Cravings

I'll begin by reassuring you all that I'm not the big "P" word.  These are just normal cravings by a gal who is limited to very little variety of foods these days.  :-)

1.  Indian Food, specifically Murgh Makhini - mmmm.  Do try it someday!  I practiced my hand at cooking it last night, and it actually didn't turn out too bad!  The recipe will needs a few tweaks, but the end result should help to curb this craving.  :-)
2.  Short Smoked Salmon Filet.  Peter and I would order this every.single.time we ate at our favorite American restaurant in Virginia, Sweetwater Tavern.  Our order would go something like this; "Two Short Smoked Salmon Filets, extra mustard sauce on the side, Ozzie rolls only and extra poppyseed butter please."  We could order the moment we sat down.  It was always a quick meal!  :-)  This, I'm afraid, I won't be able to duplicate.
3.  Thai food, specifically Chicken Red Curry.  Again, I should be able to duplicate this, just haven't tried my hand at it yet.
4.  Maple bars.  Oh boy, I could  devour a few of these right now!
5.  Captain Neon Burger from McMinnimins - I (we actually!) have been craving this since we left Oregon: thick patty, extra thick drippy bacon, blue cheese, special sauce... mmm.  If you eat it in just the right fashion, it'll drip all of the delicious sauce all over your fries.  It's a party in your mouth.  A heart attack waiting to happen, but SO worth it.  :-)

That sums it up pretty well for now.  If y'all have occasion to box some of those up and send them our way, we'd be much obliged.  ;-)

(kidding)

Sailing to Bigej ~ Monday

Over the past weekend we sailed up to Bigej (Bee-gee) and had a fantastic day of snorkeling and sailing!  It was fairly overcast all day, with a few quick showers once we arrived at the island.  What a pity... we got wet!  :-)

We usually snorkel as soon as we arrive for 45 minutes or so, then board the boat, fix some lunch, eat and jump in the water again for some more snorkeling.  We usually depart Kwaj around 9:30 arriving at Bigej close to noon.  We anchor until 3:30 or so and then begin the trip back, arriving back in Kwaj around 6pm.  However, yesterday's trip was extended a bit for two reasons:

1.  There was NO wind!  We motored the whole way and although we had the jib and mainsail up, they didn't do much work!  

2.  We met up with three power-boats which had 13 other folks at the island after they completed a dive on a wreck not far away.  They were mainly from KPD (Kwaj Police Dept) as they were placing the ashes of one of their officers who just passed away.

Those two reasons meant we arrived back at Kwaj at 7pm... but we weren't complaining!

There's a country song that I kept singing (to myself!) yesterday.  It goes something like this:

It's a great day to be alive

I know the sun's still shinin' when I close my eyes

There's some hard times in the neighborhood

But why can't every day be just this good? 

Sometimes it's lonely

Sometimes it's only me

And the shadows that fill this room

Sometimes I'm fallin'

Desperately callin'

Howlin' at the moon...

Ahwoo!

Ahwoo!

That's how I feel about this adventure for us.  Every day is a great day!  Sometimes it's lonely, sometimes there's not-so-pleasant things to deal with, but overall, it's a great day to be alive!  

Ok, enough with the blabbering, here's some photos from our trip!  We got some pretty amazing ones, if I do say so myself!  :-)

This one looked like a flower, blooming out of the coral below.

Do you see the grouchy fish?

These little (say 10 feet or so across?) coral pods are all over at Bigej... beautiful!

I love these little guys!  They're so photogenic. :-)

CLAMS!!!  These were one of the highlights of this snorkel trip... we saw SO many!!  Big ones, small ones, and they're all different colors!

The sea anemone's are beautiful here... can you spot the clown fish?

Hubby!

Ok, here's a question for anyone who knows anything about water creatures... Do you know what this is??  It was about three inches in diameter, and the "legs" were wiggly.  How's that for a scientific description?

Puffer fish!

Another big clam - about 3 feet across.

Another highlight!  We saw this HUGE (to me!) ray!!  She didn't have her stinger... but was still probably 5 feet in diameter!

My favorite clam from this trip.  Isn't it beautiful!?! 

Loved this little coral tree~

Doesn't this make you want to visit??!

Another clam!  This little guy (about 12") was inside one of the purple coral heads in the above photos.

...And another one, not far away!  While Peter was photographing this guy, I saw something right next to him change color.  Upon further inspection...

...it was an OCTOPUS!  How cool!!!!  Can you see his eyes?  They're the little red spots in the center of the photo. 

Here's a farther-away shot which shows the proximity of the clam to the octopus.  SO COOL!  We backed away hoping the octopus would come out of his hiding spot, but he only popped his head up far enough to keep an eye on us.  :-)

Amazing

Another clam!  They close up if you cover the sunlight above them, so the trick is to sneak up from the side.  :-)  Peter's gotten pretty good at it!

A beautiful sunset on our way home. 

I love the clouds in this one ~

And finally... our gracious captain, Rick.  He and Peter work together... we're so fortunate he enjoys sharing his boat with others! 

On a completely un-related note - they delivered our pack-out on Friday!  This means that I no longer have a rotation of only four tops and three bottoms (YAY!), we have a fairly complete kitchen set, OUR BED IS HERE, and the guest bedroom is furnished!!  So, please come see us! 

Kwaj life!

Finally I think we have a system figured out for uploading and posting photos!  

So, without further a-do... (and in no particular order!)

The following five photos are from one of our weekend sailing trips to Bigej, and the underwater photos are from snorkeling off the boat.  

Can you spot the turtle?

This clam was beautiful... it was about 12" across, and bright, bright purple on the inside!  We've heard the clams up at Roi-Namur (one of the northern islands) are HUGE - over 5 feet!!  We want to take a trip up there one of these weekends to see for ourselves... there are free, "space available" flights daily up to the island, so we'll try to take advantage of them soon! 

The boat, named the Panacea that we've been sailing on - that's my hubby floating in the water.  :-)  Someone asked him on this trip if he was part fish; I think while we were anchored he spent more time in the water than he did on the boat!

The next two photos are from the dive we did two weekends ago on the South Kwajalein wall.  This first one is just amazing to me - the beautiful reef and the abundance of life!  This was just before we went over the wall... the diving here is beautiful!!

One of the white-tip sharks that Peter mentioned in his earlier account:

This little guy gets in on quite a bit of action over by where the fishermen feed the sharks the "leftovers" from cleaning their catches of the day.  He nibbles right along with about 30+ nurse sharks and 5 or so white-tip sharks!  I'm sure he's glad for his shell sometimes.  :)

These nurse sharks were just hanging out, waiting for their free meal...

Usn's

The hermit crabs are EVERYWHERE here!  They're so adorable; you pick them up and they squirm all around trying to find the ground beneath them.  We eventually put them back down...  :-)

Beautiful... we see rainbows 3-4 times/week. 

This beach, (above and below) is one of my favorites for finding shells at.  In fact, I just might bike over there when I finish this post to do some hunting! 

Hermit crab pile - they're all fighting over one empty shell!

Just a neat photo~

This photo is taken just off the north tip of Kwajalein.  We did our check-out dive from this location.  The buoyed area is a swimming spot called Emon beach - you'll see it better in another photo below. 

Here's a better shot of Emon beach. 

Often after Peter gets home from work and we finish our dinner, we'll take a bike ride around the island... Yesterday we hopped on our bikes, rode about 1/2 way, went back home, changed into our swimsuits and biked back to Emon beach for an evening swim.  It was beautiful.  

Next up... hopefully delivery of our pack-out this week and then some photos of the house, inside! 

Pack-Out Status!!

We just got an update that our pack-out is on the barge that is scheduled to arrive.... 

TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!!

Yahooooooooooo!  

There's a process for offloading the barge and distributing the goods, but we should get our stuff delivered to the house within a week!!!

Can you tell I'm EXCITED?!  It's going to be like Christmas... I can't even remember what is all coming!