Category Archives: Vacations

Last Monday in Aruba

November 30, 2010 Maurice Leave a comment

Today we took it easy, just one swim at Boca Catalina. Whenever we go in at Boca, we swim up to Malmok, because that’s where most of the reef is located. It was a pretty clear day, and nice clear water, for the most part. Sometimes close to shore it gets a bit churned up from the sand and waves.

Today we saw some nifty stuff, including several new fish. There was a quillfin blenny, which we had not see before. It’s kind of a large blenny, and rather strange looking. It’s a shy fish, and quick to take cover, so we’ve never been able to photograph it before. There was another blenny, a two-toned blenny that we managed to get a shot of too… it’s another fish that won’t sit still for a shot, so we were lucky to nail her.

We saw a queen angelfish, which have been very few and far between. I think we’ve only seen her once before, and Pam was the only one who saw her. It’s a really colorful fish, bright blue and bright yellow/orange.

There was a yellowtail jack – in a school of four or five. The look and act just like a barjack. The other fish get nervous when they cruise by. They come out of nowhere and blow by you in a hurry. You have to have your camera on and ready to take a pic in order to get a shot. We got lucky today!

I managed to get a shot of a queen triggerfish with her front trigger raised. The first time we’ve managed to do that I think. They use the trigger to lock themselves between rocks, when they feel threatened (I know this because I read it in our fish book!)

We saw another turtle today, a hawksbill. She was quite a bit smaller than the one we saw yesterday, so that means there are least three turtles in this area! It’s been a treat each time we get to swim with them. They only use their front paddles to move, unless you startle them, then they kick with all four legs.

We followed the turtle out quite a ways from shore. Then we saw this large school of fish we’d never seen before. They were quite large, about two and half feet up to about four feet. They moved quickly, darted around in a huge circle. We think it might be a rainbow runner, or a guaguanche, which are related to the barracuda class of fish. They are long and thin, and amazing swimmers.

There was a Spanish hogfish that I managed to get a pretty cool shot of… I dove down, and as I was coasting along the bottom, he popped up from behind a rock and I had my camera ready. I think it’s one of the best shots I’ve taken the whole trip!

This is one of Pam’s favorite fish, so I was glad to get this shot! I guess it’s the color of them… they do stick out in the ocean! But I still can’t figure why this fish is called a hogfish. Maybe it has strange eating habits!

I also got another pic today that I’m pretty happy with as well. I was diving down to get a shot of a scorpionfish, a fish we’ve taken enough shots of! I saw this great photoscape and just took it. It came out better than I dreamed! Really happy with this shot.

On the way back, we saw a balloonfish. They are cute little guys, with weird psychedelic eyes. They have a green pattern, like some pattern you’d see on a disco light show! Usually they are under a rock, peering shyly out at you, but this guy was laying in a depression of the ocean floor. Maybe he thought he was hidden! Quite a cute little fish.

I’m going to add a second one, just because he’s cool. He’s about ten to twelve inches long. He has these little quills that he will stand on end, and he’ll puff up to be about two or three times his size, if he feels threatened.

About Bailey, Aruba, Vacations

Last Monday in Aruba

November 30, 2010 Maurice Leave a comment

Aruba, Vacations

Short swim at Malmok

November 29, 2010 Maurice Leave a comment

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!

Aruba, Vacations

Renaissance Island

November 29, 2010 Maurice Leave a comment

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!

Aruba, Vacations

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.