TravelwithMitsugirly: Aruba Day 9

Aruba 2021

Day 9: Wednesday, August 4

Cooling discoveries, hidden snorkel, unusual food shapes...

A caffeine filled morning at 7am in the morning led to a new discovery for us today. Every day I had complained about how quickly my pop gets hot while sitting outside in the morning and the hubby would watch me chug it down like it was the last one I would be getting for awhile. Ya know ya just can't waste that pop here when it's so expensive and I don't like hot pop.

So this morning, as I sat out back, the hubs had made his coffee and he comes out carrying a cooking pot. I give him this puzzled look and ask "are we making breakfast on the grill or something?" As he gently lays the pot in front of me I notice a can of pop sticking up. "Wait, what is this?" He shows me he has the pot filled with ice and he has solved the problem of my pop getting hot too quick and now I could have an iced cold chug of it with drink.

HE'S FABULOUS!!! His problem solving skills were on point this morning. But, why did it take him so long to come up with this? LOL Now I will admit, this is something that I do when we are at the beach (whether we are at home or on vacation). I always open up my drink and then put it back down into the cooler to keep it cold. I don't know why I hadn't thought of something like this while we were here at the house.

Our two-English-sentence pool boy was there bright and early to clean our pool. We did notice that he did our neighbors pool as well. I discovered this when the goat family came to visit this morning and I walked up on the hill in our back yard to look at them and I could see over in the neighbors yard.

As the morning passed by, we decided it was time to start breakfast. The hubby and I were pretty much taking turns making breakfast and dinner so it was his turn this time. He decided he wanted to make omelettes. So, I did help with cooking the bacon after watching him struggle.

It's funny how these days we depend on so many gadgets to help us out with every day life and today he was struggling with how to cook bacon. "Where's the bacon cooker for the microwave?" He's looking all over the kitchen....well, there wasn't one. "How are we supposed to cook bacon?" I had to laugh when I told him "In a skillet on the stove perhaps? You know, like it's always been done before we got a bacon cooker for the microwave or even before the microwave was invented?". He says "Oh yea, I do remember seeing my mom do it like this when I was young". The next complication came when I was painfully watching him try to flip the bacon, with a spatula and not being able to get the spatula under it and flipping it, was just hilarious to watch. At that point I had to take over. "Let me show you the easier way" as I grabbed a fork from the silverware drawer. "See how easy it is to grab the bacon between the fork and pull up on it to flip it?"

Ok, so he taught me how to fix/keep my pop cold in the morning and I taught him how to cook bacon without any gadgets. We're even now!

Sakari's sniffer was working this morning and here she came...

The hubby was itching to try out his new snorkel he bought yesterday, so a beach day it was! I started packing our snacks and sandwiches in the cooler and then all of our snorkeling goodies and beach towels as well.

As we walked out the door, Sakari looked over at the pigeon, hoping that miraculously it would be fine all of a sudden...but it was still dead. I really didn't know what to do about it. Who do I call? Where should I put it? I knew for the amount of time we were staying here, it would start to decay and smell. I really didn't want to bother the landlord again. They had already come out several times to drop off things or fix things. I really didn't want to have to call them again about a dead bird. I decided I would just pick it up and throw it out back over the fence and let nature take it's course.

I decided that I wanted to find a "new" place to snorkel. I've always heard that Malmok was a good place and it's on the main street and down the road. Now I've never really BEEN here before but back in 2017 we were going up and down the road to find a place to go and checking out the beaches and I had pulled over on the side of the road and got out to look at a place. I found this couple that were going in to scuba dive and ask them what place this was. They told me Malmok and said it's an awesome place to go and there's usually tons of snorkelers here. I wanted to find that place!

Here's a few pictures from back then when I stopped to show you what I was seeing.

Here's a picture of those divers going in:

So I wanted to attempt to find this place and snorkel around the area. We drove up the main street and pulled over a few times and I would tell the hubby "No, it doesn't look the same. This is not it."

We would continue on down. Now this entire area looks different to me. I think they have redone it. I may be wrong but I just didn't remember the nice sidewalk all the way down the road and there were some trails and wooden pathways. Then there were small area's along the street to pull over and park. However, there sure wasn't many! Maybe 4-5 cars could pull in there.

I did find a spot to pull over and we grabbed our things and went down to a little beach area with only a few (maybe 4 or 5) palapa's there. There were some other people there: Two families with children.

It was a very rocky shoreline and you would have to maneuver around them to get down to the water, but there was some sand as well. The small sandy area was nice.

We grabbed our snorkeling equipment and the hubby and I headed out. Sakari did not want to go and said she would just stay at the palapa for now.

It really didn't look like there was much in that cove area. I kept thinking there has to be more!

On the side of the cove by the big rocks and shoreline, there was a rope. The hubby and I were trying to decide what this rope was for. Does it mean we are not to cross it? We took awhile trying to decide what we should do and then finally decided we were going for it. We were going under the rope and snorkeling along the shoreline to see what was there. That's when we started seeing all kinds of fish.