Why I Didn't Post Yesterday

This nuisance airline named Dutch Antilles Express held us up because the flight was delayed overnight, and they never told us the proper departure time. We had to keep moving around to different gates and eventually we slept on some old metal chairs in the airport. It was utterly uncomfortable.

Here is some good advice: I do not recommend travelling with Dutch Antilles Express ever. Eventually we got on the plane, but the plane was broken so we all got off the plane again. There were a lot of people who kept shouting and there was a big argument amongst all the Spanish-speaking people about the delays. Eventually they had to bring over another plane from Curaçao, and this plane actually got us to where we wanted to go (also Curaçao), more than 15 hours late. The flight was only 25 minutes long.

This is me holding my prize starfish.

Now let's take it back to the beginning. I woke up in the Posada Movida back in Los Roques. We went to the main place for breakfast. There was croissants, toast, scrambled eggs, and a new type of fruit juice. After that we went back to our room to change, as usual. We met the people with the cool boxes by the main building and we walked down to the speedboat with twin engines.

The boat took us to a sandbar where we saw lots of starfish. The water was very shallow and clear. Some of the starfish were orange-red, and some were light yellow. I dived down and picked one up. It felt weird on the bottom, a bit like holding seaweed. My mum and dad took pictures of me holding a starfish. There were also lots of big conch shells and I would like to have taken one home as a souvenir, but they were all inhabited.

After a little while everyone got back in the boat, the captain roared the engines, and we sped off towards another sandbar. This one had a lot of fish in a lagoon around big lumps of scaly-patterned coral. We saw a lobster hiding from us underneath some coral. There were loads of different fish including a flat sandfish. The sandfishes lay down in the sand and eventually they pop up. Both their eyes and their mouth are on one side of their body. So if other fish wanted to tease them they could hide on the side with no eyes (see Finding Nemo).

After than we got back in the speedboat and sped off to the third and last place, for lunch. It was another sandbar wit lots of dead coral disintegrating into sand. Lunch was wraps with ham, cheese, and lettuce. There was water to drink and Oreo cookies for desert.

This is Hermitville. An overpopulated town of hermit crabs.

One of the things you really should know is that it was overrun by crabs. There was a big crab that we saw pop out of its hole. It ran away from us sideways of course. There were also swarms of tiny hermit crabs running everywhere. There was so many that I ran and got my bucket and started looking around for hermit crabs. It was pretty easy to find them. I put a little sand in my bucket and when I found a hermit crab I put it into the bucket. I decided to call it Hermitville, which I know is a little strange because hermits are people who live by themselves, but I couldn't think of any other name at the time. I found all different sizes and they all had different shells.

When it was time to go I real eased them all back into the wild. When we left we said goodbye to Greta, an Italian girl and her parents, packed up our things and headed back to the boat. Everyone was waving to us and shouting 'Ciao', although it was hard to hear over the engines. The motorboat took us back to land. We went back to our room, we showered and changed back into our regular clothes. Then we packed up our suitcases and went to the airport, about a five minute walk. We watched the planes landing. There were a lot of planes for such a tiny airport. Eventually our plane arrived. It had 16 seats—a little bigger than the one we came on. It took about 40 minutes to fly to Caracas, and then the problems started.

Los Roques was a very interesting place. It made me feel happy. The waters were the perfect temperature and shallow. There were loads of fish and other sea creatures to look at.


Now were are in a big resort hotel call the Hyatt Regency in Curaçao. We are spending four nights here before we fly with that pesky airline again.

The Third Day in Los Roques

After breakfast (Auntie Els: this was toast, scrambled eggs, and pancakes) we boarded the terrible lurching speedboat of doom. They started up the boat and it sped off quickly. I decided to sit at the very front of the boat. It was all rickety-rockety and I was being bounced about a lot, but that didn't matter because I liked it, and anyway I wasn't getting as wet as everyone else was. It was half an hour and eventually I was getting really fed up of the bumping about. We reached the island of Cayo do Agua and I got up and told everyone, 'We're safe! We're still in one piece!'

We got off and the people set up our umbrellas and brought us our chairs and cool box, and I went off snorkelling for a little while. There were all different kinds of fish: small fish, big fish, fry, colourful fish, and white fish. In the afternoon I went to the coral area and did some more snorkelling and I saw a barracuda. It was a little hard to make out but it was long, thin, and full of sharp teeth.

The island had soft sand and there was a sand bar which connected the island we were on to another with a lighthouse on it. The sand bar had waves coming from both sides so there were no dry patches.

On the way back there was more bumping about but still Lucy fell asleep which was a miracle. We made a stop at another remote sand bar once used by sailors so they could scrape the barnacles off the bottoms of their wooden boats, or fix them, called Carenero. 

Now I'm waiting for dinner at the Posada. Dinners are always scrumptious. Last night we had zucchini carpaccio for starters, followed by kingfish pieces with salad and potatoes. It was a bit like fish and chips. For dessert there was a traditional Italian cake called tres leches, which they said means 'three kinds of milk'.

Francisqui Island Notes

Today I woke up feeling happy. Breakfast was tasty. There was ham and cake. After that we went to our room to change, then we went to the speedboat. It took us to another sandy beach with cool shallow water. There were lots of types of fish to see and there was a coral area which was quite interesting, full of weird rocks and big lumps of coral that had wavy patterns. There was a massive swarm of green fish. I wish we could have stayed longer.

Notes From A Small Island

Posada Movida

This charming little parrot lives in a cage outside the posada

Today I arrived in Los Roques in a small plane. It's a bunch of small islands of the coast of Venezuela. There were ten seats on the plane including the pilots. We went to a beach by a motorboat. It was a lot of fun. I went snorkelling. It was nice and warm. I was standing still looking at the fish when they started staring at me like I was a tourist attraction. Afterwards my sister Lucy buried me in sand. We are staying in the Posada Movida. It is nice and cozy. The food is really nice here.