Sydney

I had already been to Sydney before I arrived there permanently on the 22nd of December. I had flown down with my mom to check out schools and apartments before the schools closed for summer break. Sydney is already one of my favorite cities even though I have only been here for around a week or two. There is everything you need in the city center, the suburbs that surround it are beautiful and peaceful and the people are super accommodating and nice. 

We found an apartment located in a nice and convenient part of town, my sisters and I are all enrolled in our separate schools and we're all ready to move in on the 10th of January. After moving around constantly for the past two years, I'm kind of ready to settle into a house for a while. 

We just celebrated Christmas and after getting lots of new stuff I packed most of it away to open again when we reach the new house. It's hard to get organized when you're moving your stuff around all over the place and I've been losing and misplacing my stuff where ever I go, so I've decided to try to get by with as little things as possible.

Melbourne

On November 16th we flew from Brisbane to Melbourne for my moms birthday. It was a 3 hour plane ride to the Melbourne airport, and a couple minutes in a taxi from there to the hotel. Our room was nice and comfortable with two bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a sitting room and even a kitchen. We unpacked our stuff and relaxed before exploring the neighborhood. My mom had picked a place in Chinatown because we were big fans of Asian food and the other interesting parts of the city were within walking distance. 

Melbourne was awesome! We took a walking tour one morning and my sisters and I spent a fun day with a friend when mom and dad were busy. We discovered hidden alley ways brimming with tasty surprises and neat little squares hidden behind towering monuments. We went to the zoo and saw platypuses and kangaroos and koalas where I was used to seeing snakes and tigers and bears. We quickly outfitted in hats and socks so we wouldn't completely freeze in the ice skating rink (it can be cold in Melbourne) and saw the whole city from above when we took a trip to the Melbourne Star, a giant ferris wheel like the London Eye. At the Imigration Museum we did a treasure hunt while learning about how Australia got such a diverse population and every night we eat noodle soups and dumpling from the many Asian restaurants in the neighborhood. 

I really want to go back. 

Australia

It took almost 11 days to sail from Fiji to Brisbane. At first we had lots of wind and waves which battered us and made us feel seasick but then it settled down and the wind died away until we were left drifting in a millpond. We checked the weather forecast and found that there were major winds heading our way, we turned on our engines and rushed to safety into the river that winds it's way through Brisbane. Unfortunately we arrived after sunset and were unable to disembark and stretch our legs after 11 days of immobility.    

The next day we were welcomed to the marina by a family who lived on another boat there in the marina, they had been in the same marina and lived on the same boat for 4 years and had grow used to living in Brisbane city. They showed us around and we picked up some bread from the guy who lived on the house boat at the end dock. He owned 9 guinea pigs and he washed and exercised them everyday on the lawn in front of the docks. After we had explored our new environment (the marina), we got on the ferry and went to downtown Brisbane. 

The ferries were small and red and went up and down the river like a water bus for free. There was a dock at the marina and every half hour a ferry would show up there. It took us maybe 15 minutes to go from the marina to the center of the city on the ferry. The city looked like any other but it was surprisingly cleaner than most cities, there was not much litter on the sidewalks and every building gleamed in the sunlight. There were restaurants and shops everywhere and skyscrapers made from windows and office buildings with thousands of cubicles. We walked across the big bridge with lights running down the sides and stepped into awesome gardens with paths throughout the flower beds and fountains in the middle of pruned hedges and a public pool that looked like a natural pond and stretched the length of the park. Everywhere we looked we saw picnic tables on the lawns and children waiting in front of ice cream shops with their hair still wet from the pool. We walked under the enormous trellis with vines and flowers growing over it, we found a wooden boardwalk winding through a tiny forest and we saw birds floating on the stream that chuckled along next to us. 

I love Brisbane.

My Birthday

A few days after my grandparents came we celebrated my Birthday. 

I had toasted baguettes with strawberry jam for breakfast, then I went back down and read.  At about 10:00 Nanna and Nonno came and we got ready for snorkeling.  We spent half an hour snorkeling and swimming then came back for lunch.  For lunch we had quiche, cabbage salad and bread, it was really good.  

Later Daddy and Nonno went scuba diving and my mom went for a spa treatment, so Nanna took me and my sisters to the pool.  When we got tired of the pool we went back to the room for showers and pedicures.  

We did each others toes and I got mine a gorgeous blue color that was kind of iridescent.

When everyone got back my mom produced a delicious Key Lime pie for a birthday cake, we stuck candles in it and sang the happy birthday song, then we ate it and it was soooo good!

My sisters then brought their presents and begged me to open them so I did, because i’m such a nice sister.  

Cleo and Jade both gave me bracelets and Nanna gave me clothes and jewelry, my mom got me a fancy headset that has its own 3 gig. storage, and even though Mimi and Pop weren’t here they had sent me presents.  

It was a good Birthday.

Pearl Farm

The Tuamotan islands are famous for their pearls so we decided to take a look at on of the pearl farms in Rangiroa.  The bus took us to a small gazebo like seating area outside of the giftshop and a tour guide told us about the difficult task of extracting a pearl from an oyster.

He explained how each oyster is specially raised for 5 years until it can produce a pearl sac.  Once   it has grown to a good size the technicians use the lip from a younger oyster (also called the graph) and insert it into the older oyster so that the pearl it will produce will have good color shinyness.



After the oysters have the graph they are placed back into the ocean with nets to keep away predators, they sit there for 2 more years until the pearl has developed enough to be extracted.  A separate technician then takes the finished pearl, determines if it is worth keeping, then places a bead, a small ball made from the shell of the oyster, into the pearl sac so that the oyster can continue producing pearls.

We watched the workers at work for a while then wandered into the shop so we could look at the finished pearl jewelry.  We mostly browsed but Nanna, my grandmother, let me pick out 2 pearls so that the lady could make them into earrings!  They are beautiful and unique, made from the black pearls of the Tuamotan atolls.

Bagels

Today we're making bagels, first time, from scratch.  It sounds hard, and it is, but I think it's worth it.

Like any bread type recipe, it starts the same, one big bowl, yeast mixture, let it sit.

 I followed instructions, adding flour and sugar and salt until I had a nice and sticky dough.

I let it rise in a greased and covered bowl for a while until it had nearly doubled in size.  Turning it onto a floured surface I kneaded it until it turned smooth and elastic.

I then seperated the dough into small pieces, kneaded them and punched holes in them then let them rise on a greased oven sheet.

When they were round and fluffy I dropped them into boiling water for 1 minute each side until they were bloated and greasy.  I then placed them back onto the greased sheet.

When all of them had been boiled I baked them on high heat until they began to brown.  We arranged them on a platter and had them for lunch, hot with butter.

A Farm Day

We're leaving soon for the islands in French Polynesia, The Marcecies.  Before we leave though we need to stock up on fresh fruits and vegetables because we ran out of them coming from Panama to here in the Galapagos.  We do this every we time we leave for a passage, but this one is going to be at least three weeks long so we need to get a lot.  The store in the town is unreliable because it only gets small shipments every few days, so we are going to go up to the farms that supply the store with most things.

At first we did not have high hopes because the first farm was a run-down dump and did not have very good produce, but the second one was really good and we got everything we needed.  We drove into the drive way, scattering a bunch of ducklings who were feeding on a watermelon rind, and sat on the bench to wait for the owner.  The owner was a tanned man with a machete and knife case attached to an old leather belt and... He only spoke Spanish.   When we asked for bananas he took a long branch, looked for a while then poked just the right spot so that the clump of bananas slowly lowered itself down and he took his machete and chopped the whole bunch off and the tree sprang right back up!

When we got back we were excitingly telling everybody who didnt come (including my sisters and dad), how amazing it was.  We gotten everything we wanted and more, overflowing all of our bags in the process, watched him chop it all off the plants when we asked, and paid forty dollars, a very cheap price.

Tsunami

We were at the island of Isabella in the Galapagos when one night a woman got on the VHF and warned everyone in the harbor that a tsunami was coming and everyone should evacuate the anchorage for safety.  At first we all thought this was an April fools trick, but when our friends got on the radio we were surprised to here that this was no prank and everyone raced to get their boats ready to leave.  Our friends on Moana Roa were in town that night and we were all panicking to get a hold of them before the wave reached us.  Field Trip organized everybody to contribute any information on how to contact Moana Roa, but nobody had their phone number.  Luckily they had brought their satellite phone with them and eventually we reached them.

When everyone reached their boats there was a mad rush get out.  We hauled up our anchor and weaved in between the moving boats until we passed in between the jetis and sailed out sea.  We kept our radio on so that we could here what everybody was saying about the tsunami.  Apparently there had been an earthquake off the coast of Chile and a tsunami was heading our way.  

We spent the night 20 miles away from shore and didn't have the time to develop a good watch system so everyone was tired in the morning, luckily a surprise was waiting for us.  By 7:00 in the morning we had caught a 35 ilb tuna and we were all excited for lots of tuna dinners in the near future.

San Cristobal

We arrived in San Cristobal, the first island in the Galapagos, late in the afternoon two days ago and anchored in a small anchorage by a humble little town. The Galapagos has such a fragile and unique ecosystem that measures need to be taken to protect it. When we came into the harbor a crew of men came onto our boat to check if we were carrying anything dangerous to the islands.  One guy actually dived to see if the bottom was clean!  

After that episode, during wich we had to clean the boat again, because of all the dirty footprints, we explored the town. Exploring a town, in my parents world, apparently meant, finding a place with wifi.  So we went around asking if anybody new where there was an internet cafe or ciber place.  Eventually we found a couple and settled down for school and work.

When we got here we didn't have very high expectations for San Cristobal, but turns out there are tons of things to do!  Of course we haven't done any of them ourselves but we have friends who have been here a long time already and they tell us about the different tours and excursions they have done, it all sounds pretty cool and I hope to do at least some of the activities before we move onto the next island.

San Cristobal is sea-lion paradise.  As soon as we pulled in we saw an abandond boat simply covered in sea-lions, there were sea-lions sunbathing on the deck, sea-lions sitting proudly on the transom and sea-lions lying in clumps in the cockpit.  We pile our fenders and jerry cans in our sugar-scoops so that the sea-lions don’t climb up and get our boat all smelly.  We don’t use our dingy because we don’t want the sea lions climbing in and piping it.  We have to step over them when we get onto land because they’re just laying all over the stairs.

Our Longest Passage Yet

After we crossed the Panama Canal, we set out on our longest passage yet, to the Galapagos Islands.  It was going to be around 10 days long even though we did 100 miles a day and the islands were 600 miles away.  The reason it was going to be that long was because we were sailing through the Duldrums, an area around the equator where the winds from each side meet, it is dead calm in the Duldrums.

We spent our days doing school work, playing games, sleeping, and watching the horizon for the familiar cloud shrouded gray lump that meant land.  With all the time in the world we explored new games and watched dolphins perform for us, doing flips and jumping sometimes 5 feet in the air!  We also noticed that the dolphins were somewhat smaller than the ones we observed in the atlantic.

One night my dad woke me for the equator crossing on his watch, I went up on deck and my dad showed me a light he had seen and told me to click into it on the AIS screen. I did and saw, to my surprise the name of the boat we had spotted was Field Trip! My dad smiled and told me that just a few seconds ago he had talked to Mark, the dad onboard Field Trip, they were going 1 knot, waiting until morning for Sarah, the mom, to wake up so they could go across the equator.  

We dismissed the idea of dumping salt water or going for a swim to celebrate equator crossing because we had just taken showers, instead we celebrated with ginger-ale and chocolate, Yum!

The Canal with Remi De

In the San Blas we made friends with the people on Remi De. The parents are retired proffesional water-skiers and the kid is Remi, they named the boat after her.  They're really nice and after the San Blas we met them again in Shelter-Bay Marina, and after spending a couple of days there they had to leave to go through the canal. Luckily we were invited to come and be line handlers on their boat so we could experience the canal before we had to do it ourselves.

We had a really fun time with Remi while we watched the huge loc gates open and close behind us as we pushed through onze of the biggest accomplishments of mankind.  Our parents were of course completely awed, and we were kind of too but it was really awesome to see the water rise when they let it come in from the bottom

Shelter-Bay Marina

We arrived in Shelter-bay Marina about a week ago and have been working on various projects. My mom has been stocking the boat up on food for the pacific, my dad has been taking care of the boat and fixing it up for the canal and pacific, so far my sisters and I have been trying to keep up with school work and stay out of our parents way, mostly by spending a lot of time in the pool. My mom comes back from the city everyday tired when she realizes she's going to have to cook dinner in the mess the boat is in, she usually sends us up to the restaurant to eat. We did that for a couple of nights until we realized that the food at the restaurant was not so good and for the next few nights we just dealt with the mess and cooking dinner.

The people at this marina are really friendly and we've made a lot of new friends. When we arrived our old friends were here but the had to leave after only a day and we were left with just ourselves.  Unfortunately most of the friends we've made here have already left to go throughout the canal or back to the San Blas islands. Because it is a marina there is not much wildlife that you see everyday but tales follow us of crocodiles in the water and Jaguar sightings on the road to the city, and even just running on the path my dad saw 5 monkeys.

The Mud Baths

  Cleo, my friend Hazel, her dad and I

(try to figure out who is who)

My friend Hazel and her family came to visit us after my grandparents.  On the first day we showed them the fort and took them around town, but the second day was a real hit, we went to a volcanic mud bath!  We hired a driver to take us there and back, and we arrived at the village that was appointed official caretakers of the baths, just in time.  We bought tickets and climbed the rickety stairs up the volcano, the volcano might be called a volcano but it will never explode, it’s just hot enough to melt the mud inside of it into a liquid but no more.  

We waited in line at the top of the mountain/hill until we finally caught sight of the mud, it was far down in the volcano and looked exactly like gray soup, explaining how the people coming down the other side of the hill all looked like they were clay statues that had gone in the microwave and were melting down to the core.  My mom told us to get partners and I grabbed up Hazels hand and squeezed it, she  smiled back at me and adjusted her bathing suit.  farther along in the line Cleo and Ruby were holding hands and talking about what it would feel like, “It probably will make our skin really soft,” I said to Hazel, “It’s mud after all.”

The line slowly curved around the edge of the pool and anticipation piled high in my throat, finally it was our sisters turn and Cleo and Ruby climbed down the ladder, they slid in together and we asked the temperature and they said it was not warm but not cold, soon it was our turn ad we slipped into the mud.  They were right it was in between, but it felt so good!

From the outside it had looked like there was some kind of floor on the bottom but it tuned out it was bottomless! At first I thought I was going to sink but it turned out that the mud was so thick I couldn't sink!

It was so fun! After the bath we washed off in the lakes and changed in the van, then had lunch at a road side stand and headed home.

The Fortress

My grandparents, my aunt and my great uncle, came to visit for an early Christmas celebration and one day we decided to show them one of the great attractions of Cartegena, The Fort.  The Fortress looks like a man-made mountain, made entirely from stone and it slopes up continually until it reaches a flat-topped peak with artillery storing and sentry houses at the corners to watch for enemies.  Now you might be wondering why this massive,impatrenable fortres just to watch over one small town.  Well Cartegena was a major stopping place for the gold and precious jewels that circled through the continent, especially emeralds, one of the rarest stones in the world.  In all of the big churches and temples gold is more common than marble that would be but a fraction of the cost of a small amount of gold in other places, as a result one of the only places you will find a full marble floor is in the Popa, the biggest and oldest monostary in town.

                                          

The Fort had no inside except for a labyrinth of tunnels that acted as a last line of defense in the context of a battle.  Each tunnel had cubby holes on each side so that if enemies did venture down there it would be an easy matter to pick them off.  We explored the tunels to an extent but I have the feeling we didn't even get to see half of it.

Ronia

Ronia is the 7 month old baby that lives on the boat opposite us.  she is really cute, her family is Swiss and their boats name is Priscalina.  When her parents go somewhere or are just doing something that Ronia would just get in the way, we get to babysit her!

She has blond fuzz on her head and big brown eyes, whenever we put her down she starts waving her arms around and wiggling so much we’re afraid she’s going to fall out of her chair!  She can’t walk yet but you can tell she would like to, whenever you stand her up with you supporting her she wiggles and tries to walk and it’s hard to keep her from falling!

Casa Loma

For my moms birthday we went to Minca an stayed at an Eco Lodge called La Loma/Casa Loma.  Casa Loma had lots of pets, they had 5 pets and each one was very cute:

Baludal

 Tica

 Lola

Lucy

Narese Blanca

Every morning a Yoga instructor did classes on a porch in the forest.  One day after a Yoga class the instructor set up a stretchy piece of fabric and demonstrate  how to climb up it towards the tree branch and did cool tricks.  after he taught us how to do it he let us try:

Santa Marta

     Santa Marta Colombia is a culture filled place and we've had fun walking the streets of this city.  Last night we went out to have a stroll at 7;00, and it was just as busy at any hour in the day!  We've feasted on street food, Arapas (corn meal buns stuffed with meat and cheese), Shishkabobs, and Limonada, the lime drink that is practically a staple in Colombian food!

This is a Limonada stand we bought from late in the evening.  Because it's so hot here more people are out at 8:00 than at 11:00.


Many nights we've disregarded our own kitchen, settling instead for the cheap, but delicious food-stands we find on the streets of Santa Marta.  Our  impression of Santa Marta has so far been amazing, everything is cheap, the food is wonderful, and we've had a very good time.

Fishing

We left Curacao a few days ago and are just getting into Santa Marta.  Yesterday evening we were all still up and awake, when there was a tug on the fishing line!  So far we hadn't caught one fish in our sailing adventure, even though one passage we had trolled the line for 4 days! My dad reeled it in and for a while we could see it, skimming along the waves a few meters away.  My dad hoisted it onto our boat and we could see it was a black-fin tuna.  My dad butchered it and we put it away for another meal, wile we all settled down for the night.  

The next day my sisters and I were sitting around, my mom was sailing the boat, and my dad was taking a nap, when the fishing line suddenly gave a sharp jerk and an odd buzzing sound! my mom yelled for me and I yelled for y dad until everybody was in the cockpit and looking and the rod.  It was a deep sea fishing line and very hard to reel in, but what made it really difficult for my dad was not only the size of the fish,  although it was no skipjack, but the distraction that came at that moment.  My dad was in the midst of trying to reel in this huge fish when the other line let out a call!  My dad told me and my sister, Cleo to attend to that while he struggled on with the original fish.  Cleo and I wrestled the line back onto the spool, watching the beautiful fish jump through rainbows above the water, and finally succeeded in hauling a Mahi-Mahi (Dolphin fish) onto the boat.  

My dad left the fishing rod for the time being and helped us subdue the thrashing creature, calling my mom over to watch, but she was busy trying to clean up a coffee spill that was threatening to break the electronics that she had left on the helm-seat.  Through all this commotion the wind had sped up and the waves grown larger and larger until the boat was listing sickeningling to the starboard side.  I took pictures of the Mahi-Mahi and got my dads sailing gloves for him, ducking under the main-sheet every time I wanted to reach him.  In the end we lost the big fish but, thinking back on it, I don't think we could've eaten it anyway, what with the two other good-sized fish we had already caught on that passage.

Halloween

It doesn't feel like Halloween here, but I guess it never will.  I usually associate Halloween with the time when it's starting to go cold, but where I am it never does!  The weather changes have thrown me off and I only just remembered about it when another cruising friend invited me to their Halloween party, and now I'm rushing to catch up!

Halloween on a tropical island isn't very easy at all, especially if you're weeks behind, and the day before Halloween I'm still out and searching for gold paint!

I'm going to be Athena, one of the Olympian goddesses, which would've  a very easy costume to put together back in Philly, but not here!

Our Hammock

Recently we got a Hammock.  It's striped and made out of thick cloth, but we only have one, and at first we couldn't agree on  it.  

One day we all sat down and devised a system for using the Hammock.  Our system is similar to the used by libraries for sharing computers, where if someone is using the computer you can sign up as the next person to use it and the erson currently on it gets 15 more minutes on it then has to give it up.  ours is basically the same, but the person in the hammock gets 30 more minutes instead of 15.