29/3/08  13:00

We left Puerto Malinka at nine. Another wonderful day with no clouds and T-shirt weather in the cockpit.  We fly the spinnaker for a couple of hours and while it’s very pleasant we can’t do much more than 5 knots so we go back to the motor as we want to get to Puerto Quellón before dark.

19:00

We anchored in Puerto Quellón by 4pm, another 50 miles closer.   We go ashore to check out this town of nearly 14,000 and are immediately disappointed.  It is really very grim, so much so, I can barely lift the camera to take any pictures.  There is a good supermarket however and we pick us a few things.  Nik decides to go to the Internet Café and the other three of us go back to the fishing dock and the dinghy.  It is now Saturday late afternoon and all the boats have arrived with their catches.  This quickly become the most interesting 45 minutes we’ve had here.   It is a mini wholesale fish market, sans fish, but with clams and sea urchins by the ton.  One of the buyers gives us a small bag of clams and they are fantastic on the half shell.  They are to be shipped to Hong Kong. Tonight will be spaghetti vongole.  We had already given up on the thought of trying one of the local restaurants as they all looked so dire.   Puerto Malinka was much more sympathetic.