Hello again!

Firstly, I have to send out a gigantic big THANK YOU to my family, especially my mum, for being so wonderful as to send me a package full of goodies all the way to South America - including Fazer chocolate, which is hands-down the best in the world. Seriously, try it. I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH! You make me blush. Thank you :) I feel very lucky.

So, down to business! Anthony and I had our house warming party two weeks ago and Anthony's wonderful colleagues thought it would be a wonderful present to bring us four chicks. As in live chickens. Our faces, absolutely flabbergasted.

Anthony had apparently spoken very eagerly about  chickens at work and so... here we are - we'll be able to start a farm soon I think :P Heeey! That could be good, we could start taking admittance fee when we have friends over. Business 101!

Also, we hope they are female as we've given them all female names. Oh well, we are a modern anyway - we can always argue that we are challenging the concept of gendered names. Jolly good.

Here they are, our four little HENS! (... hopefully)

Gertrude, the largest and "leader" of the brood. She already tries to flap about and fly.

Margaret, the beauty of the brood (she already has a few tail feathers peeping out).

Astrid, along with Claudette, is slightly smaller. Small but clever. The lightest of the bunch.
Claudette, is also small. She is an eager "digger" and very adventurous. She has gotten stuck in between the bars of the cage twice already.

They really are quite wonderful to just sit and look at as they bob about peeping and digging.

They also look very cute when they drink.

Four little chick bottoms in a row :)

Melba has taken to watching them religiously, it is rather sweet actually. Now, I don't actually know whether she is watching them in order to size out the best moment for chopping them into little pieces and having a nice fresh lunch, or whether she is actually twisted enough to think they are her little babies due to the high pitched squeaking noise they make. In anyway, she tends to have an eye on them throughout the day, especially when I clean the cage.

So! We spent the majority of last weekend building this! ... and when I say we, I really mean Anthony. But I did keep him hydrated and well fed throughout the process, so I do deserve some credit :) And the best part, the entire structure and all materials are 100% recycled (even some of the nails!) as it is made from pallets.


Here he is, my little carpenter.


... hard at work, recycling nails!

The frame came together really quickly.

Just along the finishing line.

The inside, including a peg and roosting area, as well as a sliding door!

placed perfect in the garden, now we just have to construct the outside pen and voila!

I had to take a picture of the door because Anthony was very proud of it. For good reason too!

The only fear I have are the coconuts (of death!) located right beside the pen. I still have no idea how you're supposed to get these down safely and avoid death by having a coconut fall on your head.


Our other pets are doing very well, Melba is getting on fine even though it is still rather hot sometimes. But she does love romping around on the beach (... and bothering some of the joggers to my dismay).

She still makes me laugh on a daily basis. She was out blank in this very comfortable looking position. And she has also developed quite the impression of a noble guard, even though she would actually be utterly useless if someone really did decided to rob us. But she is sizable enough and makes one hell of a racket if you dare to walk past our gate, so I think it puts people off from taking the chance. She still needs two long walks a day to keep her head screwed on right which keeps me busy enough.


Charlie tends to sleep for hours and generally just look wonderfully cuddly on a daily basis. I swear cats always know how magnificent they look too. He just lies about the house as if he is surveying his territory and his loyal human minions. So in that respect he is very cat-ish. Otherwise, he is too fat to catch anything that actually moves, except maybe leaves, if even that. But Anthony doesn't like me calling his cat fat so I have to keep these comments to myself mostly. But he looks gorgeous and anyway I quite like his cuddly belly so I don't mind his pudginess, even though he might be (utterly) useless in all other respects. If he sees a gecko he sits and meows at it until it leaves - enough said.



Our wonderful avocado plant (grown from a seedling!) who I have named Albert, is pictured above.

Carpenter gone gardener.


But, we actually had a bit of a disaster on the home front. Our dear plants did not take well to the amount of nutrients we (/Anthony) decided to add to them so I'm afraid we will have to see how they get on. Albert has changed from bright green to beige in colour. And our tomato-plants have slouched and shriveled together. Oh well, you live and you learn - at least our other living things are doing well!

We did however, find a bit of time for some leisure. It was very windy so Anthony took his kite-surf for a spin.


Up up and awaaayy!


... and then you walk back, and then you're off again.

total pro



Melba did not take her eyes of Anthony for one second, she really doesn't trust this wing business I think. Although she did find time to roll around in the sand in order to get sand everywhere in the car later. Yup. She is handy like that.


Even when I tried to pose for some pictures with her she was too busy watching Anthony. So I made him come over to take a picture of us instead. The result...


Yay! My girl and I in the sun :)



and back to work, when unexpectedly...


Horses. So I died a bit on the inside and made Anthony promise to come with me on a horse ride on the beach. Anything really can happen in Kourou. Also, he said yes :)  So that will be the topic of a post to come!

But before that... well, I figured kite-surfing couldn't be that hard - looking at all these other people. Easy enough, I figured. Well, it actually isn't. At all. It is actually really really hard I found out. But I wanted to try so Anthony strapped me up aaaand then I almost died. Apparently, your'e not supposed to pull down on the bar when the wind takes you as it multiplies the strength of the kite - yeah, so I didn't know that and off I flew. Anthony desperately trying to hold on to me, shouting "let go of the bar! LET GO!" Meanwhile I was panicking so of course, holding on to the bar for dear life, whilst pulling down. Not a very good situation.

But, it ended fine, thankfully. You live and you learn, again - hopefully! I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to applaud Anthony for the faith he has in my innate sporting abilities or whether I'm supposed to be worried that he almost killed me without a thought about wether or not it would be safe to strap your girlfriend into a kite-surf belt, attach her to a giant wing on an extremely windy day when she has had no previous instruction what-so-ever on how to use it. Hmmm, it's a thinker. Well, anyway, all is well that ends well.

And here we are. Yesterday, I made a very very tasty chocolate cake, to make up for all the excitement of chicken-hutch building (and in the hopes of not flying quite so high the next time my boyfriend straps me into a kite-surf) :D  I am just full of bright ideas.

I hope you all have a great day and thanks for reading!

Peace & Love to all :)

Trip: Saint Laurent du Maroni

Hello everybody!

It has been an age and a half since I gave an update -- I know! I know! I'm sorry, I'm totally crap at updating regularly but this is how it is unfolding so this is how we're all just going to have to deal with it... but I have been really busy. My excuse is really quite good as you will see. I have (finally) finished my TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Certificate - YAAAY! and I scored a 97% on my final test. (Boom.) So I think it safe to say I have English down. So I'm happy :)

Although, this update is actually about a trip that we took a couple of weeks ago but as I have not had time to update it before, I was planning to do so now. We flew up to Saint Laurent du Maroni, the northernmost town of French Guiana, across the "maroni" (which the dutch call "marowijne") is Surinam. Maroni is the 724km long river that flows into the Atlantic Ocean and seperates these two countries.

We flew to Saint Laurent along a route which at first took us inland and then north, and returned along the coastline. Our flight up was rather cloudy but I did mange to grab some good shots!

This is Kourou by air, with the river Kourou and the bridge crossing heading towards Cayenne.

The lush greenery and these wonderfully windy rivers were the highlight of the flight up to S.L. I liked this one particularly because it looks like an S from where I took the photograph :)

As I was flying over I wondered how many anacondas live in these rivers (and how long it would take me to get eaten by one of them had we needed to crash land). Fun thoughts!

We then came across one of the only landmarks on our flight up, a large dam.

Later on into the flight we climbed quite high and I managed to catch this beauty.

This is Saint Laurent du Maroni from the air and Suriname just across the river.

 

Upon our arrival we were greeted by no one less than the town army commander, a friend of our co-pilot, who very kindly showed us the sights of S. L. The first sight was of course the prison camps where the convict Henri Charrière (or "Papillon", meaning butterfly) spent his incarceration, until his escape, 11 years later, in 1941. Surprisingly, I thought, the camp, although abandoned, was open and free to any visitors. You simply walk in.

So, here we are, posing in front of the gate of the enforced labour camp which housed the century's French condemned criminals - rather morbid actually. But there we are, looking nice.

These were the kitchens. Obviously, at the time of use the buildings were not as flashy. Some of the camp buildings were restored in the early 1980's.


This is the main square where the guillotine was located, now replaced by the magnificent mango tree seen on the left. Ahead are all the cells parallel to each other.

The first set of cells.

Judging by the erosion these buildings have seen quite a bit of life and death.


"Case 1" - Cell 1.




The doors were still intact, including the gigantic locks spanning the length of the door.



A relic, used for transportation of goods or building materials.


Some of the buildings were being completely restored in order for public use. If I remember correctly I think our "guide" mentioned they would be used for schooling purposes or likewise.


Afterwards we headed to the sizable local market, featuring (I will claim!) pretty much every vegetable and fruit that you can grow on the continent. Seriously, I had never seen some of these things! Anthony was vexed to notice that the prices were considerably lower than in Kourou - still, very impressive!


These are all different types of chillies, ranging from mild to you-will-die-if-you-touch-it (unless your taste buds have been weaned to eat this stuff since birth). I know I'm Finnish and blabla.. we can't take this sort of stuff but seriously, just trust me.


We proceeded to a really awesome ship-wrecked themed restaurant that is actually situated on a boat docked by the maroni.


... including pathways with thatched bamboo roofing!


and actual bamboo :)


Wonderful setting! right by the river. (Those who plan to visit us.. we will take you here - BY PLANE if you fancy it :P)

Yes, the menu was printed on rolled up cloth and the food was extremely scrumptious.


Before our departure home we had a spot of trouble with the weather. It started raining and we saw some thunder so we had to wait it out until we flew back. Once it cleared, our flight back to Kourou was trouble-free and the visibility was fantastic! This is the maroni of S. L. with the town just "behind" us.

A panorama inside our four-seater Cessna plane. A-boom :D

These are rice fields right by the sea.

Again, I managed to catch some great shots of the rivers (and fluffy clouds!)

Layering perspective.

Jungle, all the way up to the coastline. See, unless it is sand or marshlands, every inch of earth has something growing on it here.

Anthony piloting our plane above what I have started to refer to as "the broccoli fields" :)

Yay for flying! Woop-woop.

A small town (whose name I have forgotten) in between S. L. and Kourou.

More fantastic winding rivers.

And there we have it, our trip to Saint Laurent du Maroni :)

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for chickens! yes... I said chickens.