Van Zandt: Looking for answers in Aruba

Clint Van Zandt • Profile • E-mail

I spent last week in Aruba looking for answers in the Natalee Holloway missing person case.  On the four-and-a-half hour flight to the island almost all of the seats were full, and yet it's the off season.  Clearly, Americans -- who make up about 70% of Aruba's tourism base -- are not avoiding this vacation spot because of a missing teenager.  As you step off the plane the heat hits you smack in the face.  It's really hot here, but that's why most people come to Aruba -- for the sun, the beaches, and a good time.  Many people from the U.S. believe Holloway's disappearance is an aberration, a blip on the radar screen of life that may be as much her fault as anyone else's.  "She should have known better," or "Why'd her parents let her come here in the first place," are some of the responses you get from tourists and locals alike.

Arubans are happy to share their theories of her being kidnapped by slavers or of her running away from her family, escaping her dull life in Alabama, aided by Joran van der Sloot who is now in jail.  Or perhaps, it is said, she simply went for a swim and drowned.  A popular story that's told by locals concerns an Aruban man and his sons who were fishing off the coast about a decade ago.  The engine on their boat failed and they begin a slow drift that eventually carried them over 700 miles to the Panama Canal.  Residents told me this story to emphasize how a person, or a body, once in the local waters could quickly drift from sight and never be found. 

When you look around in any city, island, or country you find that all have their secrets, things they don't want outsiders to know.  In Aruba's case a few warts are beginning to show.  Last week the FBI indicated that at least three American women have come forward since Natalee's disappearance to report that they had been sexually assaulted while vacationing in Aruba.  Are these women aberrations, too?  Did they contribute to their own victimization?  And, are these alleged crimes related in any way to Natalee Holloway's disappearance?  To my knowledge none of the reported victims have identified any suspect in the Holloway disappearance as their alleged assailant, yet other women are still coming forward and, as the police say, "the investigation continues" concerning the now three prime suspects.

Natalee's last night in Aruba was at Carlos'N Charlie's, a local nightspot that every tourist knows.  As you turn down the small, nondescript cobble stoned side street in Oranjestad, the capital city of Aruba where the cruise ships dock, you first spot the construction project across the street from Charlie's, something that dwarfs the otherwise well known local bar.  Big bouncers (probably wrestlers in high school), stand out front of the bar, eyeing everyone who enters.  Why, I'm not sure, since children, young adults, and seniors alike are found inside.  Visitors tell me they have been approached to buy drugs in this same area.

Once you enter Charlie's you know you're in the islands, and, indeed, as the tourist brochures say, you're on "One Happy Island."  The melodic tropical sounds are booming throughout the main room, and, as if being played by an Aruban pied piper, and as you follow the tunes inside you see all of the people dancing in the bar.  Upstairs, a DJ in a little booth plays the music, which he blasts through large speakers.  Multiple bars are pouring liquor into tall, pink plastic glasses (by the yard), as two employees with microphones work the crowd.  These guys are there to set the ambience, to get you singing, dancing, and drinking.  The congo line soon begins to wind around the bar, with patrons induced to join in, as if they needed any inducement, by the offer of free shots of tequila.  The young, singing attendant leads the human chain around the relatively small bar, with everyone doing their own dance, singing, and ultimately pausing ever so briefly next to yet another bar employee standing on a chair.  As promised, he uses a squeeze bottle to shoot shots of tequila into the willing mouths, and sometimes on the bodies of those in line who dance up to him.  The women appear to get a little longer shot, but this is the islands.  People are here for fun, and this is the place to have it.

You have to ask yourself, if you're young, or even not so young, why else would you pay for a plane ticket to Aruba if you didn't expect to have fun?  I didn't stay late, but the fun continues late into the night, every night.  Please know that I'm not the bar police.  Young and old were having fun, something they paid for, something that almost seemed expected in this environment.  And, though appealing, it seemed artificial at times on this small rock, coral, and sand island covered with upscale and downscale hotels and motels.  Some local citizens tell me that fresh water, for example, is so expensive on the island that they bring it home from work to their families.

As I walked out of the bar the cabs and cars drove by.  Some were looking for fares, while some were just cruising, checking out the nightlife in the area.  In Aruba it can be hard at times to tell a private car from a cab.  If you play detective you can spot the special license plate decal on registered cabs, if, that is, you go to the rear of the car to look for it.  Sometimes there's a small, plug-in sign on the dash of the car that says "taxi," and sometimes the driver even has a CB-like radio.  But other times a car rolls up and when you climb inside you see nothing that suggests it is a cab.  This happened to me twice.  When I asked, the driver said his "real" taxi was being repaired, so he was driving a friend's car.  The reality is that you have about five seconds to decide whether to get into the car or not.  It's hard to know if it's a real taxi, perhaps a situation that Natalee, like me, accepted at face value.  What we do know from witnesses is that at about 1:45 a.m. she drove off in the back seat of a car with Joran van der Sloot while the two Kalpoe brothers were in front, and she was never seen again.

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