Modern pirates have rocket launchers, not swords… and though our captain looks most fearsome, like a sea faring Mr. Clean; he is, it turns out, much more tender-hearted than he is iron fisted.

So it was truly a blessing that the pirates looming off to our north a good portion of our journey to wild Madagascar, ultimately must have decided they had bigger fish to fry?

Sailing with a rampaging tail wind can be fast and furious, not for those weak in the belly and we will never again forget that sailing through pirate infested waters is not for the faint of heart.

The Naughty List is RICH with pirates!

We carried on southward though, our spirit of adventure restored by the retreating pirates. Retreating pirates are our new favorite kind!

The Sea Witch safely arrived at the port of Antisiranana yesterday, but not before we hit a sleeping whale and had to rescue some French folks who’d crashed their rented catamaran on the rocks.

The whale, and the French folks were ultimately fine; their catamaran I’m afraid, is at the bottom of the ocean; and the bottles of shampoo, oranges and books etc. that flew around the inside of The Sea Witch from the whale jolt have all been safely secured!

We’ll spend three days here in Madagascar. I hope to see enormous prehistoric eggshells and hear the singing lemurs that enticed us to come south to begin with!

We are off to find some dinner. Sweet dreams children of the world!

Santa and Mrs. Claus

To the land where the coco de mer nuts grow!

But then, time is often wholly forgotten at sea. Once the white beaches of Zanzibar disappeared in the distance, we did not see land again until The Sea Witch arrived in the Seychelles. Mrs. Claus and I were as grateful to see land again as any ancient explorer who ever shouted LAND HO!

The hotel we’ve been staying at on shore has felt like sleeping in a tree house! A lovely tree house planted firmly ON LAND. Bobbing around at sea for days always gives me a fresh appreciation for bathrooms on land that do not sway and pitch on the waves, often a bucking bronco potty!

Indeed dry land felt so very good under our feet that we happily dropped our bags at the hotel and walked into the village ripe for adventure! It was a very small village in which we found little more than a very tiny store that doubled as a post office. While Mrs. Claus stamped and mailed some postcards, the fellow working inside told us a story about nuts that weigh as much as a child! The biggest nuts in the whole wide world …

Long, long ago, enormous Coco de Mer nuts were an enormous mystery…worth more than a king’s ransom for those lucky enough to find one washed up upon beaches across endless seas!

Since no one in the rest of the world had ever seen where these enormous 40 lb nuts come from, people began to imagine that they grew on upside down palm trees at the bottom of the ocean. Can you imagine imagining that?

Because that is what people imagined must be true, until someone finally sailed to the Seychelles Islands for the very first time, “and there in a wood Coco de Mer trees stood,” growing right side up, on dry land.

It took hundreds of sailors, hundreds of years of exploring this planet to realize that this one little forest, on this one little island, far and away in the endless sea is the ONLY forest in the whole wide world where these, the largest nuts in the whole wide world, grow.

Luckily this forest has remained undisturbed since the first baby Coco de Mer tree sprouted here millions of years ago! They call untouched forests Primeval, a very mysterious sounding word itself… Unfortunately its one of the last of such forests left on Earth.

I must say, although Mrs. Claus may very well disapprove, that these nuts look an awful lot like a bum to me, ho ho ho! Do they look like a bum to you? Mrs. Claus is indeed giving me The Look.

And so, I will change the subject to Pirate Ships! I think it safe to say that it is the deepest wish of everyone on board The Sea Witch that we make it through these lawless pirate waters safely. And that it was a great relief to find out that the pirate ship we saw sail into port on our way to dinner tonight is a sort of floating museum. Their crew preserve and sail an actual pirate ship from the 1800′s! Cannons are much more charming when the pirates firing them are only make believing for a living!

The imaginary pirate crew sauntered into the restaurant as Mrs. Claus and I were finishing our dessert; exclaiming very piratish things about being so hungry they’d ‘eat a buttered monkey’ or ‘Blackbeard’s peg leg!’ Tomorrow they set sail again, but for tonight, their only plans are to eat, drink and be merry, on dry land!

We are also setting sail tomorrow, this time for Madagascar. The Sea Witch is restocked and the crew well rested. I wonder what surprises, mysteries and adventures may lay before us crossing the Indian Ocean to Madagascar?

Perhaps like the Owl and the pussy Cat, hand in hand on the edge of the sand, we’ll dance by the light of the moon, the moon the moon! We’ll dance by the light of the moon!

Jan Brett/Edward Lear

Much Love,

Santa and Mrs Claus

This morning Mrs. Claus and I drove into the jungle heart of Zanzibar Island to a Spice Farm in Kizimbani Village. Spicy breezes greeted our noses from miles and miles away- clove buds, black pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, ginger, vanilla, citronella, saffron…

we were able to pick spice nuts and OH the fruit! Such unusual fruit such fun! Sniffing and eating curious new things like Tope Tope Fruit-

Bread Fruit

and Jack Fruit was a yummy way for our taste buds to spend the afternoon!

Now we are on our way to the East coast of Zanzibar to board a boat sailing for the Seychelles Islands! It is so very sticky and hot here in Zanzibar that a refreshing breeze will be just the thing.

We are nearly there so I must go for now. Bon Voyage to us!

Much Love,

Santa and Mrs. Claus

Wandering around the winding, narrow walkways of Old Stone Town required dodging bicycles zipping by, goats wandering free, people pulling delivery carts, and motorcycles carrying entire families!

Just before lunch our group was ready to leave for a visit to the Jozani Forest sanctuary where some very rare and LARGE Red Colubus Monkeys FLY from tree to tree!

 
It seemed wise to keep one eyeball looking out for rare lurking leopards once thought to be extinct, as our group ate lunch beneath a shady tree…

While we ate our guide told us there are over forty different kinds of trees here; and over fifty kinds of butterflies, SOME AS BIG AS YOUR HEAD!

Cocoons dangled like jewelry from limbs and leaves.

 
It was a hot and sticky adventure that made the air conditioning of our hotel room feel like a wonderful treat! Tomorrow we’ll visit a spice farm as we travel east toward the coast where we will sail away from Zanzibar toward the Seychelles Islands! It will take a few days sail to get there.  Barring any unforeseen pirates, we will report to you of our adventures once The Sea Witch has dropped anchor in the Seychelles.

Sweet dreams my sweet children and much love,

Santa and Mrs. Claus

Yesterday morning Mrs. Claus and I walked through the Vestibule into the Anchorage Airport where we flew away on a jet plane to Zanzibar! We didn’t want to be seen doing anything the least bit magical in such an exotic distant land. Its fine and dandy with by us, by sleigh, by plane, or hot air balloon we do so love to fly!

February in Africa! Imagine, eating your breakfast in the endless white snow fields of the North Pole and your dinner in the lush garden islands of the equator! It was so late after dinner that we found a nice hotel to stay in here in Old Stone Town.

This is not a photo of our hotel, but it is such an delightful dwelling that it could not go unmentioned! We saw it as we were making our way to the warm, turquoise blue, waters lapping gently upon the fringes of soft white sandy beaches… after having a tasty breakfast here in Zanzibar, rich with dark history and spicy winds… Oooo la la!

Much Love, Santa and Mrs. Claus

Miss Sarah, these are very good questions. I am indeed feeling fit as fiddle again thank you so much for asking. Vertigo is when going very, very high up, or coming from very high up down to say the bottom of a mountain very quickly makes you really dizzy.

For some reason when people go up and down very quickly (which I do all Christmas Eve night over and over ) oxygen (air) has trouble flowing around our body and it can feel like the whole world is spinning!

Luckily once I take a hot bath and sleep I wake up feeling fine and dandy again!

You are quite welcome for your new sled sweet Sarah. I wish for you plenty of snow for whizzing down hills!

Much Love,

Santa Claus

Of course, around here we celebrate once I have returned safely home and slept off the exhaustion and vertigo of my long trip around the world.

As our children have grown and scattered to the winds, Mrs. Claus and I have found ourselves celebrating a whole week of Christmas! Its quite lovely actually, celebrating Christmas again and again as our children and grand children come and go!

I have not forgotten how much you like to hear about the gifts that Mrs. Claus and I give each other. So let’s see… This year I gave Mrs. Claus a hair clip made by an artist who preserves real butterflies. (Once they have gone to heaven of course) She also was delighted by a box of glass owl ornaments that our daughter Rebekah had collected for her!

And hmmm…Oh! She loves the knitting pattern our younger daughter Meta gave her of an enormous red fox!

Mrs. Claus gave me an extraordinary thing I hadn’t seen the likes of in several hundred years, a Radiometer! The light and heat of the sun make the wings inside spin like magic, sending lovely cheerful sparkles around the room!

I hope very much that you and you had a wonderful Christmas yourself and your 2011 has a fine finish that lights the way for a beautiful New Year!

Much Love,

Your Santa Claus

By magic of course!

The odd thing was that wasn’t very much this year…

Could it be because last year our youngest son was overcome with Christmas spirit and harvested baskets and baskets of mistletoe? It was hanging everywhere by the time we emptied his baskets!

Its a sort of tree fungus anyway. Did you know that? Makes you wonder how anyone got the idea that fungus had anything to do with sneaking a kiss?

OH BABY its cold outside! Mrs. Claus just let out dog in and the cold just rolled through the room like a herd of frozen buffalo!

I am going to go hop in bed and warm up!

Sweet Dreams!

Santa

Are you surprised to hear that we do not? Just like you, we only have a tree up at Christmas time- and today Mrs. Claus and I flew south to get our Christmas tree, in the sleigh, which Mrs. Claus loves but rarely gets to do.

We flew with the birds over miles of lonesome snowy white tundra sparkling like an endless field of diamonds. We flew over seas of migrating elk and deer. We flew over hungry wolves hopping in the drifts looking for a little furry something, anything to eat. We flew over Siberian Pine trees as old as me! Well, maybe not quite as old as me but very nearly.

Finally, we flew over a river and through the woods to where a dear old, old, friend of ours named Nik lives nestled at the bottom of a small mountain in a forest of Christmas trees.

Nik had sent us a letter inviting us to come visit with him and choose our tree! So Mrs. Claus and I bundled up our grand daughter Ellery, our dog Artemis, and ourselves into the sleigh with some cocoa (of course) and a sharp saw. And off we flew! Excited to find the perfect tree; not too TALL and not too wee; not too BUSHY and not too sparse…

The smoke from Nik’s fire met our cold pink noses as we slowly descended over his house… lower and lower until Hedley, Brawley, Hansel and Klondyke’s hooves finally reunited with the ground.

Nik came bounding out of his house to greet us in the wild storm of snow the reindeer’s hooves and sleigh runners had kicked up! It is quite impossible to guess how old Nik really is by the way he bounds up and down his mountain, a sure footed old goat. You would never know he can barely see anything anymore. We have known Nik soooo long, so unusually long for a human, that recently I have begun to suspect he must be part elf…

We followed a deer path that meandered gently up and up until we had nearly come all the way around to the back side of Nik’s farm. Ellery would be very disappointed if we came all this way only to go home without a tree to decorate. And so we stood, all of us, looking up the high side of the mountain and then down down the down side below us…

Well, this was it. This was our chance. We had to find a tree! So I left the path with the great determination of a grandfather on a mission. I hiked straight up the steep mountain side fully expecting there to be no way for my boots to grip the slippery slope, but to my great surprise and delight my boots did grip the steep ground well. I climbed toward a tree that looked wonderful… until I got close enough to see many of its branches were quite brown.

Wandering from one “I see one !” to another led me huffing and puffing quite high up the mountainside. Suddenly thoughts of my delicate, just healing collar bone made me wonder how my journey back down was going to be…

When I turned to look down the mountain to where the others stood, there was Mrs. Claus not far below me and there next to Mrs. Claus was THE ONE! How on Earth had I walked right by the perfect tree!?

Reaching gingerly from tree to tree, we were able to slow the speed with which gravity was desperately trying to send us careening down the slippery, snowy mountainside. We, and our tree, reached the path below safe and sound, richer by one perfect Christmas Tree!

Et voila! That is how this extraordinary tree (they always look bigger indoors somehow don’t they?) came to be standing in our living room happily overburdened with over a thousand years of pretty shiny baubles and balls, squirrels and snowmen, fish and cupcakes, birds, bees, butterflies, and and and…

I managed to do just fine waving mostly left handed. Some of my favorite balloons were in attendance, Shrek, a big blue Smurf the energizer bunny… Oh! And its always a bit dicey for Spiderman to make the parade route without incident! Congratulations Spiderman!

Most special was being with my family. As you can well imagine Mrs. Claus and I have children and grandchildren scattered to the furthest corners of this globe and it truly is a miracle for us to all sit down together and share a meal these days. We managed just by the hairs of my chinny chin chin to all be together and THAT is what I am truly most grateful for this Thanksgiving.

I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful, that you had a chance to snuggle on the lap of someone you love and have a nap; I hope you thought about what you are most grateful for, I hope you laughed so hard you thought you might burst!

I am grateful for you. I am grateful for your Christmas spirit and for your belief in Christmas miracles! I am grateful for your loving heart and wish you and your family a most blessed holiday season!

Much Love, Santa