Medregal Village position 10.31.80N 63.47.83W
Chaser 2
Yvonne Chapman
Sat 20 Sep 2008 19:42
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----- Original Message -----
From: philandnon
To:
Sent: Saturday, September 20, 2008 2:13 PM
Subject: Medregal Village position 10.31.80N 63.47.83W Medregal Village is the kinda hub of the area we
are in at the moment as far as Cruisers are concerned. Once a very
thriving hotel complex with tourists coming from all over Europe, now since
Chavez came to power, and the US and Europe became a little hostile toward him,
travel companies around the western world have been nervous about sending there
tourists to Venezuela. Now things are different and it is deemed safe again,
though Chavez is still about as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool in the
States. But, Venezuela is the 4th largest oil producer in the world and the US
needs his oil and Venezuela need the US for its imports because other than oil
they produce little themselves. His oil revenues certainly seem to help the
local people, the houses of the local community here all have electric and
water, but that is supplied free of charge, they have no rates to pay either and
only on luxury items you pay VAT at 9%. Petrol and diesel you have to pay
for, as I've said before it's a reasonable price, we filled up yesterday, 300
litres, that cost us nearly 2 pounds or 3 euros. We can do that!
Medregal Village though has suffered as a result of
lack of custom and turned to the sailing community for its business. Jean Marc,
a Belguim guy runs the place with his Venezuelan wife Yoleda. Jean Marc in his
office is in one of the photos. He has built a yacht haulout facility and its
proving successfull, and while hauled, if you don't want to live aboard you can
rent a room. As you can see the hotel area is quite charming, if you look under
the bar, there are glasses with notes in, they are the cruisers bills. There is
no barman, we help ourselves, write down on paper what we have and Jean Marc
makes up the bill when we leave. Apparently I'm told a certain nationality
is renown for disappearing in the early hours without paying, I won't say who,
they don't even say au revoir.
We are anchored a couple of hundred metres offshore
as you can see on the Google earth pin. The rest of the photos are of the
adjacent beach area where many ex-pat or ex cruisers have bought property.
They're all on the sea front although as you can see, it's not the open sea,
we're anchored near the eastern end of the Golf of Cariaco. It is though a
beautiful stretch of water, with some good winds and generally calm seas. So
sailing, windsurfing and boating in general is good here. There are a lack of
shops, in fact there aren't any around Medregal Village so it means a trip into
town by bus to get to market. Alternatively you can sail or dinghy about 6 miles
across the golf to another town to shop. On the trip you'd no doubt be
accompanied by our Dolphin friends, they follow us everywhere in the Golf,
hundreds of them.
We'll stay in Medregal for a couple of weeks more
or round and about before a trip to Margarita perhaps, though we intend to
haulout at the end of November in Medregal to clean and paint
Chaser's bottom and take a trip back to Spain and UK to visit Rob
Susie, hopefully James and our new Grandchild 'Peanut' that we have an early
photo of. It still makes me feel old being called Dad, so Grandad has to be out
of the question, maybe Captain, or Supreme Commander or something. Any
suggestions on a postcard please.
IMGP5033.JPG IMGP5040.JPG IMGP5041.JPG IMGP5043.JPG SI850516.JPG SI850521.JPG SI850524.JPG SI850525.JPG SI850566.JPG SI850509.JPG SI850451.JPG SI850452.JPG These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. Try it out here: http://picasa.google.com/ |
