Sunday 21 December – Woohoo, Luke, Milly and Dani safely arrive

We had breakfast and headed over to the resort at Kri where we were booked on the mooring ball. It is too deep all along the Island to anchor and Kri has the best reefs for snorkelling. Rowan got a message from the resort to say they had been doing maintenance on the ball and we could only get it from 11am. That just worked as Dani arrives half an hour after Luke and Milly so they should be on the boat taxi by 8am, it is about a two hour boat ride for them to get to us, so it should have just worked out. Around 10 am the resort told us that the mooring ball would only be ready in the afternoon, a bit of problem as the taxi is meeting us there around 11am. As we were about a km away and wondering what we were going to do, the only other mooring ball on this side of the island became available. Wow what timing! We quickly decided to tie on and at that moment a boat approached and it is the kids! Their taxi was a lot quicker than expected. We could not have timed it better! Dilah who had cleaned our boat when we were at the marina in Sarong, picked everyone up from the airport and took them to the boat taxi rank. She had also done a big shop for us of fresh produce. It took a while to get everyone, their bags and shopping on board. Keep in mind Milly and Luke had a couple of extra suitcases of goodies for us, as did Dani. We had our English tea bags taking up the biggest amount of space, plus 5 bottles of gin, 2 bottles of rum, seeds, nuts, tahini, let alone all the other boat bits. It was so great to have them safely on board, amazingly their 3 flights and Dani’s 4 flights all went to plan, no delays and no baggage inspected. Incredible as they have been on the move for 48 hours.

It was blisteringly hot, so mid afternoon they all went for a snorkel with Rowan while I unpacked all the groceries and put away the endless goodies they had brought over. Finally at 5pm we got a message to say the resort’s mooring ball was ready for us, so we moved over to it. Our travel weary guests all powered on, and managed to stay awake for supper at the resort. The high light of the meal was seeing Otis the Cuscus, that we had seen last time we ate there. It is like a possum. Everyone was in such good form it was a very good evening, with a lot to catch up on.