Today, as Karen and Ralph were picking us up to go ashore, another dinghy, from the Canadian boat, KAHLULA, arrived simultaneously.  After an exchange of names and :where are you from?",it was discovered that they were from Squamish as well and that Karen and Ralph knew the parents of the two brothers and had been encouraged by the parents to correspond with them as Bryson and his brother circumnavigated!

We managed to tie off at the concrete pier near my encounter with my remora friend.  The town is definitely designed for tourist traffic with many small shops selling snacks and beach paraphernalia.  It is quite small and it did not take long to locate an ATM and an internet cafe (sans air conditioning).  There are vendors everywhere, and, being the only visible foreigners in town, we were approached by every one of them, I believe.

The town is quite charming and already decorated for Christmas.  Frosty and the Nativity scene depicted on the beach reminded me of the large fabric lanterns with internal lighting we saw in Singapore at the time of the Moon Festival.  Most of the two-dimensional Santas and Frosties sported the local black and white patterned straw hats.  Frosty was surrounded by smaller "lantern" red crabs.  Fruit vendors are on every street corner and do a brisk business.  Vegetables are harder to find, but seem to be fresh and local- very flavourful.  We had lunch, sharing a plate of lomito, tenderloin and tomatoes and papas fritas.  We found it tasty and the restaurant pleasant, but not terribly inexpensive.  We all thoroughly enjoyed ice cream treats at a sidewalk stall afterwards!

The weather seems to be abating and we have decided to set sail for Punta Hermosa at 0200 hours.  This has rather put today in limbo.  We are just filling in time.  Yesterday Dave dropped me off at Isla Pelicanoto swim around it and return to the boat.  It was a much shorter swim than anticipated in more than one way.  It only took about 15 minutes to get all around the island and, since the visibility was basically zero, rather a disappointment.  En route to the boat, I noticed that Dave had returned in CHERUB, thus relieving the need to be on constant vigilance for motor traffic.  Thank heavens he DID return.  I had only swum a short distance when I was suddenly bumped twice by the over friendly remoras again!  Dave says he has never heard me shriek before!  I hastily aborted the swim and clambered aboard CHERUB!

I was considering swimming to shore from the boat and doing some lengths when Ralph reported that he was being bumped by remoras right at the boat!So much for swimming again yesterday and today!

We puttered about on shore visiting LunAzul, an air-conditioned internet cafe which also allows you to plug in your laptop to their service,  for a weather update, snacking on meat skewers and limonada, exploring and "chatting" with the locals.  Most importantly we left our week's garbage in a bin on the shore.

A couple of incedents this week at the dinghy pier were rather upsetting.  Earlier Ralph and Karen returned to their dinghy to see a boy jumping overboard and swimming away.  Their gas cap was off the tank and found on the floor.  Apparently, the young boy was sniffing gasoline in their absence.  How sad in a place where the children all seem to rush down to the beach for swimming, pedal-boating and other healthy activities each afternoon when school lets out.

The second incident involved CHERUB.  We had anchored her stern away from the pier to minimize damage while we were ashore.  When we returned, the anchor line was floating free.  I swam and searched thoroughly for the missing anchor (formerly attached with a non-slip knot), but it is still missing.  We now need a new kedge anchor and a little bit of ANGEL remains in Rodadero as a souvenir of our visit!