This last week has been full-on. We have worked really long hours getting the house ready for a visit from Carol from Ross Medical University on Thursday. We are considering letting the house to parents of students who visit the island, so we are trying to finish all the ongoing jobs. It is really exciting that all the design ideas we had are now coming together and look even better than we thought. Tonight we have almost finished all the woodwork. Just about 2 days work left. The bathroom now has a stunning shower all tiled by Andy who has become [View Full Entry]

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The work on the house continues. It is time to decide what will not be done so we can finish and enjoy Carnival before we leave. Kurt and Casso come every weekend to make sawdust, lots of sawdust. They have cased in the shutters beautifully, cut pine for all the detailing we want and routed all the picture rail. Son comes 2 or 3 days a week, he has built more steps through the garden, cut more trees, planted a hibiscus hedge along the side of the path and much more. Andrew has continued with the electrics, connected up the washing [View Full Entry]

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Our neighbour, Son, grows his own coffee and one day he brought us some beans... [View Full Entry]

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Lots of work still happening at the house and garden, and everything starting to take shape. We have taken a few days off and made the most of them. Our trip to Chaudiere Pool was fun although our timing was a bit out. It had rained constantly for 4 nights and the river was quite high. The ‘boiling pot’ which is normally great for swimming became quite tricky trying to suck you under. The hike up and down through the rain forest was stunning with all the lush vegetation - we even saw parrots. Managed to get the car stuck in [View Full Entry]

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This last 3 weeks have just flown by, and one of the best things is that we just keep finding more and more lovely things about living here. The whole village seems to have taken us under their wing. Everyone is genuinely friendly and very proud that we love Dominica. Toucarie is a quiet spot and being on the Caribbean side of the island we avoid all the wild weather of the Atlantic side. The bay is just perfect even though the sand seems to have been replaced with pebbles during hurricane Omar. There are no nasty sea urchins - just [View Full Entry]

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We arrived from St Lucia by ferry at 10 p.m. and our hire car was nowhere to be seen. An hour and a half (and an expensive taxi ride) later we were at the house with no water and no electricity. It was Sunday night and the next 2 days were public holidays - 30th anniversary of independence - so no hope of going anywhere or getting anything done. Despite this, we walked the few miles into Portsmouth, got some shopping and survived on bread and jam. In the first week we got water and electricity, the second week a fridge, [View Full Entry]

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Continuing our southerly route along the Peloponnese coast and through the Saronic Islands, we have been travelling considerably slower than our first 2 weeks. We have visited reasonable sized towns and found a few lovely bays, but not many. Old Epidavros is a safe harbour and nice town. While there we took the bus inland to the ancient archaeological site and the “theatre” which is very well preserved. Around the site 2000 year old buildings are being renovated to their former glory with EC money. Unfortunately, in many cases they are 90% renovation and only 10% original. Ka [View Full Entry]

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This summer we really hit the water running had no problems to delay us. We landed in Greece at 10am on Sunday morning. By the end of the day we had anti-fouled, polished and prepared for launching. We spent the night onboard still on the hard. On Monday morning we did a massive shop with our hire car visiting 3 different supermarkets - including LIDL and Champion. At 2 in the afternoon Freedom was launched and we loaded all our shopping onboard. At 8am the following morning we started our journey from the Ionion to the Aegean. 2 weeks and 215 [View Full Entry]

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After a pretty disappointing whale watch in California last year, it was with high expectation we handed over our money to go out yesterday. We weren’t disappointed. We were lucky to have a PhD student in Oceanography and an expert in Sperm whales as our guide and we learned all there is to know about these fascinating animals. As they stay in family groups and in the Caribbean Sea west of Dominica they tend to hang around for weeks at a time, it was a case of “if you see one, there will be more". It took 2 hours before the [View Full Entry]

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Emerald pool is the easiest falls and pool to acces with its own visitors centre and a short walk. This is one not to visit when cruise ships are in as taxi after taxi deposity passengers here. We had the place to ourselves and enjoyed a Tarzan and Jane moment swimming under the water fall deep in the rain forest. (This is apparently where Superman picked an orchid for Lois Lane in one of the movies) [View Full Entry]

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