Chapter 2 Midget

“There’s nothing in here but a knife.” Jack called back to Parker. “Oh.” Parker said looking disappointed. “Well maybe we should try to figure this out guys.” I said. No answer. “Guys?” Jesse motioned for me to be quiet and pointed behind me. I slowly turned around and scanned the edge of the woods, and then on the rocks I saw a man. But the man was no taller than one foot and he had whitish tan skin and no clothes. Holding in his hand he had what looked like a miniature blow gun. “See the blow gun?” Parker whispered. “Yep. See the sparrow?” Jack whispered back to him. About five yards away from the man there was a sparrow. It was hoping along enjoying the beautiful morning. Then the man silently put his blowgun to his mouth and made a spitting noise and out came a very small dart. We saw the sparrow up ahead drop to the ground dead with the dart lodged in it’s side. Then the short man hoisted it up on his diminutive frame and carried it away into the woods.
As soon as the short man was out of sight, Parker shouted “I call dibs on the knife!” I grinned and said, “Well then I call dibs on sleeping on the boat. By the way the seaweed feels nice and it would be a well fit bed for you guys.” I said sarcastically. They all looked at me grimly and walked of to their beds among the rocks draped in seaweed. As I climbed into the small boat I thought about how that short man killed a sparrow. If he could kill a sparrow he could easily kill a sleeping person, and that is what kept me up the whole night.

December 28-29

We went back to Honey Moon Bay in St. Thomas and we’ll be here for a week because we need to fix the boat. Which means I’ll be there for my Birthday. We have not done much ever since we got here but we have done a lot of shopping so much that Julian knocked over some wine bottles. On the beach all we’ve really done is play football and other sports. It’s been real fun though. That’s really all we’ve done here but now I have to get back into school so I’d better have fun while I still can. Happy New Year and don’t forget to wish me a happy Bday!

Ian

Dec 23-26

I forgot mostly about what happened in Culebra as I’m now in St. Thomas and did not blog for awhile. We did a lot and it was really mind boggling! Well anyway we arrived in Culebra and met some new friends, Alex and Mila. They are girls. Alex is 9 and Mila is 7. We anchored behind their boat Shaka and they came out and waved. They came over as they had not had other kids around lately.

Then we went to the library with then Shaka kids and made Christmas cards. The library is an old wooden place sort of like a patio. There were awesome horses there too.

The next day we woke up and went to a small shop (sort of a shack) and santa was giving out presents there. There were lots of screaming little kids. Everyone spoke Spanish. Santa was called Papa Noel. Loud reggae music was playing….. I got a board game you catapult mice through a house……

We woke up on Christmas morning and we opened our presents. We got all sorts of stuff. I even got some fireworks. Then we went to Flamenco Beach and did lots of body surfing then Julian lost his mask but then found fifty five dollars floating in the water!

The next evening there was a parade and it was awesome because there were bouncy houses and free cotton candy! And then we had PIZZA for dinner.

Then we went somewhere else and saw turtles and went snorkeling it was awesome!!!

Unlike Puerto Rico almost everybody speaks only Spanish. My parents are enrolling me in the public school on Culebra for two months but I’m not very good at Spanish so it might be hard for me to fit in.

Ian

December 22, 2012

Today was seemed very short and boring. We woke up and had breakfast and had school. Then we had to go to several shops to get a part for the boat. When we finally got it we went to an island near to Culebra but it was really wavy on the way there. Some of the waves where about 8 feet tall! when we got there we had dinner and went to bed.

Ian

Puerto Rico – December 18-21

Day 1,

This entry is just a bunch of days put together. While I was in Puerto Rico we met up with Jesse’s family. First we went to this really awesome private island that Jesse’s hotel owned. When we got there we all went swimming and we saw a huge jellyfish and lots of little ones too. Soon Jesse had to go horse back riding. So my brother Julian and I played mini golf for 45 minutes and of course I won. They eventually got back from horse back riding and we played chess. Except the board was giant and so were the pieces so we had to shove them to move them. Then we played a game of nuke ‘em in the volleyball court. Then we had to go out for Mexican food and then we went back to the boat and went to sleep.

Day 2,

I woke up and we had to get in the car immediately. We were going to meet Jesse at the rainforest. When we got there we went for a long hike but did not see much but water falls and bugs. Then we climbed a tower and could see all of Puerto Rico. Then we got in the car and went back to Jesse’s hotel and swam for the rest of the day until we had to go back to the boat for dinner.

Day 3,

We woke up so early this morning. We were going to old San Jaun to see the forts that Spain had made. When we got there we just explored the forts. We learned that Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed there. When we were done with the forts we went to pigeon park and it was filled with pigeons. We bought a bag of pigeon food and fed it the pigeons. When I stopped feeding them the all perched on me. Soon we had to go home. When we got back we went to Jesse’s for dinner and then went to bed.

Old San Juan is a fortified city built by the Spanish almost 500 years ago. The fort is located at the entrance to the port of San Juan, which is the capital of Puerto Rico and is located on the eastern end of the island. I visited Old San Juan a week ago and I’m going to tell you a bit about it.

Old San Juan was built by the Spanish in 1533 and still remains on the island to this day. The actual person who founded Puerto Rico was Ponce de León. He was a great Spanish explorer. The reason the Spanish built the fort was as a safe haven to protect their gold on their ships. Puerto Rico was thee first protected anchorage for ships coming from Europe to the New World which had fresh water readily available.

Old San Juan is no longer used for military purposes, but is still an attraction for tourists. The U.S.A now owns Puerto Rico. The U.S took it over in 1898 following the Spanish-American War. The reason the government preserved Old San Juan was because they wanted to teach people the important history of Puerto Rico and the Americas.

On my visit to old San Juan I saw lots of things all these pictures will show what it looks like and what I did there.

The Curse of Curtis
By Ian Henderson
chapter 1

I woke up with my head under a pile itchy seaweed. Then I remembered! I had just gotten in a crash with my friends Jesse, Jack, and Parker. I pulled my head out of the seaweed and looked over at the rocks and saw our boat Serpent wedged between the rocks with a large hole in the hull. After seeing that, I decided to wake up my friends before anything else could happen.

I started to shake Parker, but after a few seconds he started to groan. “Uhhhhhhhh. . . . Mom just five more minutes.” I sighed. When Parker was asleep, it was almost impossible to wake him up. I waded into the water and picked up a small crab. I walked over to Parker and placed the crab near his head. It clamped down hard on his lower lip. Suddenly, Parker’s eyes flew open and he sat up clawing at this face trying to get it off. “What was that for?!?” The crab on his lip bobbed up and down as he spoke, and it slowly slipped off. “Sorry, I couldn’t get you up.” I said. “Oh well, next time please….” he replied. “Wait! What! Where are we? Oh right yeah.” “You wake up the others” I said. “I’ll go find some wood for a fire. M’kay?”

When Parker was done waking up the rest of my friends, and I was picking up my last piece of wood, I saw a large X in the sand with a rather large rock with something engraved on it next to the X in the sand. I looked at the rock and said “Guys??… Come look at this.” Jack, the fastest of them, arrived first and said “Cool, it’s just like Indiana Jones or something.” “Jack, it’s not funny. Right.” I read markings on the rock aloud to them. It said “leave or die”. “Oh that doesn’t sound good” Jesse said. “See Jack, I told you!” I said and I looked over my shoulder and saw Jack digging where the X used to be. “Jack, what do you think you are doing?” “What does it look like to you?”
“Jack, you don’t go digging a hole when you are about to die in the wilderness.”
“But what if we get rich?”
“What good will it do us if we might not ever make it home?”
“Oh!” Jack said as as he had hit something while digging. It was a chest with a note tapped to it. “What does it say?” Jesse asked. Jack called back to us “It says ‘Welcome to C.’” “Cool” Jesse said “What does that mean?” “Open it up and see what’s inside” Parker exclaimed.
And that was the start of my awesome adventure.

December 16, 2012

Today we woke up and went to Honeymoon Bay to get our water maker fixed. When we got there we went ashore to this really nice beach for homeschooling but instead we got free presents from Santa 10 days before Christmas! When we where done with that we played football with some other kids and we won 48-12. Then we played a couple games of volley ball went swimming and just ran around. Soon we had to leave so we went back to the boat to have dinner and go to sleep.

Ian

December 15

Well today was my last day with my cousins. So we woke up had breakfast and awesomely enough we didn’t have to do school work. So we cleaned up the boat from the parade. When we were done with that we started up the motor and got out of that place. We decided to go to our cousins new hotel. We anchored out front and dinged (took small boat) in. It was awesome. The hotel had a giant pool with a water slide, a pool table, a ping pong table and a teen center. We started with the pool and there was a long line for the slide. So we had to think quick. Then when it was my turn we made a train went down but I accidentally stopped us and the whole line except for one little kid who hadn’t gone down yet. Well anyways everyone was stuck except for that little guy. We sat there for couple of seconds then we heard something. “Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” He was getting closer someone in the back screamed and then we went flying off the slide and into the pool. We did that for awhile then it was getting dark out so we had to go back to the boat and that was pretty much the day.

Ian

December 14, 2012

Today we did our morning stuff and got ready for the Christmas boat parade for miracle on main street. We would be boat number ten in the parade. If you win the parade you get $500 if you get second place you get $200 and if you get third you get $125. Our plan was to wrap ourselves up in Christmas lights and do a synchronized dance on the deck while dad steered the boat. Right before the parade my mom was taking a run and while she was running she saw really cool vines with pink flowers on them. So she brought them back with her and we hung them all around the boat. Soon it was time for the parade we had to do 4 rounds through town. It was so tiring. This was our creepy dance: roll, roll, left, roll,roll, right, roll, roll, up, roll, roll, down, roll, roll, shoot, roll, roll, muscle. And after that we where so tired we just went to sleep.

Ian