Beachity Beach Beach Beeeach

I loved today. It was Jon’s first break from classes, which started on Tuesday (and are going well, by the way), so we lived it up by sleeping in, making a late breakfast, then hitting the beach. There are a couple of different beaches here, and people reference them mostly by what side of the island they’re on. Half of Statia is bordered by the Atlantic ocean, and half by the Caribbean. The Caribbean beaches are great for swimming and snorkeling, but we’ve been told that the Atlantic beaches have a dangerous undertow and are best to enjoy from dry land. Some people surf on an Atlantic beach called Zeelandia, claiming that the board is buoyant enough to counteract the current, but I’m not sure if I’ll try it or not. I don’t know. Only two people have ever died there, and at least one of them was wasted when it happened, so I guess I’ll see about it. Anyway, don’t think I’m an expert on Statian beaches – so far we’ve only been to one. It’s the closest to us – about a 20 minute walk down Rosemary Lane. Rosemary Lane! Adorable huh?? We live on it. It’s one of two streets on the island that anyone ever calls by name, and it leads at a steady incline to the volcano (The Quill) so it’s an easy walk down and a very tiring walk back. I’m assuming we’ll get used to the humidity eventually. Supposedly it’s the most humid part of the year right now, being hurricane season and all.

OH MY GOSH, so way back in June, we sent three large boxes of our things to Miami, then the school was supposed to pick it all up in Miami and it was supposed to be waiting for us when we got here BUT IT WASN’T so we’ve been barely scraping by with what was furnished in our house plus a couple of things our friends Ed and Laura loaned to us. The container never came, never came, never came until yesterday, oh blessed day, Frig from the school pulled up in front of the house and brought all of it up to our doorstep. And we spent the next couple of hours unpacking our boxes while exclaiming over every item we’d thought to put in. Since we’d sent it all so long ago, we’d forgotten about most of it and it was like Christmas opening it all up and seeing what we’d sent ourselves. SCISSORS!!! And dental floss! And BATTERIES!!! Anyway, the beach, the BEACH, I went off-topic for a minute, but the reason I mentioned it is because one of the things we bought ahead of time and sent in the container to Miami was snorkel gear. You may know where I’m going with this - okay it’s pretty obvious - we went snorkeling today. It was such a perfectly clear day – the clearest since we’ve been here, so we had to go. I’d forgotten how much I love it. You could totally get addicted to it. So relaxing and beautiful. I saw lots of fish and coral and sea urchins and a crazy old anchor. It was enorm. E-NORM. And classic anchor shape. Like the one in front of Skippers restaurants. Skippers? Anyone? Jon saw a cannon underwater, a CANNON. I’m pretty upset that I missed that one, but there’s always next time.

Anyway, for those of you that only want pictures, here are a few from the last couple days ;-)

Here’s me today at the top of the Slave Path, which leads down to the close beach. I don’t know the whole history behind the path yet, but I do know that it had something to do with slaves, and that it’s very, very steep. And that we saw a tarantula on the wall of it our second day here. That’s all I know about it. Clearly I need to do some research.

Also today: Jon swimming. (Ignore the slant)

Soldier crab at the beach: Kind of like a hermit crab. In fact, it may very well be a hermit crab, just a different name for it. Not sure.

Oh, so this is a picture of a hummingbird, only my camera accidentally focused on the foliage instead, and the hummingbird took off right when I snapped the picture. So, basically, everything went wrong, but I sort of like the picture anyway.

And last but not least, Jon snapped this picture of a sunset the other night from our patio. It was even better in person.