Perseids and Baby Beach

Last night and tonight, we all sat out on the beach and watched for meteors. It’s time for the Perseids. It’s really nice and dark here on Aruba, but we weren’t very successful. We found it very hard to orient ourselves because we’re not used to how the sky looks at a latitude of 12 1/2 degrees north. Polaris is almost sitting on the horizon. Half the sky is full of things we don’t recognize.

Anyways, we did manage to see a couple of good ones. Tom was the most successful. He didn’t seem as bothered about not being able to get oriented and he just took in a lot of the sky at once. That seemed to be the best strategy.

Earlier in the day, we went snorkeling at baby beach. The name comes from the fact that this is the beach that the locals take their babies to. It’s a very sheltered lagoon and there are almost never any big waves. There are two inlets to the lagoon. The one on the left is full of a lot of large, friendly parrot fish, but the coral is pretty chopped up. The inlet on the right has heavier waves and doesn’t attract as much of a crowd, but the coral is much better. There were brain corals that were about 5 or 6 feet across, and sea fans that were 4 or 5 feet across. But the kids seemed more impressed by an enourmous school of blue tangs. The one odd feature of baby beach is that it is overlooked by an oil refinery. That gives it a sort of surreal atmosphere.