Day 11: Statia (Mark's birthday!)

Today was one of our favorite days so far. We hiked the Quill with our amazing guide Hanna. The Quill is a dormant volcano that last erupted around 400ad. It was so amazing! The Quill is one of only a handful of places in the world where you are able to actually hike down inside of the crater. There were many incredible plants and animals there that cannot live in any other part of the world. We are so lucky to have been able to hike the volcano with a guide that really cared about the forests and knew a lot about the volcano and the plants and animals that live there.

After the Quill, we were starving. We hadn't really had anything to eat because we had to meet up with Hanna at 7 am. We finally found a place that serves a decent burger and fries for a decent price- that's exactly what we were looking for! The burger and fries were good, but the real highlight of our meal was the waitress's son. He was five years old and came home from school for lunch. He was adorable and loved helping his mom. He liked telling us about what he did at school and brought our drinks. He was so cute!

After lunch, we went to see the St. Eustatius Historical Museum. It was a pretty good museum. It told the history of Statia and they even have a special exhibit about slavery right now so we got to see how the slaves lived and what they worked on while they were here. We also went and saw the old fort on Statia. Statia was an old trading post. When a ship arrived at a port, the ship fired a 21 gun salute and the county fired a salute back recognizing the country. During the American Revolution, an American merchant ship, under the command of an American Navy captain, went to Statia to trade goods. This ship, the Andrew Doria, fired a salute and  Statia fired back, thus making Statia the first country to recognize the 13 Colonies as an independent country.

After we got back to the boat, we realized there were three other boats around us that had kids on them. Our parents had met their parents and customs and came over to say hi. These kids live on their boats and just met a few months ago. One of the boats, Day Dreamer, has been sailing for almost four years! Another boat, Discovery, has been sailing for a little over a year. The other boat, Fezywig, has been sailing for about 6 months. We really enjoyed meeting these people and hung out with them for the rest of the night. We went out for pizza with Discovery, then went over to Fezywig for cookies and music. Their kids are extremely talented on their instruments and played their original songs for us. We loved meeting these people and really hope we can keep in touch with them as we all go on our separate adventures.

Funny story (now, not so much then)-
I, Arden, had a horrible migrane headache so I did not go to dinner with everyone else. As you all know, the power goes out in the kitchen/salon area almost everyday- we know how to fix it now, but it is still really annoying. Anyway, I didn't really want to mess with it so I decided to take a shower. After my shower, I felt a ton better so I grabbed a flashlight and some crackers and went outside. After a while, I decided I couldn't survive off of saltines forever so I went inside to make myself some dinner. While I was looking for something to make, I saw a HUGE Roach. I DON'T LIKE BUGS!! I usually make Grant kill them for me. I was all alone on our boat with a giant roach (4 inches- no exaggeration). The stupid thing must have gotten here in a cereal box or something from the grocery store (I now appreciate American health standards so much more). I kept throwing shoes at the thing, but it was the roach that wouldn't die. Eventually, mom came back and helped me get it. The problem was, it was hiding behind the wood on the wall, so I could see its antenna, but I couldn't get it. Mom and I killed the roach, but I like bugs even less now. Fyi- Off bug spray does paralyze bugs!

By the way- Happy birthday dad!

Fyi, Lindsay and I are in the pic of all of us kids in the dinghy...can you find us?