Friday morning we had a swim at Nikky’s beach, which is the beach closest to the airport. It’s not quite like Maho on St. Maarten, but it’s a nice sandy beach. The sand is powdery soft! But there was very little to see in the way of fish. There was the odd French Grunt, and a couple of barracuda, but that was about it. It was really too sandy for most fish.

We had lunch then spent an hour or so in at Boca Catalina. It was nice, saw a few unusual fish. There was also a really tiny little box fish, about one inch long. He was chased by a damselfish, and the damsel is no longer than tow inches. The picture shows them going toe to toe! Cute.

The picture of the fish with an orange back, and bright blue spots on him is about one half an inch long! He’s notoriously hard to get a shot of, because he’s so quick. He won’t stay still for a second. He usually is hanging around spiny urchins, so it makes it even tougher to get a shot, since you don’t want to be touching a spiny urchin!

A really nice triggerfish was the highlight for me, though. I can’t get enough of this fish. They have amazing color, and they move so gracefully through the water. This one was around a large rock. I would dive down, and wait for him to circle around the rock. I got a couple of him, almost looking startled!

This is a short movie of some French Angels hanging around some other fish. It will give you an idea of how large the Angels can be…

This evening we moved to the last timeshare on this trip, the Renaissance, in downtown Oranjestad. It’s a more upscale place than either Caribbean Palm Village or Paradise Beach Villas. It has two humongous swimming pools, one with a swim up bar. It also has a private island, just for guests of the hotel. There is a free water shuttle taxi that leaves every fifteen minutes. We’re going to be trying that out, you can be sure!

We checked in late, so we really haven’t done anything here yet. Last night we checked out the local casino. I have to say, that’s the most play I’ve had in a casino for a long long time. I spent only forty dollars, for the whole evening, so that’s almost like winning!

UPDATE: Discovered that wifi is seventy dollars a week! An outrageous fee, considering that Wifi Aruba charges thirty five a week. There is no wifi available in our room, you can only access the net using a network cable! How old school is that? The lobby is filled with people with laptops perched on their laps. Absolutely ridiculous. I take back that comment I made about this being an upscale hotel! It’s about as backward as they come.