Aruba 2021
Malmok
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.
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.
There were so many Needlefish in the area. I don't think I have ever seen as many as we did that day.
The color along the rocks at the shoreline was starting to come to life. It was very pretty!
Then something caught my eye over on a rock...it was a Chain Moray Eel
We continued on down the rocky area:
Then we ran across some really huge and beautiful Rainbow Parrotfish
We came across a little cove area where you could stand up and it was a little rocky. It was a great place to rest.
We seen A LOT of Trunkfish along the way. Here are a few:
Then this beautiful Queen Angelfish. I'm always mesmerized by their beautiful markings.
I absolutely LOVE pulsing Xenia. They are so neat to watch. Their "pedals" just close and open over and over like they are dancing to music. I had some of these in my salt water tank and they were so cool.
A large French Angelfish
At some point I realized just how far we were and we needed to get back. I started to freak out. How far did we really go? Wait, Sakari isn't with us! She's on the beach alone. OMG! We need to get back like right now. We took off swimming and the hubby must have put his gears in overdrive because he was GONE...left me in his dust. As I came across the corner of the rock, he was getting out already.
So we walked up to Sakari and she said "So, how was it? Did you see anything interesting?" My reply was "of course" don't we always?" She kept pushing for some reason... "What did you see?" I really didn't know what she was getting at. I said "We seen all the pretty fish and stuff we always see when snorkeling, you really missed out". She said "Did you see any eel's?" Me "As a matter of fact we did and is was so pretty and big".
She said "Come with me, I found something too while you were gone" She headed over to a rock out of the water along the rocky shoreline. Now it's hard to tell in the pictures but there is a small drop off here into the wall. So this was on the top of the rocky wall.
I walked over to where she was at and she tells me to look under this small rock. I wasn't sure what I was looking for because the rock was so small and the water had carved out a spot under it. The water would rush in and fill the hole and then rush back out and the water would go back out leaving just a little puddle under the rock.
It was hard to see at first but then I spotted it. It was another eel.
As we sat around under the palapa and snacked, we had a few visitors. Now I was really happy to see them because we had been here for 9 days now and we have pretty much only been blessed with the presence of the blue lizards that were not very blue like we've seen in the past.
Information on the whiptail lizard: The males are a brightly turquoise blue. They have rows of white to blue spots on their sides. Females and young ones are brown with less spots. Adult males possess a territory and will allow females and immature males to live there but not other adult males. If another male enters its territory, it will raise up to make itself bigger in hopes to scare off the other male. If that does not work they will fight with the territorial male usually winning.
A few pictures from around the beach area:
A few more pictures of the eel Sakari found:
We kept noticing that the Pirate ship stopping where we had been snorkeling. I guess we found the spot on our own. They had a rope out and everyone was swinging off the rope and into the water. The music was playing and everyone looked like they were having an amazing time. Sakari watched them for a long time and said "They look like they are having fun. Wouldn't that be fun to do?"
Then we noticed a pelican in the tree over that way.
Sakari would go over and try to get a better look...and of course take pictures of everything around there.
We had visitors...
They were checking out Sakari's drawings and I'm sure they thought she was amazing. She did manage to finish another drawing during the time we were snorkeling. I think she was thinking about the poor pigeon that took one wrong turn and lost its life.
As we set there a local came with a small stool and a bucket. She sat in the water and would look around to see if anyone was watching and when she thought they weren't, she would be cleaning herself with her bucket. She was there the rest of the time we stayed. At one point she lost her bucket and it drifted out into the water. A gentleman came up and ask her if she would like him to retrieve her bucket. She said "no, it is ok" but he did go out and get it for her and she was very grateful. We ended up leaving at 5pm.
Here is a video I made of the day: