The rain came last night in the middle of dinner, we could hear it rushing across the bay before it arrived, huge rush to close hatches and cover the cockpit.  Now it is less sultry and we have a good northerly wind blowing.

This morning two children arrived at the boat on a very small dugout canoe and climbed on board asking for sweets.  I gave them some biscuts and colouring books with crayons.  Took the yacht over to the fishing village to try and buy some lobster but none available, they did try to sell us tiny seed pearls.  The large village was filthy, dog poo and rubbish everywhere, locals lazing around in hammocks, playing dominoes and board games.  A tiny church with a service going on over a very unnecessary loud speaker.  Cockrels tied by their legs to the top of walls, and iguana tied up by the legs, mangy dogs, children following us asking for their photo' to be taken and amongst it all very modern televisions, very fashionable jeans with sparkles and studs and men waring oakley sunglasses. Not a charming village at all and glad to leave.  Just before lunch when we were back at our anchorage a dugout came over with some small lobsters so J has bought some and they are steaming right now in the pot. I will download some more pictures of our trip up the river yesterday and some of the other islands we have visited.

 

Dear Reader(s) (from Allan)

 

The visit to the previous village a couple of days ago was brief. A row of breeze block one storey hut/houses behind a low wall at the top of the sandy beach. People making breeze blocks with sea sand. A school, a battered church, fishing boats dragged up the beach and not much else.

 

We then sailed south and fetched up at anchor off Rio Cacique in a bay well sheltered from the northerlies that prevail at this time of year. It is a recommended anchorage as is a trip up the river.

 

We set off just before the top of the tide in the dinghy. The river entrance is protected by a bar stretching from the west and the entrance is a narrow gap at the eastern side which quickly opens out into the river proper which is surprisingly wide. The water was flat calm and a lovely apple green color. Young bright green mangroves stretcched low and thick away to the east while the western side was the bar. As we motored on, the river changed color to brown and eventually black, shallowing as we went. The young mangrove shoots gave way to tangled grey black masses of mangrove roots supporting increasingly large bushes, then trees. As the trunks thickened and grew taller they were supported by strange almost humanlike legs or supplementary trunks reaching out from the main trunks with a strange almost tentative delicacy, politely overreaching each other to push down into the river and support the trunks which looked like grey multi-legged, headless people stopped in mid stride. The slender trunks soared up to maybe a hundred feet, bare until the top when together they formed a canopy of green which filtered the sun. An occasional egret or ibis flashed by as we drifted along on the flood tide, engineless. As the tangle of mangrove intensified some grew so they became unsupportable and fell, bridging the river. Old remains poked up like spears from the black water. The stream narrowed and shallowed and it was very quiet and shaded from the sun. Fending off, we pushed on, losing all sense of direction with the sinuous twists and turns of the river. Lianas hung down from the canopy into the stream in curtains. Red spiders spun their webs between the hanging strings and little grey crabs scuttled across and up the mangrove roots.

 

Then without warning, the river suddenly broadened, the watery sides which stretched away beyond sight became mud and rock and there were palm trees, ferns and the trees of the Rainforest. By now it was too shallow to continue and we drifted back the way we came on the first of the ebb tide, enginelesss and turning slowly with the stream, watching the river narrow again as we went through the gloom under the canopy then widen, changing back from black to brown to cool green.

 

A quiet mysterious world where we did not belong.