13:22N 81:22W

 

Seemed to take us forever to get into the anchorage yesterday afternoon.  Providencia is ringed by a huge coral reef – the second biggest in the Americas (don’t know what the biggest is and don’t have internet to google it!) – and so we had to pick our way in carefully.  We had to go past the anchorage and find the markers then turn back and come in through the channel.  Over here the marker system is different – it’s the American red right return rule and that always takes a while to get our heads around.  Just when you think red should be to port they go and put it on starboard.

 

We dropped anchor just on 5pm beside an American catamaran who started shouting greetings at us from some distance.  When he saw the Kiwi flag he just about fell overboard with excitement “Kiwis – my favourite people in the whole world”.  It is always so nice to get such a welcome and luckily, New Zealanders do seem to be popular overseas.  We will continue that by taking him over some wahoo shortly as we still have plenty of it. Might as well keep the friendly reputation intact.

 

After another delicious wahoo meal (not sick of it yet) we fell into bed at 8pm.  It was unbelievably hot and still.....even our wind scoop didn’t seem to pull any air down into the berth and of course, you can’t sleep outside here because of mosquitoes......who wants malaria?  We have nets over all the hatches but there always seem to be one that manages to sniff us out and find a way in.  Last night however there could have been hundreds of them and we wouldn’t have woken.  Neither of us stirred until 8am which just happens to be time for the morning net.

 

Just about to head ashore and check out the town of Santa Isabel which looks delightful.  Providencia is mountainous and green with hundreds of coconut palms lining the sandy beaches.  We’ve already had an early morning swim and plan to head off snorkelling later.