Back in Aruba

Winging itWe flew back to Aruba on Saturday. We were sad to leave Curacao. It was a nice week. We saw several new beaches, lots of new fish, a wild boar and her babies, and we had a spectacular swim on the Friday through the coral forest. That swim is a memory that will stick with us forever. We’re already making plans to come back next year, so we can explore it even more!

Aruba from the air The flight out of Curacao was on time, and arrived ahead of schedule. It’s a great little flight using Insel Air. The only real drawback is the “departure tax” the government charges. It was $32.00 each, and that was about one quarter the cost of the flight! Too funny… but like Jorge says, “Everybody’s gotta have a job!”

We arrived in Aruba at 1:30 in the afternoon, grabbed our car and checked into our new timeshare, the Paradise Beach Villas. This is a new condo for us and it’s quite nice. It’s right across the street from Eagle Beach, a fabulous Renaiissance Islandswimming beach. We got our room right away, and went and lay in the sun for a while, sampling the hot tub and the two free form swimming pools. Of course, happy hour starts at three, so that’s a great bonus!

Here is a brief movie of the plane we flew over on… we were in the BACK seat! ALL the passengers were in front of us, so you can see it was a packed flight! haha

=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnrkiHyXx10

Friday at the Sea Aquarium Reef

Coral forestSnorkeling on Friday was the MOST AMAZING thing I have ever seen… I am still in shock about how magnificent it was.Coral Forest - 2 I’m still trying to find words to describe it – simply amazing. In all the times we’ve been in the water, in all the islands we’ve been to, I’ve NEVER seen anything like it, or even close to it.

Coral forest -3 I tell you – the snorkeling in Curacao is so much better than Aruba – Pam and I have already decided if we do the 4 week thing again, we’ll do more time in Curacao — it is more expensive there – the car rental was more, food is more, but the ocean is totally superior.  PorkfishWe stayed at a place called the Royal Sea Aquarium, and they’ve talked about their private reef and how wonderful it is, and we’ve snorkeled around 4 or 5 times there, and never really saw what they were bragging about – I mean it’s nice but…

Barred hamletWell on Friday we actually found the “coral forest” – coral 30 feet high, 20 feet wide, and it goes on for acres – thousands and thousands of fish – think of the most crowded area we saw, Barracudaand multiply it by about 500 per cent, and you’re starting to get the idea…. even when we went out to the Cayman Islands and took a boat out to a coral forest, it was NOTHING compared to this… and THIS was within 10 minutes swimming of our condo!

This movie is kind of a compilation of lots of things we saw. From the towering coral, to the black durgons, to the smaller fish – it was really a great swim today!

Sunset, November 19 We were so in awe of what we saw, we really didn’t take enough pictures to give you a clear idea of what we saw. I feel bad about that, because it really was something amazing. I honestly never dreamed there was something like this to see in the ocean. I thought we’d seen it all – and then this – I tell you – I wish I had the words to tell you what we saw.

We even had an awesome sunset to complete the day! What a treat this day was.

Red lipped blennySpotted drumHere is another brief movie of the coral forest. It’s like nothing we have ever seen. I do hope these movies have given you a sense of what we saw… I wish we’d done better, but we were really in awe. We kept saying to each other, “Do you believe what we just saw??” then we’d swim another hundred feet and then we’d say “Do you believe what we just saw??”