Arubabank.
6. Continue driving straight ahead on the main road passing residential houses, sport fields, a bakery, bar, restaurants, grocery stores etc. Don’t pay too much attention to any of that.
7. The next left turn is the most critical one, so here you’ll need to focus.
8. At a certain point before you reach the main traffic lights in St. Cruz you must turn to the left.
   Point of reference: Mundo Nobo grocery store on the left side of the road.
9. Drive straight ahead.
10. At the next equal crossing continue to drive straight ahead.
    Point of reference: Another Chinese grocery store on the right.
11. This road will turn, twist, go up and go down. Just continue driving on this paved road until you reach the end at a T-crossing.
12. Turn to the right at this T-crossing.
    Points of reference: On the right a small white house, up front some rocks painted in white. Perhaps you might see some goats taking it easy around those rocks.
13. After a short piece you reach another crossing, turn to the left. If you go straight the road changes into a dirt road and that’s a sign that you’re going the wrong way. Go back!
    Point of reference: At that crossing, there is a small tree with a sign to Natural Pool.
14. Drive straight ahead on the paved and narrow road where it twists and turns.
    Point of reference: You’ll pass close to some cacti.
15. At certain point, where the road seemingly ends, turn to the left.
16. When you follow this short road it will turn into dirt and rocks which means you found the point where you can start using your vehicle’s 4×4. Put it in four wheel drive high gear, this will suffice throughout the whole ride. If you don’t have such a good vehicle, put in four wheel drive low gear.
17. Guiding you from this point is useless due to the lack of points of reference. Just follow the tracks and make sure you reach the coast. If you don’t reach the pool within 30 minutes then you are lost my friend.

I never said it was easy. Hopefully my directions to the Natural Pool have been helpful. Good luck in finding it.

Thus far November and December are turning out to be unusually wet. According to statistics most rainy periods in Aruba are indeed in November and December. I also want to remind people that the total rainfall on a yearly basis is average only 17 inches a year.

There will be more sun-hours then rain, so I wouldn’t be so worried on your vacation being rained out.

No it’s not enough. There you go a very straight forward answer for the burning question. Let me elaborate.

This post’s title was Googled a few days ago by someone and landed right here at arubabeaches.net. I thought it’ll make a good title, for that, I thank the person that submitted it. I’m not sure that he or she found a complete answer to the question though.

I will take it upon myself to try to seek an answer for the matter. By the way, I think that the person that submitted this question probably is a student doing a paper on the topic. Perhaps this post might help in the quest on finding an answer.

Data

The amount of money invested in Aruba’s marketing is not available to me at this point. It would have made analyzing less difficult by just simply putting the amount of marketing dollars spent against the flow of tourism.

There are other ways to get a hold on relevant figures from where one can draw some interesting conclusions. The Central Bank of Aruba releases publications periodically in accordance to international rules regarding transparency. The bank collects all necessary information from all relevant sources, like the Aruba’s tourism authority and the bureau of statistics. I’m using the Central Bank’s 2006 Annual Report as a source.

Growth

Aruba’s tourism grew (amount of visitors) from over 250,000 in 1996 to almost 1.3 million in 2006 (Image 1), a growth of 405%. The economic growth however shows a different pattern (Image 2), a cyclical pattern. The last few years there seems to a steadier pattern.

The growth in tourism was fueled by a fierce increase of investments, foreign and domestic. Not only was invested in room availability, but also, and perhaps more importantly, in infrastructure, such as a new airport, new roads and better telecommunication. Despite the fact that Aruba lacks an impeccable natural [Caribbean] beauty, investors were confident in the potential brought forth by amazing beaches, dry weather, low threat of hurricanes, safety, political stability and a service oriented native population.

Image 1 | Tourism growth 1986 - 2006 [Amount Visitors] Click in image for better view

Source: Central Bank of Aruba

Table 2 | Economic growth 1996 - 2006 [In Percentage] Click on image for better view

Source: Central Bank of Aruba

Marketing

Aruba has spent millions of dollars in marketing in the last 20 years, not only in North America but also in Europe. Aruba isn’t the biggest marketing-spender in the Caribbean. That honor is for the bigger islands such as Jamaica, Dominican Republic, The Bahamas etc.

Tourism has changed a lot during the last decade. It has changed beyond the force of marketing-dollars spent by any individual island. The rise of no-frills air carriers and internet makes the decision making process rise above the marketing. Nowadays you can undermine any marketing campaign by surfing to a review-site and find out experiences by fellow travelers or just visit sites like this one that offer opinions.

Take Marriott Aruba as an example. Currently Marriott is undergoing a major reconstruction and it releases progress reports as they see fit. I, on the other hand, drive around there, take a couple of shots, post it on this website and you’ve got yourself the latest right there, thus undermining a multi-billion dollar company. In all fairness (as stated before), Marriott Aruba is very forthcoming with the construction and I merely mention Marriott as an example to prove a point.

Future

In Aruba there are a lot of very talented experts in the field of tourism. Many spokespersons have indicated the need to come with a comprehensive plan to move ahead. “Competition isn’t standing still, we shouldn’t either,” is the common credo.

The broad term of sustainable tourism seems to resonate in a chorus among all actors in the sector, except the decision makers: politicians.

The foremost intellectual authority regarding to tourism in Aruba (in my opinion) is the Dean of Hospitality & Tourism Management Studies at the University of Aruba. He is a local guy from St. Nicolaas that has travelled the world and studied at prestigious universities and holds a doctorate. I read many of his publications and he is a guy that I can relate myself with.

I’ll close this post with an excerpt the Dean wrote for the Central Bank’s 2006 Annual Report:

“It is a truism that tourism is experiencing a paradigmatic transformation. As Aruba ventures into the new reality of the 21st century, it faces strategic challenges that will require nothing less than a tectonic shift in rethinking and redesigning its socioeconomic foundations and philosophies. While traditional strategies and policies may have worked in the past, and growth was almost a given, today we dance to a different beat, and it’s no English Waltz.”

I haven’t been able to post for the last few days due to a computer problem. If you’re wondering: it crashed. I’m trying to fix it myself and I expect it to run again before the weekend.

When a “blowhole” is mentioned automatically it’s referred to the biological term, however, there’s another meaning of the word, namely in ecology. “A blowhole is a cavity formed in the ground at the inland end of a sea cave,” according to Wikipedia. Sounds complicated? Not really. On the north eastern part of Aruba there’s an area where you can see this natural phenomenon.

Obviously you need to be lucky to catch that shot. Check it out below.

Aruba’s blowhole

Just like every week I browse the internet in search for the hottest deals. Beforehand I theorized that it wouldn’t be so easy to find specials coming into December due to the influx of travelers from Venezuela.

This wasn’t necessarily true. In fact, I’ve still managed to find several:

• Delta Airlines offers in December airfares from Amsterdam to Aruba, with a stop in Atlanta for 655 euro.
• Martinair’s cheapest airfare from Amsterdam direct to Aruba is of 804 euro.
• KLM flies to Aruba from Amsterdam direct, or with a stop in St. Maarten, for 825 euro.
• “Feel The Warmth Of Aruba, Plan For Sunshine And Fun Times” according to American Airlines Vacations. They still have deals available.
• Continental Airlines Vacations’ Aruba Vacation Packages has a grand total of 21 hot deals at this moment. Check it out.
• On the front page of US Airways Vacations there is a three-day deal for $659 to Aruba. On the section page they offer 13 deals.

Hopefully above deals were useful. Now you know where to look. Don’t wait too long though, high season is around the corner which means that tourism operators are going to raise prices soon.