Moondancerx's BIG adventure

Its not the first time we've anchored at Comino, mostly famous for the irridescent Blue Lagoon, but it is the first time we took a day to hike around the island, and what a pleasant surprise. The views from the cliff tops were breathtaking, and there is alot more to the island than it appears from the water. In the middle are buildings which were at one time quarantine hospital buildings and are now home to a few people. We met an elderly gentleman called Carmen who told us that only 7 people live on the island now, and he only comes there on the weekends, but there used to be 100 people living there in his lifetime. There are remnants of farming; rusting farm tools and field dividing walls aswell as domestic plants which are now growing wild. St Mary's Tower which is an impregnable fort built in 1618 to fight off pirates who plied the waters between Malta and Gozo has recently been renovated back to almost perfect condition - wasn't open - so we didn't go in, but di...

We arrived back in Malta last night after a pretty boisterous sail back - sailed until just a few hours off the coast of Gozo - a beamer all the way - Moondancer X just loved it, and if it hadn't been for the bloody awful sideways chop it would have been 'perfect', but who expects perfect in February. It was a good sail back, and when Gozo was in sight it really felt like we were coming home. So young Toni woke up this morning to the crystal clear waters of the Blue Lagoon on Comino, which is a small island in between Malta and Gozo, a rare privelege to be in this amazing place without the hoards who normally grace it in the summer months. Thought about going for a swim as the sun is shining and its quite warm - but Nah! that's pushing it a bit. Glad to be out of Tunisia. Though we saw a few awesome things there, and regret not staying to see the Sahara, its not one of my favourite places.

Tunisia February 2011-02-08 We’ve come to Tunisia of necessity; MoondancerX being Canadian can only be in the EU for 18 months without being officially imported or leaving. As we have been here for 18 months and have no desire to sail our boat under any other flag than Canadian we have come out of the EU and Tunisia is the closest place to Malta. Tunisia has just undergone what the local people refer to as a ‘revolution’, which I suppose it is – they have ousted their President of the last 23 years with some bloodshed – depending on which reports you read, about 40 people killed - but some pretty scary violent demonstrations. This happened about 3 weeks ago mostly in the town of Tunis, and perhaps it is only in our imagination there does seem to be a residue of bad feeling about the place. Of course that may just be the way it is here – we see groups of men everywhere sitting around in cafes doing nothing – when we walk past these ‘man caves’ they stare at us and it doesn’t fee...

Sorry, the 'longer post' did not work - please see facebook for what I had intended to put here. I'll figure it out when I get back to Malta. Not sure why, but I have limited time to work it out.

This is the Roman Colliseum in El Jem, Tunisia, I have written much more to post here, but the blogsite is not working in its normal way while I'm here, but I'll keep trying. If unsuccessful I'll have to wait until we get back to Malta to post it. I've got alot of spectacular photographs taken in Tunisia which I also cannot post here for some reason - I'm going to post a few on facebook, that seems to be working for me right now.

This is an abbreviated post - we don't have good internet access here. In fact up until today I have been unable to actually sign in to the blog. Not sure how I got on today, but here it is. We arrived in Monastir Marina this time last week - it seems like alot longer than a week. Since we've been here we've done a bit of sight seeing and have met the other liveaboards in the Marina who I already feel I will miss - but some of them may come to Malta while we are there. Our first day here was mostly taken up with sleep to make up for the overnight lack-of, the next day poured ferociously and since then it has been blowing like snot - lots of snot. Each day the weather reports have predicted the wind will ease and finally it has. There were a couple of things that we really wanted to do while here - one to see the Roman Colusseum in El Jem and the other to take a trip to the Sahara. We went to the Colusseum today and it was all that we could have hoped for - magnifique almost...