Weekend blues

Mike was supposed to arrive on Saturday, but he got delayed in LA and consequently missed his connecting flight to Aruba. He had to spend the night in Virginia, then make his way to New York, then to Aruba. He managed to finally arrive on Sunday late in the day, about 2:30 pm. But at least he’s here!

We got his stuff to the condo, fed him a sandwich and a beer, then we all changed, and headed right over to Boca Catalina. As we got into the water and swam for a bit, I mentioned that the other day, we’d spotted a turtle right around where we were. No sooner had I finished saying that, Mike said, hey look a turtle! It was the smaller green turtle, and we followed him for a while, until two women started tailing him. One reached out and made a grab for him, and he showed us how fast a turtle can go in the water!

We spotted a lot of lobster today – enough for dinner! (No no, we didn’t take the lobster for dinner!) They like to hang out under rocks during the day, so it’s tough to get decent shots of them. I think this one turned out ok.

Later on, we saw another turtle, the little hawksbill, but he took off like a shot. Not sure what spooked him, but man, when those little guys want to go, they can just fly! It’s amazing how fast they can go.

We saw lots of eels, a couple of octopus, lots of French Angels, some porcupine fish, a lionfish… it was a pretty full spectrum of fish. Saw pretty much everything you can see in these waters except maybe the barracuda.

For dinner, we tried a new place quite close to our condo called Barney’s. It’s a rib joint, but we got there too late! The ribs were sold out. I had what was called Ron’s Favorite, which was shrimp in a garlic sauce, served with stir fried vegetables, and au gratin potatoes. It was very nice, although I could have done with a bit less garlic. Pam had the Dutch combo, two skewers of chicken, served with salad, coleslaw and fries, with a peanut sauce. It was very good too, and an amazing deal at $11.50. Mike had the beeftips served in a mushroom gravy with Dutch potatoes and veggies. I don’t think he thought it was great, but he enjoyed it.

We all had appetizers – Pam the rib soup, Mike the leek soup, I had firecracker shrimp – all were very good. BUT – we ate WAY too much food. Certainly did NOT need the appetizers. The service was very nice. They had a piano player, so it was a pretty nice place for dinner. No problem recommending this place at all. In fact we are heading back there Thursday night for the all you can eat ribs special!