A typical field trip day

Mati: Careful mom, stand back or I might hurt you.

Nati: (Suprised face) OK...

Mati: (shouting) 3.5, speed a runner!

And off he went, running full speed, through a trail full of plants, using just a tiny bit of his endless supply of energy.

St. John is one of the three US Virgin Islands. 80% of it is protected by a National Park, meaning, among other restrictions, that you cannot fish and anchoring is very limited, forcing cruisers to take and pay for mooring balls. It also means that the island has quite a few hiking trails, many of them with plantation and sugar mill ruins from the 18^th Century.

As a cruising family of four, we always try to find outdoor activities. Yes, we prefer to be walking, swimming, or just sitting on a beach, instead of being on top of each other on the close quarters of Taia. When we can mix a little bit of history with out of doors, it's a win-win situation and one of my favorite activities.

Back home in London, Ontario, the school used to take the kids on field trips 3 or 4 times a year. These were fun and educational trips that the kids loved. So aboard Taia, we came up with our version of school field trips whenever we can take the kids to a museum or any trip that will end with me asking them “What is the one thing you learned in this trip?”. Camila and Matias both love and hate these trips. They love it for obvious reasons and they hate it because, by now, they know that the following day at “school” they will get to write about it. (So sorry, guys, but you need to learn to write and one day, I want to believe, you will be grateful for these written memories we're creating).

And so it is that in one of these field trips we ended up walking (or running in Matias's case) through hiking trails that took us, first, to the 18^th century ruins of the house of a sugar mill owner and a guard house where the guards were expected to shoot any slaves that tried to escape to Tortola, British Virgin Islands, only 2 miles away. We also saw the Annaberg Sugar mill ruins, where about 600 slaves worked. We learned about the manufacture of sugar, we learned geography and we learned about slavery.

The guard house

View from the owner's house. At the back, Tortola

Rescuing Camila from the evil tree spines.

Matias running full speed toward the Sugar Cane Mill

The sugar mill

Reading about the horse mill

The boiling room where the sugar was manufactured

Snorkeling with a turtle after a fun day of hiking.

Ok, guys, this is not funny. Stop following me!

I like to think this is fun and educational for the kids, much better than being in a room and reading about it from a book. I also hope my kids absorb as much information as their young minds allow them to, and use it to become better persons one day.