It started as any other trip does, finding cheap tickets. I used to spend way too much time scouring the web for the cheapest plane tickets I could find so that I was able to afford traveling as much as possible. These particular tickets were from Nashville, Tennessee to Oranjestad, Aruba with an overnight layover in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
For those that are unfamiliar with Aruba - as I was at the time, having only heard of it in the Beach Boys song - it is a small desert island off the coast of Venezuela. Not part of Venezuela, mind you, but surprisingly part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. While it has its share of beautiful beaches and clear waters, most of Aruba is actually pretty desolate and barren with a good number of abandoned buildings scattered around its 180 square kilometers (69 square miles). And it was one of these abandoned structures that lead me to having the worst trip of my entire life…
I stayed with my friend, Eliot, during the stopover in Fort Lauderdale and he hopped on the plane with me the next morning to go experience this place that neither of us had ever been. We spent the first few days driving up and down the length of the entire island - which was only about 32 kilometers (20 miles) - and scoping out places we wanted to return to and explore in more depth. We found a number of cool places, including a cool abandoned tunnel, but there was another spot that caught our interest…
Eliot inside the tunnel we found.
From the road all we could see was a slight ramp over the guardrail next to the road, and a building that was falling apart on the other side, and then a large patch of trees.
The view from the road, Google Streetview 2021.
Through the trees was an abandoned, partially destroyed boardwalk surrounded by a mosquito infested mangrove forest that led to a pier that at this point was mostly just pieces of wood and concrete protruding out of the water. At the end of what was left of the pier there stood a concrete structure shaped a bit like a boat. In a past life it was probably a bar or restaurant of some sort, but now was far different. There was no glass in the windows, and the whole thing was slowly decaying, soon to become only a memory of what once stood there. After wandering around the structure for a bit, and watching the sunset, it was time to head back to the car.
The view from the bar back along the destroyed pier and mangroves.
As we approached the mangroves, the blood sucking hordes came out with a vengeance. In my haste to get back onto the boardwalk and to the car without being eaten alive I stepped on something in the water that punctured a hole in the bottom of my foot. I ran limping along the broken boardwalk slapping mosquitoes and trying to avoid stepping through giant holes in the structure. When I got back to the car I looked back and saw a trail of bloody footprints along the path that we had taken out. I wrapped my foot in my shirt, put pressure on it to stop the bleeding, and drove back to the Airbnb.
I slept that night with my foot propped up on a cardboard box. I woke up to a scabbed over wound, and lots of pain. When I got out of bed to take a shower I put the slightest bit of pressure of my foot and realized it could not support my weight. Hopping toward the bathroom, I felt blood rushing down my leg to my foot and within seconds my wound opened again and started gushing blood all over the floor. Quickly scrambling into the shower, I was able to get the bleeding to stop again, but just when I thought everything was under control I blacked out. I don’t think I was out very long, but I woke up in a heap on the floor of the shower and Eliot calling to me from outside the door. Rinsing off, I picked myself back up and pulled on some clothes. I opened the door to see Eliot putting on his shoes.
“Get in the car,” he said. “I’m driving you to an urgent care.”
An hour of intense and painful wound cleaning later, I hobbled back into the Airbnb only to collapse on my bed. I was unable to walk for the next few days and all of my plans for adventuring around Aruba came to a screeching halt. What was supposed to be a 10 day trip quickly turned into a 5 days of being bedridden and binge watching Breaking Bad. Thankfully, by the end of the trip I was able to manage the pain and get around a bit more, enough to get some wonderful drone photos of this island that I would not soon forget.
I don't regret going to Aruba, I don't regret going to that pier. If this injury taught me anything it was to fully appreciate every single day when I travel to a new place, because you never know when you're gonna have to spend half of your trip stuck in an apartment.