After all the travel we did last year, 2024 was supposed to be “The Year We Stay Home”. But then, last December, we learned that one of our dearest friends, Steve, wanted to celebrate his 60th birthday with a trip to Costa Rica, so he could get some surf lessons, and they wanted us to come along. After much deliberation (seriously- it might have been 2 whole seconds!), we said we wouldn’t miss it. We just returned from that trip, and it was definitely worthy of a blog post!
Continue reading “Steve’s Surfin’ Safari to Costa Rica”Category: Photo Galleries
Posts that are mostly pictures, not many words
Tahiti (Nui and Iti)
This is the eighth and final in a series of posts, each one about an island we visited on our grand tour of French Polynesia. (The first post was about Mo’orea, the second was about Rangiroa, the third was about Fakarava, the fourth was about Hiva Oa, the fifth was about Nuku Hiva and also included a “status check” on the trip so far, the sixth was about Raiatea and Taha’a, and the seventh was about Maupiti.)
Continue reading “Tahiti (Nui and Iti)”Flowers for Maddie
Fran and I are in the final few days of a trip of a lifetime – we spent two weeks in the Galapagos Islands, followed by nine weeks on eight islands in French Polynesia. The longer the trip has gone on, the more I find myself thinking of Maddie. If you don’t know, Maddie was my daughter, who died in 2017 at the tender age of 22. You can read about that here if you like. In that post, I wrote “One of these days, when the feelings aren’t so raw, I may write more about Maddie…”, and today, finally, is that day.
Continue reading “Flowers for Maddie”Maupiti
This is the seventh in a series of posts, each one about an island we’re visiting while on our grand tour of French Polynesia. (The first post was about Mo’orea, the second was about Rangiroa, the third was about Fakarava, the fourth was about Hiva Oa, the fifth was about Nuku Hiva and also included a “status check” on the trip so far, and the sixth was about Raiatea and Taha’a.)
Maupiti is the farthest west of all the inhabited islands of French Polynesia, although not by much. It sits just 35 miles west of its far more famous sister island, Bora Bora, and 195 miles WNW of the main island of Tahiti. (To put that into perspective, Nuku Hiva, the island we visited a few weeks ago, is 860 miles from Tahiti.)
Continue reading “Maupiti”Raiatea and Taha’a
This is the sixth in a series of posts, each one about an island we’re visiting while on our grand tour of French Polynesia. (The first post was about Mo’orea, the second was about Rangiroa, the third was about Fakarava, the fourth was about Hiva Oa, and the fifth was about Nuku Hiva and also included a “status check” on the trip so far.)
We’re back in the Society Islands, the group of islands in French Polynesia that includes the two most famous ones, Tahiti and Bora Bora. (We actually spent the night last night on Bora Bora: it was our ferry stop between Raiatea and Maupiti, which is where we are now. We had an expensive dinner on the waterfront – we were so close to the water I thought our waiter might fall into the lagoon – but that’s all the time we’re spending on Bora Bora. Too touristy and too expensive!) Raiatea and Taha’a are interesting because they share a large lagoon (defined by a fringe reef). In the photo below, the turquoise “border” is the fringe reef, and the dark blue between the green and the turquoise is the deep water in the lagoon. At one point on our boat tour around Taha’a, we went from 18 feet deep to 180 feet deep in about 3 seconds, as we left the turquoise and passed into the dark blue.
Bonaire Dive Trip
Fran and I just returned from a 10 day dive trip to Bonaire. My long-time friend and business parter, Joel, joined us for 8 of those days. We had a good time, with plenty of great diving, although Fran got strep throat about halfway through the week, and didn’t dive after that.
One aspect of this trip that’s interesting is that we did it using HomeExchange.com, a website I highly recommend you look into. We exchanged our house with a house in Bonaire, so Anke and John stayed here while we stayed there. (We also exchanged vehicles and boats, but that’s not normally part of a Home Exchange.) We’ve done several exchanges since June of last year, and will keep doing it – it’s a great way to visit some amazing places and not have to spend anything for you lodging.
Unlike most of my previous posts, this one is going to be more pictures, and fewer words – since I know that’s what you all really want anyway! So here you go: Smartini Goes to Bonaire!
Continue reading “Bonaire Dive Trip”May the Boat Cat
May was with us for more than 5 years. This is a celebration of that time.
Me: “Bennett, what’s this black cat doing in the house?”
Bennett: “Oh, that’s May. You know, from Mom’s house. Since Mom sold the house, she can’t keep May anymore. She’ll only be here until we can find another home for her.”
Me: “Yeah, I know who May is. Well, I guess she can stay here until we find her a good home.”
And so began our five year relationship with the best kitty ever. (You may think you have, or have had, a good kitty, and I won’t argue. But May was the BEST kitty ever.) We never found another home for her, because, to be blunt, she HATED other animals, and everyone we knew who would love to have her already had at least one other pet. After a few months of trying – and a few months of her sitting on my lap for what seemed like hours every day – one day I said to Fran “Well, I don’t suppose it would be horrible to have her on the boat.”
Continue reading “May the Boat Cat”The Virgin Islands
Once again, Faithful Readers, I find myself apologizing for such a long wait for a new post. I can only imagine how many of you must wake up each morning and think “Today’s the day – a new post on Smartini Life – I just KNOW it!”. (I imagine that the number is zero.) At any rate, my apologies.
Smartini arrived in Charlotte Amalie, one of the largest settlements on the island of St. Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands, on the afternoon of March 28, just two days ahead of our first guests, Steve and Challen. Friends of ours, Max (Maxine) and Whitey, who we met in Key West after Hurricane Irma, and who run the charter sailboat Nutmeg, were anchored there, so we joined them, anchoring on the West side of Water Island. We promptly put Killer in the water, picked them up from Nutmeg, and went ashore to Tickles, the bar/restaurant at Crown Bay Marina, and proceeded to celebrate our arrival in the Virgin Islands, and our reunion, as it had been over a year since we had last seen them.
Continue reading “The Virgin Islands”Long Island, Conception, Cat Island and Eleuthera
In the middle of June, we had a two week stretch between guests to get from George Town on Great Exuma to Governor’s Harbour on Eleuthera. The weather was mostly favorable for travel, so we were able to spend all the time we wanted at each of those places. This post tells just a little bit about those two weeks, with a whole lotta pictures at the end of it.
The North end of Long Island is about 53 nm from George Town, and that was our first stop. We had heard that Calabash Bay is very nice, with one of the most beautiful beaches in all of the Bahamas. We made it there easily in one day, and found (surprise!) a beautiful bay and beach, and a nice calm anchorage. Long Island is long (duh!) – about 80 miles – so one of the days we rented a car and drove about 2/3 of the way down it to Clarence Town. There, there are two churches that were designed and built by a man called Father Jerome – one church is Catholic, the other Protestant (Church of England). He was an interesting guy, but I won’t spend much Smartini Life time on him – if you’re interested, his real name was John Hawes. Near the end of his life, he built “The Hermitage” on Cat Island, of which there are a lot of pictures in the photo gallery at the end of this post.
Continue reading “Long Island, Conception, Cat Island and Eleuthera”
Visit Report: Bennett’s Spring Break
Visit report and photo gallery from Bennett’s 5 day visit
I always wait way too long to get Visit Reports out, so I’m going to make this one short and sweet, and TIMELY! We sent Bennett back to NY yesterday afternoon. All the pictures from his visit are in a gallery at the end of this short post.
Picture Gallery from Christmas in the Bahamas
An assortment of pictures from the trip, that didn’t make it into the post about the trip. Some are just too good not to share!
You can scroll through them with the tiny arrows under the picture. You click on any one to make it bigger and start a slideshow. Hit the ESC key at any time to back up.