Of course one of the kids favorites is to hike up the Quill and down into the crater. Like always it was a beautiful and fun hike together. We took a little picnic to eat at the bottom, sang songs on the path, looked for snakes, hermit crabs, butterflies, and chickens along the way. I finally brought the good camera up the hike so we have some more decent photos.
We just love the all of the green and huge rain forest plant. It almost feels like you have left the island when you hike the Quill, like you are in your own little world. It's so peaceful
There is this huge tree down in the middle of the crater where people have carved names and dates in the bark. Not that I think this is a good idea or anything at all, but it is interesting to see the oldest date we could see on this tree – March 18th 1950.
These trees are amazing. We figure for these roots to make the almost tube like form is that they grew around a tree that has since died and been eaten by termites leaving the roots of the still existing tree in the form that it took growing around the now dead one.
Hiking back up to the top of the volcano from the inside of the crater and seeing some hungry chickens to feed there.
Here are a couple of beautiful pictures of the view from the bottom of the quick trail up to the top of the Quill. It is quite steep, tiring, and especially tricky getting back down but it cuts off a little bit of time climbing to the top.
The birds loved playing in our Christmas Tree. They would fly into the house and jump from limb to limb playing with each other and the ornaments. Here is one of the birds perched right at the top. You can see he’s knocked the star off the top!
While Jase was playing at his friend Beaus house Todd and I took the girls to the other side of the restaurant Smoke Alley. There is actually a beautiful beach behind there but unfortunately it’s not good for swimming. The water is full of corral and you can’t get in to just swim and play. It’s even tricky to get in there to snorkel because it is so close to the surface of the water so hardly anyone is ever over there. We were the only ones out there on this day.
There is such a deep history on this island I really don’t know a heck of a lot. That’s why we bought a book about the island for a souvenir. But as far as I know this ruin was another big shop – like the one at Kruks (spelling) castle. You could purchase merchandise here including slaves. So sad. They would be held up in the bottom of the shop to be brought upstairs and showcased to an interested buyer, and placed back down if they weren’t purchased. It’s truly hard to believe anyone could do something like that to another human being.
This next picture where the girls are standing is where Todd found his first cannon ball. I don’t have a picture of the ball so I at least wanted a picture of where it was found. These trees in this location are actually poisonous, Grant the former Archeology’s of the island told us that – so no touching!
Awe the footprints in the sand!! It was such a beautiful afternoon, walking, playing, and picking little seashells.
There are some other areas of interest down this beach. In these next couple pictures is where the leper colony of the island was kept. And closer toward the ruin is where there was some sort of burial ground was and you can sometimes see human bone remains that have been eroded away out of the ground after a couple hundred years.
Since the Dutch took the island over again in October 2011, they have been trying to improve the infrastructure of the island. And part of this has been putting water lines throughout the island so every home and shop has access to clean tap water as well as their cistern water. Apparently people have found a few blue beads and knickknacks but we ran into a local guy we know working on the job and they found a bunch of neat old bottles dating back about 300 years. Pretty awesome to hold and touch a crazy old gin bottle… at least that was the drink of choice then.
But we are not to be left out of the new and exciting finds from the dig. One night, literally in the middle of the night, Todd decided we should go for a walk down to Kruk’s castle to look for blue beads in the dark with our flashlights. So that’s what we did, it was a nice time to be together with of course no on around but we didn’t find a thing. Driving past the place where they were building a new sort of tourist outlook over the harbor Todd decided to stop to have a look at the construction and to see if we could find anything there. We walked around a bit and I saw something that looked like a piece of pottery – you see that almost everywhere here. At first I couldn't tell what it was and then I saw another piece of it just a foot away and flipped it over to see a crucifix on the other side. I could tell that it had just been broken but I could glue it together. I figure it is an old crucifix that was worn by someone ages ago. You can see a whole where a piece of string or leather or something held it around the neck, and it is made of ceramic. We thought that it was a pretty cool find on a midnight date!
Happy New Year!! We let the kids stay up for the New Year and of course they thought it was so awesome! They even had some nice fireworks down at the fort that we watch from our poolside!
Another fun activity we did during our break is the snorkel boat ride trip. Todd arranged for Becketts, Tollmans, Anike’s kids and of course us to go on a boat ride up to Jenkins Bay and back. It was great to get out on the ocean with friends and just enjoy ourselves.
You can see in the last picture the beach on the left side where were normally swim, Mazinga on the Bay where Katie was baptized, The Gin house restaurant/hotel, other stuff and the water spillway that was build ages ago to direct the water from the upper town down back into the ocean to prevent flooding.
CHRISTMAS IN JANUARY! One day Daddy came home from school with some long awaited Christmas gifts from Grandma and Grandpa Bishop, and Auntie Nicki and Uncle Sebastian! The kids were so excited and kept saying “I can’t believe it!” it is so fun receiving something from home! Everything was so appreciated and again we were spoiled! We Love You!
We spent another beautiful afternoon at the Botanical Garden. We love driving down the road to get there although you have to go really slow or you risk wrecking your car, but it makes the drive that much more pleasant. Being able to enjoy the greenery and the almost in the middle nowhere feeling on a tight knit island is very desirable at times. We took the time to get out and take a few self family portraits on our way there! It was a little tricky but we got a few good ones!
Here we are at the gardens just enjoying some of the sites. The kids really like the ‘cool corner’ part of the garden with the swings, places to sit and fresh basil you can pick. We picked some a while ago and it is now growing in our back yard! We love it!
First term school party. Todd started his second term of Med Classes in January and the school always has a welcome dinner for the new students. The kids – well the girls – love getting ready for these things and this time we braided their hair so they had wavy hair. They looked so cute. We usually get there earlier so we can eat and go before all craziness breaks loose!
The girls with their sweet friend Emelia Beckett and cutie pants Remy!
Me, Kayleigh & Meg.
School started and it was Courtney’s class ‘ turn to present the assembly to the school. Of course its fun and cute to watch the kids do it but today was special for her. She was chosen to put the flag up today with Uncle Ishmael and a little boy named Macure (not sure how to spell his name). She was so excited she had actually been sick on the weekend but really wanted to be there to do the flag ceremony so I brought her to school to do her part with the flag and after took her home to bed!
As they raise the flag they sing the Statia Anthem:
Between the deep blue ocean and the Caribbean Sea
Where the waves are all in motion
Lies a pearl so there to me
From Quill to Little Mountain
From Venus to White Wall
Long ago a golden fountain once a diamond waterfall
Golden rock I’ll always miss you when I am far from thee
Never ever I’ll forget you where so ever I may be.
There is a second & third verse but I don’t really know but I have them on video.
St. Eustatius' flag was adopted on November 16, 2004.
The flag is rectangular in shape, with a red border, and is divided into four blue squares. A white diamond rests in the center of the flag, and contains the island in the middle with a five-point golden star above.
The kids have had an amazing so far time this year doing Junior Ranger 2 with STENAPA – acronym for St. Eustatius National Parks. It is an amazing program overseen by Park Ranger Hannah Madden, who is over the Quill and Boven National Park. Nadio Spanner oversees the National Marine Park here on Statia and the kids interact with him on occasion as well. There are volunteers from different parts of the world that come, usually for schooling purposes, a few months at a time to protect the environment and currently manages the National Marine Park, the Quill / Boven National Park, and the Botanical Garden. It is a real shame thatMore locals are not taking advantage of this opportunity to educate their children on this beautiful island and what it need to survive for them to have a nice island for the future. There are only 4 kids in their group and 2 of them are my kids. Anyway I’ve taken some pictures from the Facebook page of the STENAPA Junior Ranger group to show you some of the things the kids have been up to!
Jase Shows how to get to Jenkins Bay snorkel site.
Katie and the JR snorkeling and some of the things they saw
The Junior Ranger 2 group learning about maps and navigation
Snorkeling and seeing different things in the water like this nurse shark. I’ve been pretty impressed with my kids and their snorkeling. They can all go under pretty deep! Courtney only about a foot under but Jase and Katie will dive right down!
Around the Statia coral reefs the dangerous lionfish has been trying to make it their home. I’m not exactly sure how it came into this part of the ocean, there are rumors of careless humans in Florida, because it is not indigenous to this area of the world and is now infesting many part of the Caribbean destroying native fish to the area. Because the lionfish has no natural predators here and has very poisonous spines it rapidly multiplies consuming the fish in the areas it overtakes. So in an effort to save Statias marine park STENAPA goes on fishing excursions to seek and destroy any lionfish they encounter and find it nests, how big it is, and what they are eating.
Here they are cutting off the poisonous spines and the kids each holding a dissected lionfish.
I am so excited that Katie wanted to share something on the blog. I am always asking them to tell me something to share and I can never get anything out of them! This is what Katie wrote.
For Junior Rangers we had to put a tag on a bird [Tropicbird] so Hannah put on gloves and tried to pick it up. We said, “It looks like it’s guarding something.” We looked closer and it was a baby bird [baby chick – 3 days old]. Finally Hannah got it out (the big bird) then it barfed up its lunch and pooped on me!! So I went crazy. We had to measure the baby. So when I held the baby it peed on me!
A few stories to close this off:
The other day Courtney was saying the pray and in it she said, “Thank you for my Moms beautiful cooking. Please bless that it will be good!” I thought that was pretty funny!
Many years after Todd’s first attack, it was time for him to get rid of some more kidney stones. It started on a Sunday morning and we figured it was stones so… off to the hospital we went and he spent the day and night in the hospital in agony getting a shot in the bum every once and a while, and getting lots of saline pushed through his system. Eventually the next morning he gave birth to twins and proceeded to try and go to class that morning. Only after ½ hour to an hour he came home and slept for the rest of the day.
As this semester was beginning the school realized that they didn’t know who the next student body president was (not sure why) and needed a student to give the welcome speech to the new coming students. They asked Todd to do it but lucky for him the new student body president – our friend Saad – ended up coming back to the island early on a whim (he didn’t know he was even president until someone other than the school told him!?) so Todd got out of it much to his relief.
Todd and I got our Nitrox certification for diving. After 1 year of putting off this particular certification we finally got it done! There were crazy bar and graphs and calculations that we had a hard time understanding, but thanks to new certification rules they were taking out of the exam and we did it! I’ve never been a math person!
