Aruba 2021
Day 10: Thursday, August 5
Going deep, green monsters and lots of wilds
Up at 6:30am this morning for some reason. I guess I was craving some of that ice cold cooking pot pop. I had a lot to look forward too this morning. :D
We hung out most of the morning doing next to nothing. French Toast was on the agenda for breakfast and Sakari's nose knew it and showed up on que as always.
On today's agenda was....scuba diving! I was excited but yet nervous. After my fiasco in Cozumel last vacation (on the first dive) I wasn't really sure how I would react this time (although I did redeem myself with a second dive that time). I was really hoping it was just a freak reaction and I wouldn't have a repeat this time. I know how much my family loves diving and I didn't want to let them down. I was trying hard not to over think this situation. I think the hubby knew that I was nervous but trying not to show it.
Sakari went off to create a drawing while we were killing time.
Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out what to do with myself for the remaining hours before we leave. I wanted something to occupy the space in my brain that was starting to make me nervous. I think I was starting to make myself somewhat sick to my stomach. I laid down on the couch in the living room and I managed to drift off to sleep. Well, I guess that pretty much passed the time away. Thank goodness I had told Sakari what time we were leaving, otherwise...we wouldn't have made it in time.
She came in and woke me up and we headed out (I had already packed the car with everything we would need for the day) at 1pm.
Today we were diving MANGEL HALTO with Happy Divers. So I searched before coming here and got pricing and I specifically requested Mangel Halto just for the fact that we did the seabob's here last time and I know this reef is absolutely amazing! That is the reason why I wasn't too upset about not getting to snorkel the big reef when we were here the other day. We were going to get to see it all today...up close and personal. Happy Divers was one of the few that said they dive at Mangel Halto, and the price was good. I had also seen Happy Divers there previously and knew they went there.
So we get there and there's another family going diving. There were 2 instructors and we really clicked with the girl (Lisa) instructor. We were talking about how many times we have done this and how often we go. Of course we got the "you should get certified" like we always do. I know, I know...I also told her about my injury and showed her and let them know that I wouldn't be able to carry the tank to the water. She said "no worries, we will take it to the water for you".
They did the briefing, went over the hand signals and skills and we were almost ready to hit the water. I wasn't feeling anxious at this point and I was happy about that.
As they started passing out the wetsuits, fins and mask the hubby decided his long hair was going to be an issue. We fixed him right up!
Everyone headed down to the water and Lisa geared up on both sides. Yes, she was carrying her tank on her back and carrying my tank on her front. She was a superwoman! How does she carry all that weight??? Geesh!
After she got it into the water, she still drug it all the way out there before she had me put it on. I mean I could have drug it out there myself but she said she would do it. How nice!
Ok, it was time to put my bcd on and do our skills in the water. I was feeling confident at this point. Nothing was going to go wrong! Please don't let anything go wrong!
We completed our skills with no problems. But, I was having difficulty with staying down. So, they kept having to add more and more weights to my belt. I also couldn't get my bcd to deflate all the way so the instructor put the weights in and deflated me.
The water kept pushing us toward the other family. It was pretty wavy out today. The other family took some time to complete their skills. We had to stand around and wait on them. So of course that meant picture time.
Sakari took a picture too. Hey at least she didn't forget she had a camera in her hand. They hubby was armed with the GoPro. He always managed to get good video's so I figured that's his job on this adventure again.
The other family finally completed their skills and it was time to head out. But...we ended up getting the male instructor instead of Lisa. I was really hoping we would get her. I turned to Sakari and said "Now you know how to change the settings on your camera right?" She gives me this look and I said "Oh, I know you know but I'm just double checking because I know you like to switch between macro and underwater". Then off we went.
There was lots of sand. Where's that reef??? How long does it take to get there??
I ran across the Goby family all standing guard at their station.
Sakari was busy taking her macro/close up shots of everything around her.
Now remember I ask her about the settings on the camera? Well, she assured me that she knew which setting to put everything on. According to the pictures she took...she FORGOT!!! They all turned out so bad. On the newer camera she has, there is a setting within the underwater setting that is macro. Well, she was putting on just macro, which is for land. They turned out so horribly green that they are basically unfixable. I tried to take the green out of the pictures so you could at see them, but they look terrible. I'm going to share them anyhow. She did work hard on them and I know they would have been fabulous had they been on the right setting. :( I corrected them the best I can.
She found a CandyCane Shrimp! (above)
As we are getting a little further out, the first real thing we came to was this HUGE coral. I mean HUGE! If we stood beside it, it was almost as tall as us. It was a weird shape. It was hollow inside and open on one side. I took a few pictures of it and started to move on.
As I'm snapping pictures, I notice that Sakari is still over by the huge coral. So I'm looking at her and she's motioning me to look inside of it. She keeps pointing at something but we are on the side of the coral that is full. I'm just not seeing what she's seeing.
Finally I see it! It's a large Lionfish! It was the first and last one we would see on this trip. I know they have gotten really bad down in the Caribbean and everyone is hunting them to try to kill them off. But, we have a special place in our heart for them because we had one as a pet! Yes, I said pet. Our "Mango" (what Sakari named ours) had such a personality. It would follow us when we walked by the tank. It would come to the top and want fed. It would do all kinds of neat things. It was our pet (although I made the mistake of putting "Sandy" (our Goby) in the same tank and I think she ended up lunch for Mango one day. :( That was my mistake.
Now it's very hard to see it because it was hiding in the dark, but I tried my best to lighten the picture.
We seen A LOT of Trunkfish along the way. Here are a few:
Ok, I finally seen it and time to move on. Sakari was ahead of me when I spotted these clams in the rocks. I had seen several of them since we've been here and I kept mistaking them for the red spiny sea urchins. But not this time. I was going to get pictures this time!
Man I had really wished that Sakari was beside me to get a good close up of these. She had the good camera! But, she was off taking her own pictures.
The reason we spent so much time in this area, pretty much just circling around and exploring everything, was because the other family that was out with Lisa was having some difficulty. They were up at the top of the water way up there. Where they freaking out like I do at times? I knew it was their first time.
So we waited and waited and waited. We were all trying to figure out what was going on. Our guide kept watching and keeping us all in the same place.
After awhile of waiting, we adopted another diver. It was one of the kids that was with the other group. He was continuing on with us while (I assumed) the others were going back and wasn't going to dive. It really sucked that we wasted so much time waiting on the other group, which cut into our dive time. But on we went...
Now I think I messed up on this next picture. Obviously Sakari didn't take this picture of herself. If so, she has some mad skills. Oops, just name stamped it wrong.
There was a little Goby or some type of fish in this coral. Too bad I didn't have the good, clear camera.
Here's another one of those white fuzzy creatures crawling along that I seem to think might be a nudibranch.
Now I had made a decision to hang mostly with Sakari this time around. Every single dive we do, she's always seeing "the good stuff" and I seem to miss a lot of it. She was busy taking pictures and I was right beside her and then I kinda looked past her and seen a ship wreck. The hubby was already headed that way and looking at me to come on. I had to wait to catch Sakari's reaction when she seen it. She loves shipwrecks.
I think I labeled this picture wrong as well. That's definitely a picture of me heading to the ship that Sakari took. Man, ultimate fail this time around. LOL
Hey at least when Sakari took her camera off the macro setting and put it on underwater she was able to get "normal" colored pictures. It looks so eerie sitting there on the ocean floor. She kept saying to me after we returned "you don't know how bad I wanted to swim through the windows of the shipwreck. "
Sakari and I were exploring every inch of this ship and loving it! So many things to see!
Sakari and I had managed to circle almost the entire length of the ship and was coming around the corner when I see the hubby motioning me to COME!! He kept pointing underneath the ship and giving me the BIG hand gesture. I wasn't seeing anything. He kept pointing. Still nothing. Now most of the area we were in was a sandy bottom so that meant there was a lot of sand kicked up from both us divers and whatever was under that ship. I couldn't see anything. Whatever it was, I had missed it darnit.
However, our guide didn't miss it and here's the pictures he took.
I was a little upset when we got back and I discovered what I had missed. At least the hubby was able to get a video of it on the GoPro. You can see in the video the instructor motion him over and point. I should have been paying more attention.
This is all of us looking and trying to figure out what we were missing out on:
So we missed the eel. It was time to move on and our instructor was motioning us to "come". Sakari had managed to flip back to her "macro" setting.
Now somehow she managed to get some normal pictures. That or either I took the pictures and name stamped them wrong. At this point, who knows! LOL
A few of my not-so-great pictures with my horrible older camera
I was trying to get in my National Geographic grove by taking a neat picture of putting my camera in this weavy fan thing and looking out into the water
Then all of a sudden one of the "branches" moved in the opposite direction of the others. So, I took a better look....
Ok, I guess the Trumpet Fish decided I was close enough and it was time to move on as he scurried away.
I spotted a lizard fish sitting on the coral. The hubby completely passes it up in the video as I kept pointing to it.
And another lizard fish sitting on a rock.
I was shooting into a coral and noticed something...there were several Brittle Starfish in there! I was excited that I was able to spot it before Sakari and motioned her over. I knew I wouldn't get a good close up of it and depended on her. Well we all know how that went this dive.
Also down below that were some shrimp as well. I know one was a Candy Cane (Banded) Shrimp, but I'm not sure what the other was. It was a purple with some dots. It was the first time I had ever seen anything like that. I was so excited! I believe this was a Pederson Cleaner Shrimp. It was a first for us. Too bad neither one of us got a decent picture.
We came across a really weird looking coral and Sakari loved that it had lines going up and down and then squiggle lines like a brain coral. It probably was a brain coral but I've never noticed the lines like this before and this thing was HUGE! (They were all huge on this dive)
I noticed that we were starting to see some of the things we had already seen and figured we were heading back now. Wait, were is the mounds and mounds of coral that I was expecting to see during this dive??? This was not at all what I thought it was going to be. I remember what it looked like when we were doing the seabob's and this definitely was not it. That was the entire reason I booked scuba at Mangel Halto. Hmmmm....
We went up and over this...this is what I was expecting to see all over but with vivid coral incasing it.
As we were headed back, and knew we were at the end of the dive, we frantically start taking millions of pictures, trying to get everything in site, because this was out last chance and we knew it. (Although they usually end up being just dumb pictures that I don't use because there's nothing interesting in it). But I did find another one of those fuzzy creatures (nudibranch) along the way and it was orange this time. My picture did not focus of course because I didn't have the good camera nor was I able to get it all in the frame. Go me!
The instructor, Sakari and our adopted kid were up ahead and the instructor is motioning us to "come". We were coming! Every time we looked up he would do it and once again we were coming. We weren't far from him at all and Sakari was right with him but she said he was doing it to her too and shaking his head like she was doing something wrong. She said "mom, I couldn't get any closer, I was right beside him when he did it and acting like I was not following him in".
The waves were pretty strong and pulling us sideways, but it wasn't as bad as other dives, ahem Cozumel, because we could still swim. Once we got back, I went to inflate my bcd and it wouldn't work. I kept telling the instructor it wasn't inflating and he said "you broke the tube". Wait what? I didn't break any tube, you were the last to mess with it. Then he started complaining about us coming in and we needed to be beside him. We were right behind him...like 10'. He started saying "I know these waters" "I know how hard it is to get back and how you guys don't have much air". Now I know he knows the waters and how long it takes to get back but we were right behind him and never ONCE did he check our air supply! I know how much I had the entire way. I'm always checking mine and I know the hubs and Sakari checks there's too. I mean look at my last picture of us coming in...I still had over 1000 and they had 1000. So...we did an entire dive using less than 2000 pretty much but can't make it back in with 1000? You see we're not in deep water. What would happen if we did run out? We're at the top anyhow. I don't know, he just had a really bad attitude that I didn't care for when we got back.
We ended up paying by cc with Lisa and she told us the story of the other family backed out, shot up to the top all of a sudden and just started drifting in the water. She said they were almost all the way to the island! I did tell her the reason I picked this place was because of the reef and WHERE WAS IT??? She said it was on out a ways and they normally take discover scuba if they know how good their skills are and have done it before and they see them in the water...then they feel comfortable taking us there. Wait, what? We had this entire long conversation about this before we went. I started asking about a second dive and do they give discounts and she said "yes, but it has to be done on the same day". Well isn't that a bunch of crap! She knew our diving "history" I wish we would have went with her. I also decided to ask her about the weights... "Is it the fluffier you are the more weights you get?" She was trying to be super nice but I said "I know I'm fat, give it to me straight" so she did and the answer was YES. So, now I know. I always suspected that.
They told us that they would send us a link to the pictures they took of us that day and it would have all of our dive information on it (they didn't have any books with them and I completely forgot ours back at the house to have them fill out darnit <---I've been doing this a lot lately).
We were starved by the time we were done and didn't bother to stay at the beach or swim anymore. We headed out and on our way home. The hubby seen a Wendy's and he yells "STOP, I WANT WENDY'S, I can't wait until we get home." LOL So I stopped.
I guess we were all really hungry. I didn't even bother to take a picture and I was moaning and groaning all the way home eating my Wendy's. "Mmmmm" It was the best tasting Wendy's I've ever had. It was perfect! I just kept saying "This is soooo good". I'm sure it was because we were all so hungry! The best darn $24.83 I've spent so far today.
We stopped at Tingwei and spent another $19.61.
After getting settled back in at home, the hubs fixed me a drink...hubby style.
We got in the pool and played some ball. The hubby told me how proud he was of me today and I did so good. He ask if I was nervous at all and nope, I sure wasn't. I was back to being perfectly fine now.
I finally got an email with our pictures and information from the dive today. That didn't take long! He took 110 pictures during the dive (well, some of them were Lisa's as well before the dive) but of course we had this adopted kid with us in a lot of them as well.
Mangel Halto, 40 ft , 46 minutes divetime. The cost was $100/pp
So I will share a few of the pictures he took of us.
The huge coral that was the size of us (look at me down there beside it and compare just how big this thing is!
Even our instructor took a picture of the family up at the surface.
Here's my video of the day from diving. We are having some technical difficulty this trip with air bubbles getting in the case of the GoPro (more like a line) and this time hubby was struggling with the cord that attached the red filter onto the case. If anyone has any tips or experience with this, please let me know. This air line happened the entire trip depending on what angle you had the camera. It drove me insane. Ugh! We will get it right one of these vacations...we will.
It was almost 7pm and we were just hanging out by the pool enjoying a ice cold drink from the cooking pot when I said "You know what I want to do? GO TO A CASINO!!! We hadn't been to a casino the entire time we were here and of course the last couple of times we were here Sakari was too young to leave at home. Well, not this time! We are going!
I headed for the shower and we both got ready. We pretty much headed down the street and over to the main road and they were just filled with casinos. Alright, we are going to this one on the corner. The Marriott it was.
Now I have to say that it wasn't what I expected. It was pretty small...for a casino or I'm just used to the one's we have here at home that are so large and so many different areas that you could get lost in.
I was doing pretty good and so was the hubby. We decided to walk away when we were ahead and call it a night. We walked out with $232.55 We played from 7:45 until 8:45pm. It felt like it was longer though. But we had fun.
When I was still playing, the hubby went out of the casino to use the restroom and when I was done he told me "there's a whole other world out there!" LOL
So, we decided to walk around and take a look. I immediately found a gelato place and I knew I wanted some.
We spent $16 total on this....was it good? Yes! Was it worth $16? No! Outrageous.
Then we checked out the multiple stores they had there in the hotel and I found the most adorable little umbrella that looked like a flamingo. Oh my gosh if only Sakari was still little I know she would want it and I know I would have broke down and bought it no matter the price. It was just so cute. My little Sakari is all grown up now and don't want things like that now. :(
She has been complaining about how her nose always gets burned on vacation. I sent her a picture of this....and told her "you want?" LOL You can just attach it to your glasses and never worry about your nose getting burned again.
It was now 9pm and we decided to head back home to Sakari even though she said she was fine and I knew she was fine but still...I was ready to get back.
We made it home in about 5 minutes and she was sitting in her sauna room doing her thing...more dragons of course.
It was lights out soon after that........ZzzzzZzzZzz