It’s finally started; I’m outside the borders of the United States and heading into the land of the unknown. Early this morning (criminally early, in my opinion, but that’s the price you pay) I said my goodbyes to my stepdad Steve, threw my bags into the back of my moms car, and we drove into Boston, aimed at Logan Airport. We parked, I checked in like a boss (since I knew exactly what to expect), said a tearful goodbye to my mom, and pushed my way through security and headed to the gate.

The first flight was pretty simple: I honestly just slept through 90% of it, even though I was finally seated next to some cool people instead of the usual creepy old dude. The two women next to me were in their mid-thirties I’d guess, and headed to a Bachelorette party in Cancun. Meaning that they had brought nips. Lots and lots of nips. When I finally woke back up they had dipped into their supply fairly impressively, and we spent the last 45min or so of the flight shooting the shit and chatting about nearly everything under the sun; from people being jerks and not giving up their seat to a nauseous pregnant woman who had been forced to fly facing backwards, to how amazingly impressive people who work in social work are. An interesting flight, to say the least.

At Miami we parted ways though, and I boarded my flight to Aruba. The flight itself was pretty smooth; I sat between an older woman and a dude who lives in Aruba, though I honestly spent most of the flight sleeping again, instead of chatting like my usual chattery self. After the flight landed I worked my way through the maze of customs (getting the stamp on the passport was the hardest; the actual “customs” part was literally just a dude asking me if I had corn. Seriously, that’s all he asked. Corn), and then went to get myself checked into the flight to Caracas. Normally I wouldn’t check in 7 hours ahead of time, but I had to get my bag from the baggage claim, and… man, I don’t want to lug that around. But turns out I got to anyways, since Gol Varig doesn’t allow you to check into flights more than 2 hours ahead of time. So I set an alarm on my phone, strapped my bag to my pack, and headed out to find a taxi.

I was able to find an official Taxi pretty quickly (thanks to the line of them outside the airport), and I was on my way to Eagle Beach. I chose Eagle based of a quick google search for “7 hour layover beach”, where the overwhelming majority of people said that it was the perfect combination of close-to-the-airport and awesome-beach-times. I grabbed a quick lunch at a place recommended by the taxi driver, and then headed onto the sand. Lunch was effectively a hotdog and fries, though it had a strange Dutch name, and the hotdog itself was… unique, to say the least. I don’t THINK it was dog, but I could be mistaken. Meh. It was tasty, and sitting there gave me time to call my Couchsurfing host to double-check our plans. Not complaining 🙂

The beach… wow. All I can say is that Aruba seriously is amazing for beaches, especially since Eagle beach is one of the mediocre ones in comparison to the rest of the island. The sand was that “nearly-powder” type, and the water was crisp and clear, but not freezing like New England. I set up camp with all my gear at one of the empty Cabanas, stripped down to my shorts, and hung out. I did some reading, some swimming, some gawking (seriously… I love mini-bikinis, and some of the women here were CLEARLY just strutting up and down the beach. I don’t mind at all :P), but most of the time just relaxing like I didn’t have a care in the world. Which is a lie, since I’m still nervous as hell about Caracas, but hey; if I fake not being worried hard enough, I’ll probably end up not being too worried, right? Right.