Day 144, Year 3: Happy Birthday to Heather
Date: Hari (Tuesday), Bulan September 30, Pada Tahan 2008
Weather: Beautiful Day with Lots of Wind in the Anchorage
Location: Karimunjawa Island, Java, Indonesia

Heather, your mom, dad, brother, and sister-in-law are thinking of you on your birthday. Hopefully the stormy weather you have been having on the Cape took a break so that you are having beautiful fall sunshine on your birthday. We love you and miss you and hope you have finally bought those tickets to Thailand. We can’t wait to see you.

We had another beautiful day in paradise and time is just flying by. Mark and I got up at our usual 7 am, listened to the net, and then launched into projects. Mark checked the batteries and filled those with water that needed it, while I did some needed sewing repairs on clothing. Mark got out the sewing machine and tried to patch our $2 backpacks from Panama, but I think we are going to have to buy new ones in Singapore. Justin and Jo slept in this morning and by the time they got up and we
had brunch it was almost noon. Mark took Justin and Jo to shore so they could rent a motor bike to explore the island. He brought back water so I could start a laundry and he changed the engine oil and replaced all the filters. We then took the dinghy on a long ride to the western side of a small island about a kilometer from the anchorage. The island is called Kecil. It is the home of a backpacker resort but no one appears to be staying there right now. It is a gorgeous island with a beautiful white sand beach that wraps all around. It is surrounded by coral, but on the western side, there is a beautiful coral garden. There are not as many fish as we have seen elsewhere, but there are varieties that we have never seen. We took the dinghy back around to a place where we could go ashore and walked along the beach. We didn’t get to the place that Justin and Jo discovered yesterday that is home to hundreds of sand dollars and starfish, so we will have to return tomorrow to that spot.
Justin and Jo had a great trip on the main island of Karimunjawa. They discovered one beautiful beach after another and were greeted with very friendly people everywhere they went. When I asked Justin what they had seen he just replied, “Paradise.”

080930 Day 144 Java, Indonesia–Karimunjawa Explorations