Thanksgiving in St. Barthes

Hello everyone.

We hope you all had a really great Thanksgiving. Let us fill you in on the past few days.

Tuesday we pushed off the dock in St. Maartin as you know. We originally intended to head straight to Gustavia, however, in our crusing guide we read about a tiny island with an anchorage about a 2 miles off the northern coast of St. Barthes called Ile Fourchue. We arrived in the dark and made dinner on the boat.

The next morning we awoke surrounded by the beautiful rocky cliffs of the island. The island, once occupied by only goats, is now empty. A few years ago the goats ate all the vegetation off the island (even the cacti) and began to die. The goats were removed from the island and slowly the vegetation is returning. We tried to hike around but the rocks were sliding beneath our feet we got pricked a few times by cacti. It just wasn't pleasant. Instead we grabbed our snorkeling gear to check out the reefs we read about. Sadly, it appears that a lot of. them have been destroyed from human carelessness. We saw a lot of fish none the less. Around 11 we pulled up our anchor and went to Anse de Colombier. It is an absolutely charming beach/anchorage in St. Barthes that can only be accesed by boat or foot path. We went kayaking and on a hike to Anse de Flamand. That evening we had a BBQ. It was the first time we ate red meat in a while and neither of us realized how much we missed it.

Thursday morning we headed to Gustavia to clear customs. We cleared customs and went on a ensure that we were very hungry for our feast. Around 11 we returned to the boat to begin preparing our feast. We had a chicken-it fit in the oven! We stuffed the chicken and surrounded it with potatoes and onions and let the oven do its work while we enjoyed the sunshine. An hour and 45 minutes later the chicken looked ready! We made a bit of extra stuffing, steamed spinach and gravy. Walid carved carved the chicken up and we dug in! We had a great feast followed by a nap. We have pictures that we will post within the next few days.

We have seen a nurse shark swimming around our boat and got fairly close up from the dingy. We've also seen a lot of sea turtles. We are very careful in our dinghy because they swim all over the anchorage. We have developed quite a liking to them. It makes me very sad though because every year they are injured or killed by jet skiiers and speeding people in their dinghys.

Today we are going to go snorkeling then to the beach for the afternoon. With in the next few days we will be heading to Saba. We are having a great time but missing everyone.

We hope you are all great and that you had a fabulous Thanksgiving.

Stay tuned for our picture postings. (We have some good ones!)