amazing sights....

maz waiting for the fisherman to take us to our desert island!

well tomorrow we leave our home here in sauteurs (grenada) where we have been staying on the 'YWAM' (youth with a mission) base with sharron, josh and their team and move onto the capital st georges to take our place at the second test match which will start between the west indies and england on tuesday, however as we're uncertain of our internet access we thought we'd better update our blog on our last weeks highlights before we leave here.

you may notice that we have updated our 'books we're reading' section, on the right hand side of this page, with those that we have now completed, we seem to be racing through some fiction, biographies and also some spiritually challenging books which we are loving having the time to do.

our desert island, all to ourselves!

we had intended to upload two videos showing a couple of our highlights from this last week but with the lack of avaiable data and slower internet connection here we will have to publish a link to them on youtube later on in our trip, so you'll just have to sit tight, wait and make the most of a few photos!

the first of the video was of us being left on our desert island by the local fisherman for the second time during our stay, this time we had the whole island to ourselves where maz once again spent most of the day with her head underwater enjoying the huge array of sea life which could be found on the reef which surrounds this wonderful little island called 'sandy island' which sits at the northeast of grenada.

collecting the turtle eggs 

the second video was taken this evening (sunday 19th april) where we had the awesome privileged of being able to see a leatherback turtle lay over 80 eggs on the beach not a mile from where we're staying. the whole event took place during early evening so there was quite a throng of local people watching this wonderful event with us, there were also the volunteers from a local research centre who measure and tag each turtle, our one was a new turtle who had returned for the first time since hatching at the same beach years before.

this younger adult was just about five feet (144cm) long but some adult males can measure over six feet and weigh in excess of 700kg!, unfortunately this turtle had laid her first batch of eggs too close to the water and as a precaution the research team collected the eggs which they will bury on a near by beach, far away from the high tidy line and away from the local dogs who could make these eggs a nice breakfast tomorrow morning!

job done now wheres the sea?!

this was a truly inspiring time and one that will be a highlight not only of this trip but of our lives, probably because it happened so naturally on a public beach and with out us needing to pay thousands of pounds (sterling) for the privilege!

a time to rest....

maz waiting for the public transport (south african style taxi!

well you best believe what you've heard, we can confirm that the Caribbean is truly beautiful, that said we have only spent just over a week on one island, that of the volcano inspired and mountainous Grenada, but from what we've experienced so far not only are the people friendly but life is VERY laid back! 

our walk home from the beach

the whole of the Caribbean is made up of over seven thousand islands, some big and some small, with at least 28 individual nations. we have actually visited two of those, Grenada as we said, and also a small island just off the north eastern tip which we got to via a short trip with a local fisherman to a place where Robinson Crusoe would feel right at home!

since we arrived we have been able to fully rest, although our time in the united states was indeed part restful, as you can read in our previous post we did move around lots and that was tiring in itself so to arrive at such a peaceful space has been amazing and we are indebted to sharron and josh (the YWAM base leaders) for them allowing us to chill and engage as much or as little as we wish with their team.

our robinson crusoe island view

we are staying in the northeast of the island, well away from the madding crowds arriving off of the cruise ships in St Georges, in fact we are as far away from the airport as we possibly could be, however on an island that's on 21 miles long and 12 miles across that isn't too far, but with the winding roads which venture uphill and down dale at an alarming rate it's far enough and we feel that we are engaging with the real Caribbean and it's peoples, who are very chilled out and friendly. we are walking everywhere as the streets are peaceful, which is a real bonus, and have already made some good friends.

strange fruits

the main reason we ended up on the YWAM (youth with a mission) base is because of our youngest son's, arron, connections, he spent over 10 months in the Caribbean after sailing across the Atlantic from cape town in 2011 and end up spending three months on this base, everyone remembers arron and it's great to met the people that he speaks so fondly about.

Grenada is known as the 'spice isle' and we can fully understand why, the flora here is amazing, just outside our little apartment are grapefruit, mango, orange (both sour and sweet, yes there are more than one type of orange!), banana and papaya, all quite familiar to us europeans, however a little more strange and only a short walk away we find duppy soursop and breadfruit. we have also seen cashews nuts growing under their strange red fruity flesh which is all very different to how we had imagine them growing.

coco pods

we also made a visit to the belmont estate, via local public transport (think taxi service if you are in south africa!), which is home to the grenada chocolate company who harvest the coco beans which go into making their delicious chocolate which can in fact be bought in waitrose stores in england, should you wish to try some, which is well recommended!

tim at the chocolate shop!

other than all the walking we have visited two church services, spent time on the beaches, watching people fly their kites (its a big deal here in Grenada, especially at this time of year around Easter) and spent lots of time reading, which we both love, we have probably finished over four books each so far and if you want to keep up to date with those that we are reading then you can find our reading list at the top right hand side of this blog site!

lets go fly a kite

this truly has been a time to rest and whilst we are really looking forward to the next part of this trip, which includes us watching England play the west indies in a five day test match, we don't want to leave this amazing space, so we are glad that we have over a week left here and we might have to chat up another local fisherman to take us far far away to sandy island again before we leave next monday!