Friday is for relaxing

November 27, 2010 Maurice Leave a comment

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.

Aruba, Vacations

Swimming about

November 26, 2010 Maurice Leave a comment

We had a relaxing day today. A short little swim at the beach where we encountered the large bait ball a few days ago. The pelicans were still there, maybe even more! The bait ball was still there, but seemed smaller than before, maybe my imagination.

We swam further north that we had the other day, and encountered a really cool environment. It was quite a bit different than anything we’d seen on Aruba. It seemed more rugged, less spoiled. I think it’s because there is really no easy beach access. We had to swim quite a ways to get to it from our entry point.

We saw some neat fish here. There was another HUGE school of Caribbean reef squid, probably the largest we’ve seen yet. I think we’ve seen more squid this trip than all the others combined.

There was a strange pink/red parrotfish which we can’t find in our books. She had blue lips, and blue markings over a mostly pink body. She was not shy and was completely unconcerned about us diving around her trying to get a good photo. I’m sure it’s not a mature fish yet, so she’s going to be even more colorful when full grown.

There was a huge school of needlefish, which seemed to be taking the place of the palomettos of the other day. That is, they circled the bait ball, keeping it tight together, while diving in for a snack whenever they wanted. These fish swim within a couple of inches of the top of the ocean, hardly ever going deeper than a foot. Cool looking fish, and there were some quite large ones here too.

There were lots of schools of grunts, and snapper just drifting on the waves. We saw a couple of big barjacks, and Pam saw a couple larger fish, perhaps a Cero. They move so fast it’s almost impossible to get a picture unless you have your camera on, and pointed in their direction.

There were lots and lots of lobster. Must have been a party, because we could have fed half of Aruba with all the lobster there! Seemed every rock that had a shelf under it had a couple lobster hiding under it.

Here is a short movie of the pelicans diving into the bait ball. The seagulls land on their heads, and sometimes reach inside the pelican’s pouch, looking for tidbits! It’s pretty funny to see, actually.

Aruba, Vacations

Like, wow, eh?

November 25, 2010 Maurice Leave a comment

Today was a unique swim, to say the least. The weather was gorgeous and hot, and we had slept in a little. We decided to head to our favorite place, with a nice easy entrance to the ocean, Boca Catalina. All the snorkel operators stop by here, since it really is a great place to see lots of different kind of fish.

We worked our way north, stopping off at the rock we have seen the triggerfish twice before, and while there was no triggerfish in sight, a couple lobster had made a home under the rock. The rock is very low so my pictures didn’t turn out too well – an unfortunate precursor of the day, I’m afraid. We watched a large school of squid lazily drifting with the waves, then headed over to the main reef.

Suddenly, every fish in the ocean goes flashing by us in a panic – all headed one way, and FAST. Now, we know that means a big predator has arrived, and it’s usually a couple of barjacks. What was unusual this time is that ALL the fish took off – not just the small ones, even the large parrotfish took off. Now that WAS unusual. I turned to look at what was causing it, and saw two of the biggest barjacks I’ve ever seen. The book says they max out at two and half feet, and these were easily that size. Big deal eh? Yeah, well, their traveling companion was TWICE their size! It is easily the largest fish I’ve seen in the ocean! IT WAS HUGE! I got two shots of it, but for some reason, they both came out very blue. Take a look at that picture and keep in mind that the fish on the left, and the upper right were both very large barjacks, at least two and a half feet. That makes that fat bugger in the middle at least five feet long! And look how thick he is! That was one big fish. Pretty cool experience!

After they left, we almost immediately found an octopus. It’s the first one we’ve seen on this trip, so we hung around for a bit. He seemed agitated and was moving constantly around the rock. Suddenly he went into an almost dance, his tentacles going crazy. We realized he was grabbing onto a scallop and ripping it open for lunch! That was pretty cool – haven’t seen an octopus do that, except on National Geographic.

The first part of this movie is a bit jerky, since I swallowed a big gulp of sea water and had to turn over to spit it out! So I lose the octopus for a bit, but bear with it – it’s pretty cool, even if a bit jerky.

Along the main reef we saw lots of French Angels, and today we saw all three stages of this cool looking fish. In the juvenile stage he is pretty much black with prominent yellow stripes. As a teenager, he has some yellow stripes, and some of his body is covered with yellow dashes. Then as an adult he’s all yellow dashes, with no stripes.

Cool fish!

Just one more of the octopus. In this one, I approach him and he retreats into a tiny little crevice. The closer I get, the more he retreats.

Aruba, Vacations

Tuesday ramblings

November 24, 2010 Maurice 1 Comment

We had two nice swims at Malmok Beach and Baby Beach in the last couple of days. But there are a couple of things that are kind of bothering me. First, I simply do not understand this predilection with feeding the fish! In fact, it drives me crazy! In Canada recently, some tourists were fined for feeding wild animals. It is possible to get up to a $100,000 fine. It’s a dangerous practice to feed wild ANYTHING. I just don’t get it.

I don’t like the way the fish act when this occurs. They get almost rabid, circling around, snapping and generally acting like animals! The problem I see is that this will encourage larger fish to see this as an opportunity to gobble up the smaller ones, and if a barracuda decided to strike, someone’s arm might get in the way. Barracuda are a nasty looking fish, but there has never been a recorded instance of them attacking humans directly. Humans have been bitten by barracuda, but only because they get in the way of them feeding. They circle near the bottom of the ocean, spying prey above them, as their eyes are in the top of their head. When they see something tasty, they can strike very, very quickly. If your arm gets between them and their prey, they’ll lay a chomp into you. So by feeding the fish, you’re covering yourself with barracuda dinner. And you could wind up the appetizer.

The other thing is the way people seem to think that coral is a chair in the ocean for them to stand on! Everywhere we’ve been, we’ve seen people standing on the coral. This will kill the coral. The more tour operators bring boat loads of people to great snorkel locations, the more beat up it gets. I’ve been on only one boat snorkel adventure, and that was on Grand Cayman. The operator was very clear that we should never stand on, or touch the coral. There is also a possibility that if you stand on the wrong coral, you’re going to get some nasty reaction. Fire coral for instance, will give you a nasty rash, and drive you crazy with itching. Some people even have allergic reactions, which can cause anaphylactic shock. So I don’t know if people are not being told by these operators, or if they are just ignoring what they’ve been told.

What ever the reason, just stop! Stop feeding the fish. Stop standing on coral. Stop being a bad tourist! respect the world around you, and it will last longer.

Aruba, Vacations

Swimming with turtles

November 23, 2010 Maurice Leave a comment

Monday we headed out to Boca Catalina beach. The weather was amazing, sunny and calm. As we approached the beach, we noticed a lot of snorkelers in the water. And with good reason! The water clarity was the best we’ve had so far. Near the shore, it is quite sandy so it was a little cloudy, but once out about 15-20 feet you could see for miles! We got some really amazing shots. It was hard to pick just a few for the blog!

Here is a movie of what we think is a green turtle. I’m including both movies I took, Just Because it is so awesome to swim with these dudes! The Red Sail snorkelers had gone right over the top of him and missed him. I saw the guy, took a few pictures, then dove down hoping he’d some up for a swim. Well, he didn’t disappoint us! One of the girls from the Red Sail group couldn’t stop giggling with glee when she saw him. Lucky for them, Pam called them back for the view!

We also saw so many Queen Triggerfish I can’t believe it! It’s a fish I just love! It’s so elegant in the water, with such amazing colors and patterns. I’m posting pictures of two in particular, an adult one, and a juvenile one. The juvenile one has a more delicate color, almost lavender, and she was about eight inches. The larger one is a deeper blue, with darker colors on her facial features. She was well over a foot, maybe eighteen inches. They are usually tough to get a picture of, because they swim away from you, but the little one in particular let me take a lot of pictures of her.

I was busy taking pictures of a French Angel, when Pam said to me, “Are you taking pictures of the Angel, or the scorpionfish?” I hadn’t even seen the scorpionfish! And this brief movie will show you why it’s so hard to see them! He’s laying right on the shelf and looks like the rocks and coral he’s around!

The picture of the French Angel is kind of remarkable too. Usually they swim away from you too. They just don’t like you pointing a camera at them. This particular Angel kept coming right up to us, approaching within three or four inches! The sun hit her at a remarkable angle, and made her gleam and glint with amazing sparkles. I really like this picture!

Another shot I managed to get was of a barjack. These fish are tremendously fast swimmers, and come shooting across the reef, usually in small schools, but sometimes they are alone. The other fish scatter in their path, because they are predators, using their speed to snatch the unwary. This jack was very large, and paused right beneath us, allowing me to snap this shot.

We saw a large school of Caribbean Reef Squid, maybe the largest we’ve seen. Usually these fish will move away when you get too close, but again, they just hung around. Not sure what it was about today, maybe all the great sunny weather made them lazy! Anyway, here’s a brief movie of them just hanging around. Interesting colors on them in this movie.

Aruba, Curacao, Vacations

Back in Aruba

November 22, 2010 Maurice Leave a comment

We 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!

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 swimming 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

Curacao, Vacations

Friday at the Sea Aquarium Reef

November 22, 2010 Maurice 1 Comment

Snorkeling on Friday was the MOST AMAZING thing I have ever seen… I am still in shock about how magnificent it was. 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.

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. We 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…

Well 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, and 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!

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.

Here 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??”