3 miles walked today

Today we went to Renaissance Island which is operated by the Renaissance hotels. If you’re not staying at the hotels you have two ways you can get on the island. You can either buy a day pass which are sold first come first serve in limited quantity or you can book a spa service on the island. I booked massages on the island as a surprise for my mom.

We got on board the little speed boat that takes you to the island. We were only the second or third boatload over so we had the island almost to ourselves. We went straight for Flamingo Beach which is wear they have 12 semi-captive flamingos in residence. For a quarter, you can get a handful of what looks and smells like dry cat food to feed them.

There were two types of flamingos there. The lighter pink ones were gentler and the darker pink ones were more aggressive. Not necessarily aggressive to get food, in fact they were less interested in the food but were more territorial and sometimes would bite. I didn’t get bit at all but those that did didn’t say it hurt it was just a surprise. We got beach loungers in the shade near the flamingo hang-out which meant we got to flamingo-watch and people-watch all day.

We also had to try the over water hammocks.

The flamingos walked past our seats a few times and one of the times Mom had a little conversation with them.

Mom and I fed the flamingos several times throughout the day. We also fed the bare-eyed pigeons and carib grackles. The pigeons were very tame.

Lunch was included and we both had fish tacos.

We also got to see the iguanas eat lunch. A cute story: before we left there was only one iguana left on the steps you see below. I had a half full water bottle and I said, I wonder if he’s thirsty and offered him some water. He ended up drinking almost all of it and then he seemed energized and ran across the bridge scaring tourists.

I snorkeled and saw all kinds of cool sea life including blue tangs, parrot fish, angelfish, gar, flounder, conch, and all sorts of other fish I don’t know the names of.

We also saw lots of other wildlife on the island too.

Our massage was really nice and just the icing on the cake of a great day.

We left the island then, taking the boat back to the main island. We stopped at West Deck for dinner. Mom had huge grouper fingers and I had some local dish with chicken with curry spices, cashews, raisins, Gouda, and spaghetti sauce which tasted as odd as it sounded but I ate the whole thing. We also shared some baked plantain slices.

Overall this was my favorite day in Aruba so far!