From snow to cappuccino

Just a few more days and I'll be sipping cappuccino in Piazza San Marco....hearing Italian and watching the people and the pigeons.
It's been a fun summer, from Viggo to Joe Cocker, but no mushrooms. At least my English Ivy and miniature roses, as well as some other perennials, have enjoyed the cool, wet weather. I'm hoping for heat in Italy, and the chance to swim in the Adriatic.

Home

(Really I am just posting this to keep the blog alive because I think it disappears if you don't put a new post in for 30 days...)

We are happy to be home, and return with a new appreciation for our own beautiful spot on the planet. The Sir Francis Drake Channel and the views of St. John and the BVIs definitely compare favorably with Bora Bora and Moorea. Our water is the cleanest, clearest, bluest of all that we have seen.

Since we've returned we've had a lovely Easter celebration with John's parents and several friends from Switzerland and Jamaica, so the table languages included Italian, German, French, and Caribbean English. The food was good too!

We've even continued to travel...over to St. John for a few days to check on the rental property. Soft Winds has a brand new kitchen, and it looks great. I got to snorkel in Leinster Bay and Reef Bay. Leinster was full of surprises...lots of green, purple, and pink coral, and tons of baby fish. Two huge spotted trunk fish, and several healthy conch. Felt like I was surrounded by seahorses, but just couldn't see them....elusive little rascals.

Went into Reef Bay with the grom surfers, so it was a wild snorkel. Lots of tossing...spectacular coral. More exciting swimming than good snorkeling.

Finally, the Great Barrier Reef

We took a marvelous boat out to Michaelmas Island in the Middle Reef, and Hastings Reef on the Outer Reef. The boat, Seastar, leaves a full hour and a half before anyone else, so we had the island to ourselves. With only 30 people on board, and 18 of them scuba divers, we had lots of room to snorkel without others around.

The Reef is everything I had ever dreamed. So different from our Caribbean reefs and fish. They have BLUE branch coral! There are so many different kinds of coral, I can't even describe all of them. Green, purple, blue, yellow, pink. Branch, brain, table, mushroom, plate. There are black and white snails that look like yin-yang symbols embedded in the coral.

I saw: a Moray Eel out in the open before it slipped under the vegetation and overhanging shelf. Giant clams, two feet across, with green and pink lips, and purple and blue lips. If you stroke the cilla on the inside of the shell, it "clams" up tight! Watch your fingers! And Batfish, which look like huge angel fish only, unlike the shy Angels, these Bats will come right up to you and "bat" your goggles because they like their reflection! All this on the middle reef.

On the Outer Reef, I saw: a reef shark, shy striped Sweet Lips, 100-pound slant head Parrot Fish that look absolutely prehistoric, a green turtle, and a large Maori Wrasse (Napoleonfish) named Wally (friend of the crew) who had coral embedded in his side. He is blind on his left side, and has lived a hard life. He depends on this ship's crew for food and companionship (apparently) and allowed me to tag a ride on his fin, stroke him, and playfully bumped me on his blind side. Very fun! There are zillions of other fish - small wrasse, damselfish, groupers, etc. Very different colors to what we are used to... lots of white with pale purples and pinks, paler colors in general but then some very bright combinations also. There is a unicorn fish in this ocean that we were introduced to as food on the ship, but we did not see it. It is about a foot long, white, and a horn growing out of its forehead. Yep.

I decided I couldn't do the Reef justice with pictures. You would have liked to see us in our Stinger suits which protect against the jellyfish. Think Teletubbies and you will have an idea.

For those of you who don't know, and those who may have forgotten, part of the reason we took this trip was to celebrate thirty years of a love-filled marriage. We have been so blessed, so lucky, and made some good decisions. We are further blessed by a warm and supportive extended family, as well as the two lights of our life, Julian and Vanessa. I hope everyone will have the chance to do more travelling in their lives.

We are so happy that we were able to take this wonderful trip, see some of the world's amazing places, and check so many things off our "life list".

And, we definitely do not want to go home tomorrow! We want to follow this endless summer forever....

Mossman Gorge rain forest, on the crocodile river, Queensland

After Sydney, we had planned a few days up in the northern state of Queensland, area of the Great Barrier Reef. We are staying in a charming resort town, Palm Cove, between the two touristy towns of Cairns and Port Douglas, both gateways to the Great Barrier Reef. But there is so much more to this area... rain forests, sugar cane fields, Aborigine communities, salt water rivers, amazing flora and fauna.

This entire area has only been tourist-developed in the past ten years. Up until 30 years ago, it was all sugar cane fields, worked by the Italian immigrants who came over after WWII. Back then, the land away from the coast was the more valuable, and people even traded coastal property for inland...you might imagine how they regret that now. Reminiscent of Florida in the 1950s, Australia seems far behind the times in terms of development, which is a wonderful thing. I am so glad we are seeing it now, because it is changing quickly.

With its small population living on the perimeter of the continent, Australia has a huge inland area which is mostly empty. There is land land land, and very few people.

More Maori Dancing

More Sydney photos