Under the surface

Have you ever seen such a huge hermit crab before? Seriously. Beautiful creature.

Intruders

Look at those greedy little motherf-ckers. They're definitely not scared, not even of me sitting here without make up and all while I'm frenetically typing away on my computer as the computer nerd that I am. Nice with some company though. I think we agreed on that the species is bananaquit, or sugar birds, last time we brought up the subject? And yes, that's sugar they're eating from my saucer.. just wait till they dive into the milk jug.

Good morning

Not shy at all. On islands like these you'll find goats, cows, horses, dogs and cats strolling around freely. I find it kinda charming that the traffic sometimes gets stopped or slowed down because cattle or horses have decided to have a slow walk on the roads. Would probably not work in many other parts of the world but here it does most perfectly. You can't be in a rush when living on an island like this.

Bird of the day

This looks like some type of heron to me. Anyone know better?

Read on here for more beautiful birds we've encountered.

Brave visitor

I get a lot of different visitors to my "office" here at the Yacht Club. Dogs, hummingbirds, lizards and this yellow little thing. Anyone knows what type of bird this is? They are experts in stealing sugar from your table when you've ordered tea or coffee, they even steal the whole one-serving sugar bags made of paper and fly away with it. A bag almost the size of the bird itself.

Beauty of the sea

Still overwhelmed by the sudden encounter of a large (around 7-8 meters long) female humpback whale and her calf. They played around our boat for 3-4 minutes before they took off underwater. Unbelievable creatures, they seem so harmonic and peaceful in their slow motion, their steady breathing through the blowholes and the surreal size of their beautiful bodies. Next time I'll try have a look at them from underneath the surface.

Beauty of the nature

It doesn't happen too often, but sometimes they do show up in shallow anchorages - like they did last night. Just when we were preparing for dinner in the cockpit and the sun was just about to go down behind the hills we spotted a pod of maybe 6-10 dolphins slowly swimming around our boat. Back and forth. They moved soooo sloooowly, up and down below the surface, sometimes swimming on their back showing their white bellies while observing us from underneath the water. We could hear them breathing through their blowholes and communicating to each other with their characteristic whistles. It was so relaxing hearing them and seeing them playing around us and as a great coincidence we had a chill Moby track softly sounding from the ipod speakers as they approached and there was a moment of maybe 2-3 minutes when everything was just perfect. Such an amazing serene symmetry with the nature, the easy evening breeze, the sunset, the dolphins moving around us in rhythm to the music... Magical and surreal. Those are the moments you feel like crying out your gratitude to the nature and you feel utterly blessed for being able to take part of the greatness so closely. Like so many times before, the dolphins got us speechless for many minutes after they were gone. Speechless and mesmerized. /T