Guadeloupe, 12/7/1937
Dear friends,
We say again merry Christmas in summer warm sunshine. You have to make an effort to realize that it’s time to write X-mas mail. We run around in bathing suits and we even sweat at that. X-mas displays, X-mas’ trees and all such things making X-mas atmosphere you don’t find here but I have told the children that there is someone called Santa Claus who comes with good things and presents to good children. It can work quite well and Lars keeps on asking if we aren’t soon leaving to sail to that harbor where he lives. Even if he doesn’t have too much with the being a good boy he is still hopeful. The hope is light green. We still haven’t been able to depart from this island but now it will probably happen the day after tomorrow. We have had a good time here also but the engine has not been repaired well enough. It can be used but it’s not good. The yacht club celebrated their yearly dinner here only for gentlemen and Peter was invited as the guest of honor, I sat here and listened to all the noise they made but in the middle of it all, the president sent food down for me plus a bottle of Mosel wine and a bottle of Champagne. then they could make all the noise as much as they wanted for all. Other than that we have beer on a couple of car trips and which you become so intoxicated because you drink with an empty stomach. We have had a couple of visits where we have taken passengers that came to on the beautiful ship and some of them were especially generous and gave 100 francs but they also got a picture of “Restmore” or the crew included. So, we are living high on the hog here as far as eating is concerned because otherwise there is not much of an attraction here because it’s only a
small town, imagine you can only get raw roasted coffee here and I really didn’t want to get the boat full of the smell and roast the coffee on the primus. So, I sent Peter on board a Norwegian steamer to beg for some coffee and the Norwegians who are always so nice gave us coffee, canned groceries and cigarettes plus chocolate and an invitation to share the captain’s yellow lentils with him. They were very salty but It tasted homemade and delicious and afterwards we drank lots of sodas, then we got 4 bunches of bananas, one a day. Now it’s off to St. Thomas where we hope to meet Danes with a Danish Christmas mood and at last our most loving greetings with a merry Christmas and a happy new year.
from yours, Lars, Anna, Peter and Else.