Saturday was our first chance to visit Renaissance Island, the private island associated with the resort we’re at here in Aruba. There is a free shuttle boat that leaves the dock every fifteen minutes. You insert your hotel room key, and presto, you’re admitted to the boat. It’s quite a short ride, about five or ten minutes, with the route running right under the airport landing route.

After disembarking, you can head left or right, to one of two protected beaches. To the left is a restaurant, with fairly good food prices, and outrageous drink prices. There are lots of lounge chairs, and some hammocks at each point. The swimming area is reminiscent of Baby Beach, with a shallow sandy pool protected by a breakwater. There is a raft in the middle, and people lay on floating mats in the water, grabbing some sun.

The snorkeling in the pool is naturally not great, but once you reach the breakwater, that is an entirely different matter! We saw some pretty cool fish there, and several we have not seen. The highlights were probably a big black margate, a rather large porcupine fish, several kinds of parrotfish, including the elusive blue parrotfish, the rainbow parrotfish and several good sized barracuda.

Here is movie of a vicious damselfish attacking Pam. It’s at least two inches long, so you can imagine the terror that Pam experienced.

There was a school of large fish, which we have tentatively identified as striped mullet. They seemed to be munching on coral, but looked like sleek predators. You can exit the protected pool through a smallish gap, where the water rushes at a considerable clip. Outside the breakwater is supposed to be two wrecks, one a plane, the other a ship. We did not go outside, but we might another day!

If you went to the right as you left the boat, there is another beach, with a protected swimming hole, perhaps slightly smaller than the side with the restaurant. This is the adults only side, since it allows topless sunbathing.

Another unique feature of this side is the family of pink flamingos who live here. I had mentioned to Pam that I thought it was kind of weird that Curacao had pink flamingos in the wild, but none on Aruba. Well, here they are! They have little dispensers, like peanut dispensers in some grocery stores, that for a quarter give you a handful of food to feed them. They’ll take it right from your hand!

The Island is a very cool feature of the resort, and I’m sure we’ll be back several times. The snorkeling was very enjoyable! And we do want to get a bit of sun too. Our backs are fairly brown but our faces are not as dark as Pam wants!