Position
10:12.5N 64:39.8W
Good grief, is
it really three months since we last did a blog? Yes, it almost is so I’ve
dragged myself away from the mad social whirl and sat myself down to remedy
matters. We are now, as you will have seen from the chart, in sunny South
America, Venezuela in fact, moored in Marina Bahia Redonda (www.bahiaredonda.com) in the city of
Puerto La Cruz.
Most of our
friends that were in Grenada when last we blogged (is that a verb? To blog?
Probably.) were headed this way for the hurricane season so not wishing to be
Billy-no-mates we booked a berth here too. An overnight sail from Grenada
brought us to Porlamar, Margarita, in the company of Durban Dancer, Squander
& Scorpio. I say sail, there was very little wind so we all motored almost
the entire way. Anyway, arrive we did and ended up staying for a couple of weeks
in this, our first taste of South America. And what a contrast – aside from the
obvious facts that the people are a different colour and speak a different
language, the whole feel of the place is different from the other Caribbean
Islands we’ve visited. Different music, food, and so on. You’ve got to watch
your back too as certain members of society appear to have a somewhat cavalier
attitude to crime – the bastards’ll nick the milk out of your tea if you’re not
careful! There was a religious festival while we were there, something to do
with Our Lady of Something-or-other, which seemed to involve lots of drunken
Venezuelans zooming around in boats and generally terrorising the
anchorage:
More friends
from Grenada, Somerset Cat (Leopard 47 catamaran) turned up in Porlamar and
since it was Mike’s birthday, and an important one at that, a dozen or so of us
retired to a beachfront restaurant for a celebratory lunch that rolled late into
the afternoon…most enjoyable. Much hilarity was had when we saw the artwork on
the menus contained a spitting image of John from Durban Dancer. This isn’t a
great picture of him and his beard’s now shorter, but you get the idea. That’s
him on the left:
Obviously I had
to nick a menu to get the picture, but when in Rome…
Having equipped
ourselves with various goodies from the numerous malls in Porlamar such as air
conditioners, dvd players, mobile phones, guitars (of which more later), etc,
taking advantage of Margarita’s duty free status, we set off towards the
mainland, stopping overnight on the way at a small island called Cubagua where
Squander, Scorpio and myself enjoyed a very nice dive on a sunken ferry – lots
and lots of fish. So many fish that we felt obliged to catch one the following
day on the way to Puerto La Cruz, which was the highlight of an otherwise boring
day-long motor, no wind again. Still, a very tasty Dorado:
Having tied up
in the marina, and got on with enjoying electricity, water, aircon, TV, and all
those things you lot use all the time but we rarely do so they’re a treat! And
that, my friends, was on the 1st of August. So what the hell have you
been doing since, I hear you cry? Good question, not sure really. After the
initial flurry of doing jobs on the boat that require water and power, which
took about a week, we seem to have settled into a routine of, well, time just
seems to pass…ah yes, we’ve been having Spanish lessons, twice a week, so our
Spanish has improved somewhat. The only trouble is, we very rarely get the
opportunity to practice as we’re surrounded by Americans and Europeans in the
marina and don’t get out much other than to go shopping etc and for the
occasional meal. Despite the blurb on the marina website, when you leave our
particular marina you go straight into a “barrio”, i.e. a shanty town type place
where we’re advised not to walk for fear of being robbed. So all movement
outside the marina involves a taxi, which isn’t a problem in that they’re very
cheap, but does mean that you can’t just go for a stroll. And that is very
frustrating, as we do like an amble about, so are now thoroughly fed up with it
all. Prior to our trip to Trinidad back in February we had heard stories about
security problems there, which in the event turned out to be grossly
exaggerated, as long as you were sensible and used common sense as you would in
any big city. Here, it would appear, you really do have to heed the warnings and
be a bit more careful, which to be frank is a right royal pain in the arse! Hey
ho.
Some of you will
know that I (Neil) have been trying with little success to play the guitar for
the last ten or more years (alright, nearer fifteen then) and have displayed a
singular lack of talent for this (and probably any other) instrument. But what
can you do when faced in Margarita with the opportunity of buying an electric
guitar, amplifier, tuner, bag, strap, spare strings, etc etc for £55? Well
obviously what you do is buy it. After all, we hadn’t had a guitar on board for
a while – months ago, back in Graciosa (Lanzarote), we bumped into a boat from
NZ, Essence, and Stuart gave me back my old acoustic guitar that he’d bought
from me in Turkey three years previously. I was tempted to ask if he wanted to
rent anything else. Anyway, I sold that again in Grenada so it was plainly time
for a new one. Adrian from Squander also invested in one of these fine
instruments (for those in the know they’re Silvertone Panderas) and now the
marina echoes to the hideous screeching of the two of us practicing. Actually
that’s unfair on Adrian as he does seem to have some ability, and a musical
background, whereas I’m crap but it keeps me occupied.
Tracy,
meanwhile, has been far more constructive in that she’s been helping out with an
organisation called Fundamigos which is a charitable group that provides surgery
for kids and adults to rectify hare lips and cleft palates and other similar
problems. She’s been dutifully folding bandages, along with other volunteers
from the marina, in preparation for the next round of operations in mid October.
Although looking at the number of bottles and glasses on the table I can’t help
wondering what the bandages are going to look like…
She has the
opportunity to do all manner of things including actually assisting in the
theatre, although I suspect she may restrict herself to making soup. We shall
see.
A group of us
went on a two day trip recently, up into the mountains to the Guacharo cave,
which was a nice change. It was worth it for the drop in temperature alone! It’s
very hot here on the coast, continually in the thirties but humid with it so
everything’s an effort, the drier cooler atmosphere higher up (around 1400m) was
lovely. The cave itself is an enormous, erm, cave that is inhabited for the
first 800m by birds called, with some ingenuity, Guacharos. These birds live in
the darkness of the cave all day and then come flying out at night to feed,
although since they eat fruit it beats me why they don’t do it in daylight.
They’re equipped with some clever sonar thingy so they can “see” in the dark so
I suppose they feel they have to use it. Having seen them coming out at dusk, we
returned the following morning to go into the cave, led by a guide with a gas
lamp. Here’s piccy looking out from in:
The first 800m
where the birdies are is all a bit spooky with lots of screeching (there are
around 15000 of them in there) and no small amount of guano to walk through.
Lovely. After 800m there are no more birds (the cave gets narrower and you have
to pass through a small-ish hole) and you can continue on to a maximum of 1.2km,
which of course, being intrepid explorers, we did. Here’s a weird rock formation
to prove it:
Actually, if we’d been really intrepid
we’d have got the special permission required, and the equipment, and gone on
for another 9km – told you it was a big cave. As it happens the last 9km is a
lot more difficult, involves proper caving techniques, and permission is rarely
granted, so we went for lunch instead.
Having
experienced the outside world we’re quite keen to see some more so at some point
will do a trip to Merida in the Andes, and of course Angel Falls is a must. The
hurricane season, depending on which opinion you listen to, lasts until the end
of October or the end of November, so we’re going to stick around here for a bit
longer particularly as the track of a couple of hurricanes this season has been
unusually low, one passing very close to Bonaire and we’ve no desire to be
sailing around in one of those, thank you very much.
Watch this
space, who knows within three months or so there might be another
blog…
