Paw Prints In The Sand

Paw Prints In The SandBy the Stark Family
“Here comes Bob” were words that brought smiles to our faces since
they announced the long-awaited start to our trip from Ottawa to Aruba. The long hours of planning were starting to pay off. The first hurdle was about to be overcome.

Our entourage of two guide dogs, two teenagers, one husband and one
wife complete with luggage would never fit into an ordinary taxi cab. The solution was to ask our friend Bob, a person who uses a wheelchair, for help. Since he is a wheelchair user, his accessible van, although lacking seats, had lots of room for us all.

Once at the airport, a quick check confirmed our pre-booked bulkhead seats with a bit of extra room for Luna and Quincey,
our two guide dogs, and we were off to Toronto. The overnight stay
in Toronto gave us time to check that everyone knew what luggage to
take care of and to orient ourselves to Terminal One before we had
to do it in the wee hours of a Sunday morning. After a relaxing
meal of room-delivered Chinese food, we all had a good night’s sleep, free from the previous night’s pre-trip jitters.

At 4 a.m. the next morning, the talking alarm clock announced “It’s
time to get up, please hurry” and played its familiar musical
melody. First, we fed the dogs with the first two meal size portion bags of dog food we had measured for the trip before we left home. Next, we enjoyed a quick cup of complementary coffee before setting off to Pearson International Airport.

Navigating the now-crowded, at 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning, airport concourse was a breeze. We travelled our pre-planned route, now filled with people, boxes and baggage. We were soon at the counter of our charter airline, Air Transat, and checking in. Our luggage allowance was only 20 kilos per passenger, about half of a scheduled air carrier’s luggage allowance. There was no extra luggage allowance for the guide dogs’ paraphernalia. We had two weeks’ supply of dog food, in addition to the usual holiday clothing and personal items. We waited with anxiety as the luggage was weighed, hoping that our household talking scale had been accurate when we weighed the luggage before we left home. The talking scales were accurate; we even had half a kilo to spare.

The gate agent’s request, in accordance with company policy, that we produce muzzles for the dogs, in addition to our passports and tickets, produced the letter of exemption we had received in advance from Air Transat. After fifteen minutes of checking and consultations among carrier staff, the authenticity of the exemption was verified and we were given our boarding cards. We had all been accepted for the flight.

We were advised that there would be a 90-minute delay in departure
time. No worry about time enough for the dogs to digest their food
before travelling. However, our scheduled visit to the guide dogs’ relieving area that we had found the night before had to be adjusted.

Finally we were off. The dogs slept at our feet most of the way to
Aruba while we had dinner and enjoyed the flight. They did wake up
for a few refreshing ice cubes and the odd rub from other passengers and crew who had asked first if they could pat the dogs.

Four and a half hours later, the aircraft doors opened. Ottawa’s summer rain was gone replaced by the warm bright Aruba sun. The gentle breeze that blows all the time in Aruba made the 30 degree temperature comfortable. A quick stop at the grass at the edge of the runway and then it was off to customs and immigration for the entry formalities.

Whack! Whack! Our passports were stamped. Our baggage had arrived and we were being hustled to the second bus in the line. We wore expressions of surprise and disappointment. No one had wanted to see our guide dog licences, vaccination certificates, international health certificates and all the other documentation we had been told was required. All that work and no one was interested.

Oh well, we were in Aruba. The sun was shining. It was warm. The bus was whisking us by beautiful little white houses with bright red roofs. We even passed a couple of windmills. The trees seemed very small and the ground was brown, not green, like most tropical islands since it rains so rarely. When it does, it is usually only for an hour or so. They do not even bother reporting the weather here. What a change from the rain and snow of Ottawa.

The island of Aruba covers only 70 square miles; 20 miles long by 6 miles wide. Its capital, Oranjestad, was a blur of clean, narrow twisting streets and brightly coloured pink, yellow and blue buildings as we sped toward our hotel. Aruba has a population of approximately 70,000 people who speak Papiamento and Dutch, although English and Spanish are also widely spoken. Aruba is only 15 miles off the coast of Venezuela.

Soon after checking in at the Aruba Holiday Inn, we discovered that we had a problem. It seems that when Arubans no longer want their cats, they take them to the hotel district at Palm Beach and release them. The cats then manage to survive in a semi-wild state, living on hand-outs and garbage from the hotels and their guests. As soon as it got dark, we discovered that in order to reach our room in the north tower, we had to run the gauntlet of packs of wild cats that were on the prowl and in a fighting mood.

The cats seemed to sense that our dogs were not like the wild
Aruban dogs. They were not aggressive. They would not fight back. They were a temptation the Aruban cats could not pass up.

We retreated in a huff to the Duty Manager’s office.

This was the first of a series of times that Mr. Wilfred Schoop, the hotel Duty Manager, was to come to our rescue in the next two weeks. We were soon moved to rooms in the hotel centre block where the grounds were lit and the buildings surrounded a small park for night excursions. For an hour until we could move, we were escorted to and from our first rooms by hotel security guards. The memory now brings a smile to all of our faces. We heard frantic chatter on the walkie talkies as the guards spotted the marauding cats. Jingle, jingle, clank, clank, klomk, klomk were the sounds from the bushes and brush as the guards shushed the cats away from us, convoying us along the darkened paths. After that first night and our move, we never encountered the cats again.

While Wilfred Schoop and his staff showed us many small courtesies, two are particularly worthy of mention. Many of the taxies outside the hotel would not take the dogs. The staff did not like this
treatment of their guests, so they drove us anywhere we wanted to go in the hotel van when taxies refused us service.

The first night we ventured out of the hotel for supper, we found
ourselves in the lobby of a well-known Aruban restaurant being confronted by the “NO DOGS ALLOWED” song-and-dance from the Maitre d’. By now, Mr. Schoop had come to expect our calls for assistance. “No problem”, he told us over the phone, “I know the owner”. Ten minutes later, we were tucking into one of the nicest meals we had on the island. Later, we learned that the owner had been told that the guide dogs were very valuable; in fact, worth more than the restaurant and all the pots and pans in it, so he should be nice to those well-trained guide dogs.

We had tried to avoid these problems by taking preventative
measures before we left Canada. We asked the Aruba Tourist Board for a letter on their letterhead introducing us and our guide dogs. Our request was refused and the Tourist Board staff were not able to help effectively when we were in Aruba.

Our hotel’s slogan, “a familiar face in an exotic place”, had real meaning. We had come to Aruba for a good time and they were going to see that we had a fabulous vacation.

Joe and Joan were teachers from New Jersey and this was their eleventh trip to Aruba. They knew the island well. We visited the capital with them for shopping several times, buying beachwear, hats with shark bites out of their rims, shirts, and the usual tourist souvenirs. One morning, we visited the duty free port to order our liquor to take home so that it would be delivered to us at the airport. It was even cheaper than buying it at the airport, 26 oz bottles of Jamaica’s Appleton 151 proof rum for less than $5 and big bottles of Cointreau and Irish Cream for $10.

We travelled by local bus on these excursions. The bright yellow busses were clean and fast, but often off schedule. The busses had turnstiles at their front doors. Joe would get the driver to open the back door for us. He often gave short awareness sessions to the sceptical drivers. The real sceptics who called the dispatcher received reassurance, thanks to another call from the hotel. In this way, our guide dogs joined the watermelons and other paraphernalia brought onto the local bussed by the Arubans.

We went to Aruba for beach and sun. We did not want too much excitement. Our daughter, Chantal, and our son, Daniel, went diving and horseback riding. Chantal got her hair braided by one of the hotel activity directors. She also won a bottle of champagne at the Manager’s welcome party for guests. Daniel was the only visitor to the hotel’s casino. He found the 5-cent slot machine and it occupied him for hours, in between reading his science fiction books.

We parents did even less. We wandered out to the beach and found a shaded palm tree early in the morning. A hotel staff member brought us chaise lounges and we settled down with our talking books for the day. When we were too warm it was into the water for a cooling dip in the clear Caribbean sea and a chat with fellow bathers from around the world. Luna dog would patrol the edge of the sea, back and forth for hours, looking for fish but only catching small pebbles. People were amazed that this golden retriever would stick her head under water. Quincey, the younger dog (3 years old), rarely went into the water. He would dig himself a hole under one of our chaise lounges, crawl in under the
shade of a blanket and watch the people go by. Many people stopped to talk about the dogs and, in this way, we made many new friends.

We ordered lunch from Mathilda’s Beach Bar and it would be delivered to us at our chaise lounges on the beach. This is also where we got cold water with ice cubes for the dogs.

As the sun started to sink over the water to the west, we would migrate to the pool area to wash down the dogs with the hose the hotel had laid out for our use. Then we returned our towels and it

was off to the beach bar for our happy hour half-price drink and to watch the sun set. We were able, in the two weeks, to drink the seven sins of Aruba drinks and, as a result, we received two
T-shirts which advertised the fact that had we committed seven sins in Aruba.

What an idyllic life, but, regrettably, it had to come to an end. It was time to travel home all too soon. We had made many new friends and had lots of good memories. We even had a picture taken with one of the very capable Dutch veterinarians that our daughter, the true tourist, insisted on taking when we had to visit the animal hospital for some unexpected minor medical treatment due to all the salt water the dogs had lapped up, despite our best efforts to the contrary.

We walked up the aircraft ladder with our guide dogs, Luna 63 lbs. and Quincey 82 lbs. The whites of our grins sparkled against our tans as we overheard a startled crew member remark “the dogs are big! They are not Chihuahuas!” However, maybe our grins were of anticipation, for soon it would be time to plan our next adventure.