Yesterday was a bit windy, so Pam didn’t want to head in the ocean. I decided to try the wall, a section of beach where there is very little easy access to ocean. It’s guarded by an army of pelicans, which can be quite vicious, you know!
I was rewarded with a spectacular display by the fish! I don’t even know what to call it. I’ll just let his movie say it all. (ADDING THIS NEXT DAY – I should mention that this group of fish went on and on, for well over a kilometer. We’ve seen bait balls like this before, just never this big!)
I’m also adding this brief movie from yesterday that Pam took of a stoplight parrotfish munching on some coral. It’s a fairly large fish, in the two foot range. If you have your sound on, you can even hear him crunching the coral.
Today we headed to the south part of the island to check out Baby Beach. We basically have to drive the whole length of the island to get there, so it’s a nice way to see it all. There is some road construction going on, so there are a couple of detours. They added signs to make finding Baby Beach very easy. It used to be quite a challenge, but now anyone can find it. And it was quite crowded! Big Mama’s little food hut is now a very large restaurant, with big wooden chairs and tables – no longer the cheap folding lawn chairs stuck around a mobile kitchen.
They have added some buoys and markers to warn people about different water depths, and riptides. Well, today they did not need any of them. The water was calmer than I’ve ever seen it there. We could easily exit the bay, and get into the open ocean. Usually you have to swim like a maniac to get through the channel, but today the ocean had hardly a ripple. It was really amazing to see how many black durgons were out there! WOW. Literally hundreds of them out there! There was also a very pretty Queen Triggerfish swimming with them. (The black durgon is a type of triggerfish.)
Baby Beach is really three swimming sites in one. The “Baby” part is a beautiful white sandy bay, with water barely waist deep. There are no rocks on the bottom, so it’s just terrific if you want to wander around the warm water, splashing and having fun. It’s very popular with families, since kids can easily have a great time in the shallow water and soft sand.
The second part is the channel, where tons of fish like to hang out. It’s where 99% of the snorkelers go. And with good reason. You get to see most everything the Aruban waters have to offer, from large barracuda to the smaller damselfish.
Then there is the northern portion of the bay with enormous coral formations and larger fish. For some reason, most snorkelers never head over there. It’s my favorite part though! The coral is just enormous, as big as the formations at the Seaquarium on Curacao. Baby Beach was quite crowded, but just Pam and I and one other snorkeler was on this side.
Pam has taken lots of videos of lots of kinds of fish. I’m going to include a couple in this post, so you can see various fish we’ve posted pictures of, actually swimming! This one is of a couple of foureye butterflyfish. Normally, they swim in pairs, but often there will be more, with a young one. This video is cool since it shows a pair, joined by a little tiny guy.
These two shots are of the same fish, called the yellowtail damselfish. The blue one is the female, and the primarily yellow one is the courting male.
The Spanish hogfish is a favorite of Pam. The split colors are nice to look at, and no two hogfish have the same split in colors. This one has quite a dark yellow; some are much brighter in color.
To reach Baby Beach, you have to cross a section of scrub land – wild desert, with huge cactus. And several roads traverse this way and that, on which you need a four wheel drive. There is a lot of animal life, if you have sharp eyes. On the way out, we saw a “herd” of the famous wild donkeys. It’s not often you get to spot them!
Tuesday we went back to Boca Catalina, but the ocean was a little rougher than it has been, and so the visibility was not terrific. It was ok, just not great. We saw the usual suspects, and of course, our turtle friends made an appearance. The other turtle movie I put up was of a hawksbill, so today’s turtle movie is of a green turtle. He seems to have been in a playful mood, as he kept circling and coming back to the snorkelers.
The beaches have been “crowded”… just look at this picture! Where are we supposed to fit in? I mean really… I think there have been fewer people here this year. Perhaps it has to do with so many people recovering from Sandy’s path of destruction? Pam wants me to remind you that you can make any picture bigger, by clicking them with your mouse, even the larger pictures, like the one here of Boca Catalina Beach.
Here’s a nifty picture Pam took of me looking under a rocky shelf… I didn’t find any pirate treasure, but it never hurts to look.
This last picture is of a blue tang, in the intermediate phase. When he’s really small, he’s all yellow. When he’s in the intermediate phase, like here, he’s got a yellow tail. Full grown he’s all blue with just a small spot of yellow. This is not a big fish, he’s maybe two inches at the most. Full grown we’ve seen them up to fifteen or sixteen inches.
Monday was a beautiful day. Super warm, super blue sky and super calm water in the ocean again. Aruba’s weather is certainly better than Curacao’s and I’m not sure why… the two islands are very close together, but we’re not complaining! There was barely a cloud in the sky, and the water was again nice and clear. We decided to try entering the water at Malmok Beach, and it wasn’t a total success. It was quite difficult for Pam, so I don’t think we’ll enter here again. Usually we enter the ocean at a beach just south of Malmok, then swim up to Malmok, but since the best snorkeling is at Malmok, well, we decided to give it a go.
Snorkeling-wise, it was a good decision. We hadn’t been in the water more than two minutes when we saw our first turtle. We saw another turtle later on in the day too. One of the neater things we saw was a golden moray eel. Nothing too usual in that, but this guy was “on the move.” Usually they might move from one rock, to another hidey hole. But this guy was out for a drive! I’ve uploaded a little longer video of him, moving from rock to rock.
This was International Get Close to a Pelican Day. The picture of the pelican I took. In the background is one of the lovely homes on Malmok Beach. The picture of me getting close to the pelican was taken by Pam. We thought it was pretty funny stuff. The pelican let me get to within a foot of his rock, and he never took off, but he did spread his wings just in case I reached for him I guess!
The water has been so calm we’ve gone out a little further from shore than we normally do. We encountered this group of four trunkfish, seemingly having a union meeting. Not sure what was on the agenda, but it was fun to watch. This is a little shorter movie, of fish we don’t normally put up in a movie. We also saw a couple of fairly large barjacks, hunting and catching dinner! We see the barjacks cruising the reefs, and smaller fish swimming away from them. Today we saw the reason they’re running! Gulp. Down goes dinner.
We came home, had a soak in the hot tub, and decided to have a happy hour drink. The bar here at CPV is nice, and we’ve often had a happy hour drink – they are priced two for one. Well… it cost 19.80 for the “two” drinks! WOW – that’s a pricey happy hour! So we went to the store, got a bottle of rum, and bottle of pina colada mix, some limes, and a pineapple, and it was less than the cost of the drinks! Needless to say, we’ll be doing our own happy hour from now on. Dinner was home-cooked again, so no restaurant review.
We flew out of Curacao on Saturday, leaving at 12:30 and arriving in Aruba at ten to one. A short flight on a larger aircraft than we are used to… we’ve taken the Insel Air flight a few times from Aruba to Curacao and back again, and it’s usually been on a little fifteen seater. This aircraft had two seats down either side and sat around fifty or so. It was a nice little flight.
We had a bit of a tough time getting our car rented – I don’t think I’d use Avis ever again. It is very annoying to see three couples who were served after you get their cars ahead of you! When I said to the lady, you know, that’s the third person who has gotten their vehicle ahead of me, she said, hey the traffic is bad! Ahhh… ok?? Anyway – we finally got a car, and we got checked in nicely here at Caribbean Palm Village, where we’ve stayed nearly every time we’ve come to Aruba.
We had a little swim in the ocean and it was nice. We had a nice dinner at Rembrandt’s, a nifty little restaurant near the high rise hotels. It’s a Dutch run restaurant (I guess the name Rembrandt’s kind of gives that away huh?) and the food is quite nice. The menu has changed since we were here last, and the owner told us it will change again soon since a new chef is coming from Holland next week! They had a “Sinter Klass” celebration – quite unique to have Santa bring you your beer!
Sunday we thought we’d rest, but the weather was so wonderful we decided to check out Malmok Beach, a beach I’ve come to call Turtle Beach. And guess what?? It was prophetic – we saw two turtles, a hawksbill and a green! And one VERY large barracuda too, about five feet long! And lots of moray eels. And tons of French Angels – it’s a very common fish here in Aruba. Pam calls them dinner plates – they are big round fish, visible from quite a ways away. They always attract your eye, because they are so much wider than most fish.
But the water! WOW! So clear, so calm, so warm. It was easily the best we’ve had so far this vacation. It’s nice to be back on Aruba. It just feels so comfortable here. I’m guessing it’s the familiarity of the place – we’ve been here so often, we know the streets, the beaches, the people. There are a lot of improvements going on – there is a nice new grocery store much closer to our condo. Several bad roads have been repaved. There is a big lovely looking hotel nearly completed, with a slightly Spanish style of architecture.
We also saw a number of Queen Triggerfish, my personal fave of all the fish we see. Pam took a great little movie of her, so you can see how she moves about with her flowing fins, lovely colors, and big eyes!
We had dinner in the condo tonight. It was a nice to have some home cooking after a solid week of restaurant food. And we found a package of our favorite Dutch cookies, speculaas with almonds. I had to drive to three grocery stores before I’d buy THE package – Pam kept saying, “These will be fine” and my reply was, “Not interested in Fine. Want the Best!”
I’m writing this from home. We have arrived back to some nice snow and ice. Quite a change from the constant 85 degrees, sunny, palm tree-lined existence we’ve come to know and love for the last month! The last couple of days in Aruba we tried to get in as much swimming in the ocean as we could.
I’ve prepared some pictures of the last couple of days, and uploaded them to the Aruba 2011 gallery. I’ll reference some of them here, but there are others I’ve not posted in a message. As we pulled up to the parking area of Boca Catalina, we saw a rather unique parking job! So if you come to Aruba, make sure you know which way your car should point when you park!
One of the really odd things we saw was a gold colored barjack. The barjack is quite a fish – they are hunters, and come cruising through the ocean usually in packs of three or more. You see the smaller fish heading one way in a hurry, and usually if you look toward the region the fish are running from, you’ll see a crew of barjacks! There are a cool steel blue color with a black trim. So this gold colored one was really quite unique.
One of the funny things about snorkeling is that you get a “crew.” One theory is that the bubbles created by your fins, interest the fish and so they tag along with you. Another is that so many of the tour boats encourage their snorkelers to feed the fish that the fish think any snorkeler is going to feed them, and they are tagging along in case you decide to start feeding them. Whatever the reason, it’s hilarious to see the fish swimming along with you. And some of them can be quite large. The chub is one of the larger fish that joins your posse, but a lot of them are the Sgt. Major. The picture here was taken by Mike.
People seemed to like the bird movie, so how about this picture of a pair of birds? The pelican is coming in for a “dive bomb” while the smaller gull seems to be eyeing Mike suspiciously. While you are snorkeling, you can really get quite close to the birds sitting on the rocks in the water. They don’t seem to care too much about you until you get within a foot or two.
I really like the fish called a coney. It’s a really cool color, and very shy. They sometimes can be seen swimming with other fish, or even with another coney. They do not like to be around swimmers, and will rapidly move away if they spot you. I dove down and surprised a coney, and managed to snap this picture before he realized I was there.
I took this picture of Pam on our last night in Aruba. We decided that we’d go up to the California lighthouse and watch the sun set on our holiday. There was hardly a cloud in sky, so the pics of the sunset are not worth posting, but this one sure is!
We had a really nice time in Aruba. It was tough leaving that beautiful weather, wonderful water and nice people. We’ve come to really know the people at the Caribbean Palm Village, and that familiarity has really added to the special feeling we get in Aruba. We have come home to a considerable snow fall and cold weather, so we miss Aruba even more!
Today we headed south to Mangel Halto, a place we’ve only been once before. You walk down a ramp into a grove of mangrove trees. Birds chirp all around you, and there are a couple of openings through the dense mangroves that allow you to walk along sandy, shallow water until you hit the open ocean.
The water is shallow for quite a ways, then you hit the coral. And what a coral forest it is! It’s a wonderful spot, filled with every kind of coral you can imagine, and it goes on for miles! It’s really quite a remarkable swim. The only downside is that the current is tremendously strong, and you must constantly swim against it.
The visibility was very good, and there were lots of fish to see, but it was just so much work to stay in place! Constantly battling the current really tired us out quickly, so we were not able to stay out there very long. We saw some cool stuff, but man, I’m not sure I’d come back here unless it was dead calm!
We came home for a quick bite to eat, then Mike and I headed over to one of our favorite, go-to locations, Malmok beach. Pam was too tuckered out from the swim at Mangel Halto. She’s been doing really great with swimming, and walking. Her physio coach is going to be impressed with her improvement! Even some of the ladies around the time share have commented on how much her walking has improved.
The ocean at Malmok was really clear, with great visibility. We saw some cool stuff, then we finally hit the jackpot! Yup, we got to swim with a turtle! First swim with a turtle this month! Mike had never been in the wild with a turtle before so it was pretty special.
He wasn’t a really big one, but hey, it’s the biggest one Mike’s seen! He cruised straight out into the open ocean, and we followed. After a while, we realized we were probably a kilometre or two off shore! It was indeed a tough swim back, especially after all the effort we’d expended in Mangel Halto earlier in the day. But it was worth it!
There is something special about swimming with a turtle. They move through the water with real ease, flicking one front paddle or the other. If you get too close, or he feels threatened, he kicks it into overdrive with both paddles flashing, and he can leave you far behind in a hurry!
We saw some palometas, a pretty cool looking fish, which we have seen many times. But these ones were so big! They were easily thirty per cent larger than any we’ve seen. The pic doesn’t really show how big there are, but you can see they have some orange color on their underside, which we’d never noticed on other palometas before.
Yesterday was a bit windy, so Pam didn’t want to head in the ocean. I decided to try the wall, a section of beach where there is very little easy access to ocean. It’s guarded by an army of pelicans, which can be quite vicious, you know!
I was rewarded with a spectacular display by the fish! I don’t even know what to call it. I’ll just let his movie say it all. (ADDING THIS NEXT DAY – I should mention that this group of fish went on and on, for well over a kilometer. We’ve seen bait balls like this before, just never this big!)
I’m also adding this brief movie from yesterday that Pam took of a stoplight parrotfish munching on some coral. It’s a fairly large fish, in the two foot range. If you have your sound on, you can even hear him crunching the coral.
