7.5 miles walked today

This morning I made Dutch pancakes using a mix we bought at the store. Then we took the bus south hoping to go kayaking and snorkeling. When we got off the bus where I thought we could rent kayaks the bus driver asked us, “are you sure?” but yes I was sure the kayaking place on the map was that way. While we were walking the 15 minutes or so from the bus stop to the kayak place, a nice lady pulled over and gave us a ride to the end of the road which was a little sailing club and private island ferry port.

Unfortunately the kayak place was nowhere to be found. No worries though, we just made our planned walk to the beach at Mangel Halto a little earlier than expected.

Mangel Halto was one of the beaches recommended for snorkeling. I brought flippers and snorkel masks from home and really wanted to try them out here. I saw a huge conch which had a crab inside of it and lots of fish including a couple of bright yellow ones and one little blue one.

It was really shallow and there was a strong current and we left pretty soon after thinking we would hop on the bus and go further south to another beach called Baby Beach which is in a natural bay. We got really hot on the way to the bus and one of the other passengers informed us that the bus doesn’t go all the way to Baby Beach and we would have to walk part of the way.

It was only about 10am but with our sunburn from the day before we decided to head back to Oranjestad and try snorkeling there. First we got lunch at an Italian place.

Then we went to the beach we went to on our first day, Surfside Beach. We found some shade and stayed there for an hour or two but there were biting ants there that would bug us every now and then. I had an Aruban soda which was really good and tasted a lot like cream soda.

We walked further down the beach but there wasn’t much shade there. I did a little snorkeling there too and saw a few big fish. We decided it was better to go back to go back to the Airbnb for a rest during the hottest part of the day.

After our siesta we went back to Surfside and had dinner then took a walk around town.

On our way back to our Airbnb we met some lost Canadians. They were looking for a restaurant that was on our way home so we walked together. They just arrived yesterday so we gave them some restaurant recommendations.

Back at our Airbnb we sat by the pool and chatted until dark then watched a movie and ate dutch cookies. A nice quiet end to the day.