Seaduced's Web Diary

Lagos

Seaduced

John & Jane Craven

Sat 14 Aug 2010 19:36

Yesterday was John's birthday (53 just so you know). We had a few jobs to do in the morning, one of which was to try and organise an engine service. There is a dealer here so we spent about an hour trying to sort this out, and were told that we needed to bring the boat from our mooring, to their dock at 9am, as they are not allowed to do any servicing in the marina due to the need for changing oil etc - OK in principle but we had some concerns regarding the tide and height of water in the marina and channel as we had been down to 40cm under the keel the night before. After checking, we decided it was not going to to be possible, we would have to move the boat the previous night and she would have to stay there all day until late afternoon before we could get her back. Strangely, when we rang to cancel they suddenly decided that they could do a service in the marina and would be here at 9am as planned.
After lunch on board we went to say hello to another Discovery yacht in the marina opposite us. This was boat number 6 who has done 67,000 miles, about 3 circumnavigations so we have some catching up to do! We compared notes on our boats and chatted about our different plans and other boatie stuff and then headed off into town. We were looking for a restaurant for John's birthday and there seemed to be no end of tourist places serving English breakfasts and pie and chips! The shops are also mostly tourist stuff as well. In previous towns we have visited there has been a definite 'old town' feel but here it just feels very English and different.
After a snooze in the afternoon we set out for dinner and found a very nice restaurant, according to our guide book, the most elegant in town and had a very nice fish dinner, and wine and wandered back late to the boat.

John in Lagos with his other woman!!

This morning John is in the engine room with the engineer doing the service, learning about our boat in Ukranian! My jobs include drying out the stern locker, fixing the bimini and ironing!! To keep out of the way I decided to go and check out the local market and fish market to get some provisions. The markets are always chaotic, and this one was no different and even had live chickens adding to the atmosphere. One cage of chickens was advertising eggs by the dozen but there were only 4 in the basket - do they lay to order? You may not be able to see them but there are also some live rabbits in the cage, probably both for the pot!!

The fish market here was also different to the ones we have seen before, they were gutting and cleaning the fish - even the small sardines!
The markets were the only insight into anything similar to local life or culture here - the whole place rather reminds you of Blackpool but with sun! I bought John a bottle of home-made piri-piri sauce in the market which the woman warned me was moy, moy, moy hot! John tasted it after I had passed on her warning & it nearly blew his head off!