The airport is an amazing place. It is the start and finish of so many wonderful vacations on this island. Planes land with tons of visitors and within hours an equal mass of humanity gets back on those same planes to head back home. Interesting place - Airports.

In all of this, you look for similarities amongst those arriving. Be it the sweaters wrapped around the necks of New York winter birds flying South or, the boots on the feet of the "Lone State visitors. In any case, the tendency is to look for identifying similarities. I see smiles.

Smiles for having landed safely or for having found something that was theirs to begin with (luggage) or smiles for the sun that warms faces and the wind that pushes back hair and anything else that isn't tied to the body. There are taxi (found one!)smiles and bus (wow that's big) smiles. Not too many non-smiling faces hit the tarmac. It is the way it is with smiles and airports in particular.

Departing smiles are there but a bit different. These smiles show the satisfaction of having been here and the longing to actually get back to the grind. As we all know, vacations are best kept to a time limit - beyond that magical limit, they can become drudgery. Departing smiles ate at the steak houses after having read all the reviews on this and other buletin boards. These same smiles have seen Aruba from a different point of view - perhaps hanging in a parasail underwater or across the green table covering at a casino. All are individual and equally as delightful.

Be they what they are and be the origin what it is, it is the smiles that count. It is this massive amount of smiles that we cannot forget to look at and to recognize as the the end product of most vacations on our island.

Are we perfect? Nope - we aint but then what is? I just simply love this place. I like what it offers and why it offers it. It grows on me day by day and I live here. The airport smiles grow on me. The departing ones will come back and smile some more and I hope to be a participating on looker and have them grow on me as well. Smiles and Aruba both grow on my skin and it feels good.

Simply said - if Aruba were warts, I would be honored to be a toad. Perhaps am closer to that realization than I suspect. Who knows?

RIBBIT (or whatever smiling toad sounds are)

charles
arubafastphones.com