Friday fun

December 7, 2012 Maurice 3 Comments

The wind was still strong today, so we were a little worried about what the viewing would be like. We went back to our favorite hang out, Boca Catalina. We saw a couple large iguanas sunning themselves and managed to get one to pose for a picture. We had a pretty easy entry to the water; the waves were a bit high, but no bother!

The visibility was really good, not cloudy at all. We saw lots of fun stuff. One of the coolest fish today was the coronet fish. He’s a big long fish, with a kind of whippy tail. Sort of looks like a trumpetfish, but the tail is different. He can change from light green to brilliant blue.

There were just tons of eels today. Not sure why, but seemed there was one under every rock! For the last several years, there has been this rather large porcupine fish under this ledge at Malmok Beach. We had not seen him this year – until today! It was good to see him back in his hiding spot. We were worried that the lionfish had forced him out of his home.

We even got to get a pretty decent shot of a soapfish. This fish is extremely shy, and always slips under a rock the second he sees a snorkeler. If you try and take his picture, he scoots away… we’ve got tons of shots of the back of him! But today we managed to get him in the open and snap a decent one.
We went over to the Palm Beach mall and strolled around to see what’s new. One of our favorite restaurants, the Casa Tua Mediterranee, is located here, but it has closed! That’s too bad – it was a great place to eat. Pam found a friend here at the mall… they had a little dance together.

Sunset was nice. We parked on Eagle Beach and watched it go down. Just as the sun was disappearing a sailboat drifted by… a pretty cool ending to a pretty darn nice day! I’ve included a picture of our pool and hot tub, and stuck an arrow on it, locating our apartment. We’ve stayed in this one before – it’s a great location – ground floor, with a little patio, steps to the pool and hot tub!

Aruba, Vacations

Snorkeling the wall

December 6, 2012 Maurice 2 Comments

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.

Aruba, Vacations

Baby Beach

December 5, 2012 Maurice Leave a comment

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!

Aruba, Vacations

No really, a short post!

December 5, 2012 Maurice Leave a comment

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.

Aruba, Vacations

Just a short post.

December 3, 2012 Maurice 2 Comments

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.

Aruba, Vacations

Back to Aruba

December 2, 2012 Maurice 2 Comments

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!”

Curacao, Vacations

Back at Caracasbaii

November 29, 2012 Maurice 5 Comments

Thursday we returned to Caracasbaii – we had intended on swimming at the Seaquarium, but the wind was a bit high and because the snorkeling site is in the open ocean, often the waves are just too pushy! The water at Caracasbaii was very warm, very calm, and extremely clear! I’m not sure we’ve ever seen it so clear.

We snorkeled around the wreck as usual, and saw plenty of fish, but a short trek towards the new condo development was a new experience for us. And it sure was a lot of fun! The water is fairly shallow and we got to see some fun fish. One of Pam’s favorite fish is the spotted drum. Usually when we see them, they are hiding under rocks, so we never manage to get a clear shot of them. But this time, one fellow was just drifting along, swimming his song. Here is a movie Pam took of this black and white beauty.

We saw a couple of moray eels – a chain and a golden. We haven’t seen as many eels this time. Usually we spot lots of them, but maybe we were too busy looking at other fish to spot them. I think this is the first chain moray we’ve seen.

Another cool fish we’ve seen a lot of, is the scrawled filefish. It’s a very long fish, usually over two feet, but very flat, much like a flounder. It can change color from a deep green, to a bright blue, to light white. It’s very cool, and always catches your eye because of the length.

This last movie is of a lionfish. We haven’t seen any of them, until today, so that’s a good sign. This voracious predator looks lovely, but is totally deadly to the fish in the Caribbean. Pam took this hovering over the wreck. At the end of the movie, the lionfish suddenly darts forward – the speed of this fish is so deceptive. You simply don’t think it can zip along that fast, yet, when it needs to go, it can go!

The last picture is of a spindly little spider crab. They are about a foot across, but look as a delicate as a feather. Usually they scramble around the rocks, near sea urchins, looking for protection I imagine. This guy was hanging around one of the big pilons in the middle of the bay. Kind of a strange looking beast, eh? See the tiny little blue claws? Not much for eating!