Three Years ... and counting!

It's hard to believe it's been three years since we started this blog. I'm not sure any of us thought we would get very far in this endeavor, but look at us now. Over 1000 blog posts and three eBooks later and we're still going strong with lots of ideas in various stages of discussion and execution. Thanks for coming along for the ride. It's been great fun for me to receive these lovely and exciting posts from Marcie and David (who, if you remember, are my aunt and uncle) and deliver them all to you. We work hard to get a post out every day. Marcie and David write them and take all the pictures, constantly asking, “Is this blog worthy?” Then, they have to find a way to get them to me, with pictures, using sketchy internet connections. I receive them and get them ready to post on our blog-site. Then I post them to all sorts of social media outlets so that as many people as want to, can read them. It's been a good partnership and we aren't ending it any time soon … Yay!

Over the last three years I have ooh-ed and aah-ed and laughed as I've read and posted each and every blog post. Here are some of my favorite ones:

One of the many things I love about Marcie is that she is always up for a celebration or participating in a tradition. I love her posts about sailing traditions and superstitions.

“Killing an albatross is bad luck (as if). Killing a seagull is bad luck …they’re the souls of men who have died at sea. Seeing a swallow at sea is good luck … it means you’re close to land. Cats on board are good luck … they kill rodents (and potentially provide one extra meal…just kidding). Dolphins swimming beside the boat are good luck … they relay Neptune’s greetings and we like this one.”

Superstitious Sailors

Crossing the Line ... Again

Download Marcie's Days and Ways to Celebrate - 2015 for a year's worth of traditions and holidays to celebrate.

David has a wry sense of humor and there have been many times when I've busted out laughing only to have my daughters look at me funny.

“As for us, we aren’t going to worry too much about the “Ocean Flatulence” theory – it’s one of those things we can’t do a thing about. If it is a real phenomenon, we can only hope that Neptune enjoys his tot of rum enough to keep us clear of that particular type of night wind.”

The Blue View - Methane Bubbles

The Blue View - St. Helena Driving Tips

David writes most of the technical sailing posts on the blog. To be honest it's not my cup of tea (sorry, UD) but I know many of you love reading them. You can type “the blue view” in the search box on the right and read all the technical sailing posts he has written. Better yet, buy his book Nine of Cups Guide to Anchors and Anchoring for a detailed look at anchoring a boat in different situations (you mean you don't just lob a heavy piece of metal over board and call it good?).

There have been many times when Marcie has written a series of posts on a particular location and I've thought, “I want to live there!” Here are some of the places I want to live (or at least visit) because of Marcie's beautiful descriptions and gorgeous pictures.

“Bo-Kaap is a unique, vibrant, historically-rich community and interesting to visit. Many of the old cobblestone streets remain, narrow and steep and lined with brightly colored, well-kept row houses from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The oldest house, built in 1658, stands as a local museum. The house colors knock your socks off … turquoise, purple, hot pink, mustard yellow, lime green. Eye candy for us wanderers.”

Around Town - Esperance, Western Australia

Living on Island Time

Colorful, Spicy Bo Kaap

I hope to create some eBook travelogues from Marcie's writings throughout these last three years. But for now you can download Nine of Cups' Caribbean Stories about Marcie and David's travels throughout the Caribbean.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about the blog from my point of view. It was fun to tell my side of the story.

We Now Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming...

This is a guest post from Gentry Anderson, the developer at justalittlefurther.com

Over the last couple of years that I've been working on justalittlefurther.com, I've learned so much. I went from being someone who could barely keep her Facebook profile up to date to someone who updates this blog daily, manages the social media and marketing and successfully put together an eStore in which to sell our eBooks. I've even learned some HTML (the language of the internet) in order to manage justalittlefurther.com better. However, learning all that has made it clear to me that I have so much more to learn. It's akin to being in Spanish 101 … I can introduce myself and find a bathroom, but I'm far from fluent.

My lack of fluency became obvious this week when justalittlefurther.com got hacked. In fact, on Sunday morning, Google had blocked over 11,000 Wordpress websites because of this hack and unfortunately justalittlefurther.com was one of them.

After searching the internet for a solution, it became clear to me that I was not tech-savy enough to fix this myself. I immediately got in contact with our website hosting company and while they promised to fix the issue, they were buried up to their necks in the same requests from other clients and we would have to get in line. It would take a week to fix. Unacceptable! That's when I discovered Hack Repair by doing a thorough search on the internet.

One phone call and our site was visible again in 30 seconds. He was hired. After a few hours he had our site cleaned up of all malware and by that evening we were no longer being blocked by Google or any other search engine. Hallelujah! What a relief.

In the process I learned a lot regarding internet security and wanted to share that information. You don't have to have a blog to be hacked. In fact, if you access the internet for e-mail or social media, you can be hacked. Just look at all those famous actresses whose naked pictures are now all over the internet or the Sony hack presumed to come out of North Korea.

Nothing we do can fully protect us from being hacked. However, these are steps you can take to have a safer internet experience. Some of these things I've learned over the years as I've used the internet and some of these things I got from helpful articles on Hack Repair and other websites.

Passwords Change them often and make them strong. The first thing I did after I realized we had been hacked was to change the passwords to our Wordpress site. I also changed the passwords on our Facebook account, email and our web hosting site. Candidates for password reviews are your e-mails and social media sites, such as Facebook. I use Lastpass to help me create, maintain and update my passwords, but there are many ways to develop strong passwords.

Updates Whether or not you're running a blog or using your smart phone to peruse Pinterest, you should keep everything updated. Many updates are created to solve security issues. You should be running the latest version of your browser (like Internet Explorer or Chrome) and the latest version of your operating systems (like iOS or Windows 8). On the blog, I use lots of tools to enhance functionality and appearance. However, I had a function that came with my theme that I didn't use, so I didn't pay attention to it. I didn't update it when the update became available and that was the vulnerability that was exploited. That leads me to my next point.

Knowledge Part of the reason that I didn't update this particular feature was because it came packaged with my theme and I never used it. I didn't take the time to really get to know all the features of my theme, and so didn't realize that I needed to keep that feature updated myself. The take away here is that it's important to know the ins and outs of the internet tools you are using. Do you know how to secure your Facebook page? Do you understand what the Cloud is, how to use it and how to keep your information secure? Take the time to learn about all those devices and apps so that you can make sure you're using them as safely as possible.

Backups I back up our site regularly. If this hack had been catastrophic, I would not have lost more than a week's worth of blog posts. On the home front, all of our photos are backed up automatically to the Cloud. I also have them on DVDs. I'm also taking the best ones and making photo books out of them. If there's a fire at home, I have the photos on the Cloud. If Shutterfly has a catastrophic failure, I have them on DVD. I don't back everything up, but I do back up any thing that is important to me.

While this list is not comprehensive, it's a good start. It might be early to be talking about New Year's Resolutions, but I hope you will resolve to make your time on the internet a bit safer in 2015.

Francois Leguat Giant Tortoise and Cave Reserve Pt. 1

Anse Quitor, Ile Rodrigues

There was nothing in our 2006 version guide book about a tortoise reserve on Rodrigues, but other cruisers had mentioned visiting so we inquired about it at the Visitor Center. The Francois Leguat Giant Tortoise and Cave Reserve was open daily and located on the southwest end of the island and, yes, a bus went nearby (maybe a little walk). We checked at the bus station, confirmed departure times and made plans for an early morning departure. The buses here are similar to those in most third world countries. They're old, rough-running, brightly colored and have endearing names like Lover's Choice, Prince and New Roshni Princess. We reconfirmed we were on the right bus and sat back for a cross-island adventure.

We asked the money collector fellow to let us know when to get off the bus. He was very pleasant and accommodating as he collected our 31 Rps each (about a $1) for what turned out to be a 1:05 hr ride.

The narrow paved road out of Port Mathurin was all up. A series of switchbacks had the bus chugging loudly and laboriously up above the port. The views of the sea below, even from our bus window, were beautiful.

Bus stops were frequent and it took significant effort for the little bus to get moving again up the steep incline. We stopped in several little towns … Mont Lubin, Petit Gabriel, La Ferme, La Fouche. It was a school day and all the kids were in uniforms getting to school.

After about 45 minutes, I glanced at him inquiringly and he nodded “Just a little longer.” Finally, we saw a sign for the Reserve, the bus stopped and the conductor motioned us to get off and pointed towards a rather narrow road up a hill. “It's about a 20-25 minute walk”, he said.

We walked … and walked … and walked … up hills, down hills, around corners, up more hills. We were walking at a reasonable clip and after 25 minutes, we kind of expected the Reserve to be right around the corner. It wasn't. We saw another sign … at least we were heading in the right direction. One thing about walking, you get to see lots of things you'd miss if you were whizzing by in a car. We saw small houses and lots of goats and cows. The earth is bright red and there were lots of flowers and a few gardens along the way. The land was rocky and not very arable. Some industrious folks had terraced the land to make it as useful as possible.

PVC water pipes lay along side the road like black snakes, sometimes crossing above the road to get to the desired destination. We met a few people walking along and they all smiled and wished us a “bonjour” as they passed. One remarkable sight was the number of gigantic spiders in huge webs between utility wires and tree branches. Not just one spider, mind you, but we counted as many as 17 in one massive web. I learned later that these are red-legged golden orb-web spiders (Nephila inaurata), native to several Indian Ocean islands. They're non-poisonous, but even birds and bats get caught in their huge, strong, sticky webs. Evidently, they normally string several webs together to form enormous "homes" in order to cover as much surface area as possible. Great to know, so I can avoid them at all costs.

About 45 minutes into our “little” walk, we saw another sign announcing 500m to the Reserve. The entrance road was dirt … uneven, rough and rutted. Volcanic rock poked up in the fields alongside the road, but up ahead, it looked like maybe we had arrived.

We pay our entrance fee of $295Rps ($10US) and looked for a place to relax for a few minutes. There was a guided tour leaving immediately. We begged off in favor of a cup of coffee in the pleasant little outdoor resto (restaurant) and booked ourselves on the next tour. In the meantime, we sipped our Nescafes and watched our little piece of the the world go by. As we sipped our coffee, a very unexpected turkey hen gobbled by a few feet from us, with her brood close by. You just never know what to expect.

We were invited to visit the little museum while we waited. No one else was around and it was dark when we entered. Motion sensing lights popped on as we moved from one small room to the next. One room was dedicated to the discovery of the island and its volcanic origins. Displays of early maps decorated the walls. A larger room displayed the flora and fauna of the island and was quite interesting.

The island was teeming with native wildlife when the Europeans first arrived. Tortoises by the thousands roamed the land. Birdlife was plentiful including the“solitaire” (like a dodo bird), but all were traded or eaten to extinction in a period of of about 50 years. Now only one fruit bat species is all that remains of endemic mammals. There are only two endemic bird species still around and they are considered endangered.