Sunday 25 December – just the two of us in the jungle for Christmas

Couldn’t help waking up early with the dawn chorus of the birds and the pinging of our phones.

Our version of Christmas Carols – turn the sound up load!

We are 7 hours behind South Africa and 5 hours behind Hungary. Christmas was in full swing for Luke, Hannah and Noah with my sister, on the farm I grew up on. Sadly they had a yellow weather warning day big storms and rain all day, even so it all looked very festive. We managed to have a little video chat with all the family, Phoebe joining in from Hungary, but the signal kept dropping, we tried again later but it was still too difficult. At least we managed a few glimpses and could communicate via WhatsApp chat. The biggest joke was that Luke had brought Christmas presents out to the San Blas for us from Han, but messages got lost in translation as he had a lot of presents from Phoebe to take out to SA. So our presents from Han, went all the way back to her unopened! What a laugh! It was so good to catch up with all the family, we really felt like Billy No Mates!

Noah, Han and Luke in Muden, South Africa

Phoebs and Daniel in Hungary

Noah and Han

Daniel’s One Billion Zimbabwe dollar present from Han that travelled all the way from Botswana to the San Blas Islands and then back to South Africa!

Han found a Lilac Breasted Roller feather for me, I had searched both Botswana and Zimbabwe for one. It sooooooo nearly got to me in Luke’s luggage ……..but made the long journey back to Han!

I’m not sure where all the energy is coming from but with Rowan’s back feeling much better he tackled some major boat cleaning in the morning, with fantastic results. He scrubbed the cockpit and washed it down with river water which was just a little salty, hopefully we got rid of a lot more Santa Marta grime.

Rowan’s Christmas treat!

In the afternoon we decided to head back to where we had anchored the first night, so that our departure tomorrow morning would be quicker. I decided it was time I did more practice driving the boat and in these calm conditions it was a good place to practice, it also meant that Rowan could enjoy the scenery more.

So you can see exactly where we are!

Stunning reflections

We anchored a little further away than last time to keep our distance from the other two boats at a nice wide bend in the river. It was so calm we decided it was ideal time to get the the main sail up and sort out re-attaching the sail bag that had been repaired. We needed to raise the main sail to take the weight out of the bag so we could re thread the half that had been repaired back with the other half. Which took a lot of threading on a very long piece of thin rope. It was quite scary putting the main sail up at anchor, but there was absolutely no wind so it worked perfectly. So much so that we managed to put a lot of chafe patches on the spots that are getting worn on the sail. We also got some more of the Santa Marta grime off. We worked into the dark but were thrilled to have got this sorted before going out to sea.

A very weird Christmas for us, we’ve never worked so hard before, although it seemed very weird not cooking up a storm. We had some ham and vegetables, and were pleased to settle down to the last episode of White Lotus. Only when we had finished, did Rowan realise he had not downloaded episode 4 and 5! It didn’t seem to matter, Rowan had guessed from the start who was in the body bag! We lay on the trampoline a while watching the magnificent stars in the pitch dark. The stars were reflecting in the river, doing their own Christmas twinkling magic!

Looking up at the stars from the trampoline