Pacific island birthdays and Halloween

Trying to organise children’s birthdays when you have no ability to buy anything or receive any post and you are living on a boat on a remote island in the Pacific is time for being creative. It’s also slightly terrifying as a parent used to the commercial trappings of the western world birthday merry-go-round. Luckily I had hidden away a few things from ages ago buts it’s amazing how happy the children were with only a couple of simple gifts. A book, some sweets and their first ever pen knife and they were ecstatic.

Their requests were for a bonfire and beach bbq which we achieved in a couple of lovely anchorages.

For Felix’s birthday on Halloween we found a gorgeous anchorage in Anaho and finally met some other family cruising boats. Time to switch languages from Spanish to French. We had a great party on the beach with fancy dress, pumpkin (aka squash carving), bbq, bonfire and cake. Knowing Felix’s fixation with fire one of the Spanish mother’s kindly did a fire juggling circus show for him as the sun went down. It was breathtaking. As we took the dinghy back to the boat afterwards Felix said, “it was the best birthday ever”. Perfect!