Today was Sunday, a traditionally slow day in Aruba. Most of the locals have the day off, and very few shops are open. We did a bit of shopping at the outdoor flea market, picking up a few souvenirs. We’re nearing the end of our vacation, so we’re trying to figure out what we’ve missed! Turns out, that’s not much! We’ve done pretty much everything!

After the shopping, I had a brief swim at Malmok. We usually enter at Boca Catalina, and swim up to Malmok, because it is tougher to enter the ocean at Malmok. But Pam wasn’t up for a swim; she just wanted some sun. So she rested on the sand, reading her book, while I jumped in at rocky Malmok beach.

The water clarity was very good today, and things started happening very soon after I got in. Within seconds there was a school of large squid. Then there was a beautiful Queen Triggerfish. I glanced to my left, and there was the largest barracuda I have ever seen! He was as long as me, and as thick as my leg! He was enormous! He swam with me for a while, and as soon as I turned my camera on him, he drifted off. Bit of a diva, I guess.

Mere minutes later I came across a hawksbill turtle. She was quite large, with the typical serrated backside of hawksbills. We swam together for quite a while. She was not in the least worried about me, and I could have reached out and touched her. She let me take as many pictures and movies as I wanted, completely oblivious to my presence. Unfortunately, I waved my arm to turn and that startled her and she moved away quite rapidly.

I turned and looked at the shore and realized I’d moved quite a ways off shore. I lazily drifted back towards shore thinking I’d had a pretty great swim, even if it was less than thirty minutes. Suddenly, another turtle, a green turtle this time drifted lazily under me. I followed her for a long time too. All she did was swim in circles! I could have swam with her for as long as I wanted. She was much smaller, and might even have been the same one we swam with a few days ago.

I made my way to shore and got to within ten feet of the exit point, when a sharptailed eel caught my eye! This is a quick moving eel, and he seemed to be up to something. He was poking his head in every hole, even digging in the sand. Suddenly another half dozen fish started following him. I guess his digging around was stirring up some food. Suddenly, he went kind of ballistic, much like the octopus did when he grabbed a scallop. His dorsal fin was very pronounced, something I’d never noticed before. A slippery dick (a type of longish fish) grabbed something the eel had dug up, and they kind of had a tug of war over it!

I tell you, for a short swim, I saw some really remarkable things. Malmok has a great reef, and it’s always worth it to jump in the ocean at this beach. It’s a bit rocky to get in, but the effort sure pays off!