Happy New Year!!

Safari Tu crew have found ourselves to be very busy since our arrival in the Caribbean in late November!! We have spent just over a month exploring the US Virgin Islands, and the British Virgin Islands. How do we spend our time? We have seen much of St. John, some of St. Thomas, a very little bit of Tortola, a good bit of Jost van Dyke and Virgin Gorda. We also saw the smaller islands of Peter and Norman Islands. Some favorites for us were Hawksnest Bay in St. John, White Bay in Jost van Dyke, and Norman Island (which inspired the book Treasure Island). Leverick Bay in Virgin Gorda was a special place, and we spent Christmas anchored off of the Bitter End Yacht Club also in Virgin Gorda.

We have all enjoyed exploring the underwater world, but none so much as Anna and Matthew. Anna was a fish prior to this trip, and is extremely happy to be back in her element. Matthew had never spent much time snorkeling before, but is now an expert diver and is always the first to want to get in the water. We have seen all manner of aquatic life - including beautiful spotted eagle rays, green sea turtles, moray eels, remoras (which stick themselves to the bottom of sharks - and our boat!) Matthew received a special case for our camera for Christmas to be able to take digital underwater pictures - stay tuned for a photo gallery devoted to Matthew's photos!!

We enjoyed a relaxed Christmas day on Virgin Gorda - even though it decided to rain cats and dogs, something we really hadn't seen in a month in the islands! We joined up with 2 other boat families, Stolen Hour and Chasseur for a wonderful Christmas buffet dinner - complete with Jumbie dancing! Jumbies are spirits who appear on stilts and dance their hearts out! Not our typical way to celebrate Christmas, but it certainly was memorable!

Several nights ago, we finally managed to tear ourselves away from the Virgin Islands and sailed overnight the 80 miles to St. Martin/Sint Maarten. It was a messy passage - very rainy, big swells, and high winds, but we got here in the end. St. Martin is an interesting island in that it is governed by two countries - France and the Netherlands. It is divided nearly in half, and we have found ourselves on the French side of the island. It is nice to hear other languages spoken, and we are just getting started exploring. We arrived here on New Year's Eve, and managed to sleep right through the new year recovering from our overnight passage the night before. Now it is 2010!

We visited a curious beach bar today on the Dutch side of the island directly adjacent to the airport runway. It is interesting because planes land and take off directly over the beach, where people line up to tempt fate and be blown into the sea, or blasted by sand by the jet blast. See the photo gallery to get an idea of this funny place.

We are making progress south, and hopefully will be able to update the blog a bit more regularly! We wish all of you a happy and healthy 2010 - make this the year to follow YOUR dreams!!