Day 6 - Lots of Sun, Arashi Beach

(FJJ) First thing in the morning, June and Jean had to take me for a walk to see the "Tracker Jacker" nest they found.  Actually, there is no such thing as Tracker Jacker bees, it comes from the book "The Hunger Games" but we did not know what else to call them.  The nest is a bit bigger than a basket ball and all the bees are on the outside of the nest, it looks quite intimidating, but they did not seem aggressive, but I sure would not poke it with a stick. 

'Tracker Jacker' nest?

After our walk we headed for Arashi beach in the morning, it is about a mile up the coast (NW) from our villa.  It is one of those spectacular white sand Aruba beaches and since it is a bit away from the hotel district it is not the least bit crowded. The snorkeling there is pretty good but you do have to go some distance out from the beach to get into something other than white sand.

Great Snorkling

I snorkeled from Arashi Beach to Malmok beach along the coast, about 1/2 mile, the sea life and snorkeling are spectacular in this area, it goes from very shallow to 20-30 feet deep and has amazing visability since the coast is mostly coral rock with little debris to cloud up the water. On my walk from Malmok back to our villa, I scrounged some more coconuts, we are becoming pretty adept at husking, draining, and getting the meat out of coconuts.

Fresh Coconuts....

After dinner at the villa, we decide to go to San Nicolas for the weekly 'Carubbian' festival.  San Nicolas is at the south eastern end of the island and the home of the world famous 'Charlie's Bar', a bar that nearly everyone visits when they come to Aruba. We stopped in for some rum punch, it was the best we had yet.

Charlie's Famous Bar

The festival itself was something like a street party or 'carnival' as they call it. It has local Arubian food, music and flea market like vendors set up.  It was fun but we did not stay log enough to see the parade of Arubian dancers.

The twins

The last few days have been windy, the sail boards, Hobie Cats and kite boards have been prevalent in front of our villa, achieving some impressive speeds.  Enough so that Tom and Jen  have the bug and plan to rent a Hobie Cat today (Friday), they are experienced sailors.


Today, Friday,  we have no big plans, as I sit here looking out on the ocean at 7AM, it looks like another typical Arubian day, it will start out somewhat cloudy with nice temps, so lots of activity, people running, biking up and down the beach, by noon it will be sunny and hot with a nice ocean breeze, most will migrate to water activities to stay cool. This is Aruba "One Happy Island" as their license plates all say.