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Neill August 2, 2001
Finally, my turn again. Since I last wrote I've
been home for a work symposium, made my blunder of the year and missed
Bronwen's 16th, gotten mugged in Caracas, gone to a family wedding, spent
an incredible two weeks in the mountains, and of course rebuilt the toilet
again.
But I want to write about now.
We are in a group of islands called Las Aves off
the northwest coast of Venezuela, about 30 miles east of Bonaire. We have
been in the Venezuelan islands since we left Puerto La Cruz on the 17th.
We are now living the life that many people think we are always enjoying:
work and school in the morning and play in the afternoon. Blue water, no
other boats, good reef snorkeling, windsurfing, sundowners in the cockpit.
When we are near shore and civilization, and we get together with other
yachties, my stories seem to have a common theme: hassles with
civilization. "It took two days, four hours each time, just to find that
you cannot wire money from any Venezuelan bank" "It took two days, four
hours each, to get a human on the telephone at the bank back home." I go
on and on. It is hard to imagine (not me going on, I mean the hassles).
Part of it is our lack of local knowledge, but a lot of it is that the
things we take for granted just don't happen some places, or they happen v
e r y s l o w l y. Getting parts in, sorting out money problems, making a
phone call, sending a fax, finding refrigerant, making makeshift toilet
washers. It often takes the morning to figure out what is going on, then
you need to be very quick in a place like Venezuela, because after their
two hour lunch, they only open up again from 2-4 in the afternoon.
But I was going to write about here. Out here it is
like it is supposed to be. The main civilization to deal with is the huge
population of boobies (Aves means birds and boobies are tropical sea
birds, like a large gull with wider wings, known for stupidity and
projectile defecating. At least that is how we think of them.) The only
hassle they give is diving our fishing lures and pooping in the dinghies.
There is also a little problem with the barracuda boys. They are nasty
fish, we've seen them up to about 4.5 feet, that seem very curious and
could easily chomp through my wrist or ankle, or thigh, but so far just
seem to follow us around. The more you try to evade them, the more curious
they get. If you try and scare them off, they go about 5 feet then turn
and show their teeth and follow with a little more intensity. That is when
we normally decide to end the swim.
Except for the boobies and fish, we are on our own,
nearest boat about a mile away, in a great little anchorage off of "Booby
Island". The breeze is constant, between 15 and 30 mph but we are behind a
big reef so the 3-6' seas outside don't get to us. The water is crystal
clear, and takes on the color given by the bottom. Sand gives a fantastic
travel brochure turquoise, weed is dark, as is coral, except near the
surface when it is a golden brown. We move every 4 days or so. There are
a lot of great spots. We stopped at Tortuga and Los Roques before the Aves
and they had incredible beaches but were a bit busier. One of the hardest
things is deciding where to live for the next few days. Behind the reef is
fun and great snorkeling but can get a bit wild and you tend to miss land
after a while, like being anchored in the middle of the ocean. So we like
to find a nice little island to anchor near, hopefully with a beach to
play on. But once there, you always wonder if the one down the way is a
bit "better". We read and listen to others but no two boats look at the
same place in quite the same way.
There are no shops till Bonaire. Bonaire is
downwind so we probably will not come back here after we leave. So that
means we stay until we run out of something we cannot live without.
Currently the leader in that particular race is propane, our only cooking
fuel. We are onto our second of two tanks, with something like another
week or 10 days left. We are trying hard to stretch it. No afternoon tea,
no toast, team meals when practical. Provisions are doing pretty well. We
did our last shop in Puerto La Cruz on the 16th, over two weeks ago. We
still have some of the longer lasting veggies, even some meat left.
Although we did three major shops to stock up in PLC (it was a 5 mile
dinghy ride through a strange Venetian-like inland water way to the
supermarket) we find that we overlooked some stuff that we assumed we'd
never run out of: popcorn, crackers, tea (!!) When we got here our good
friends the Hoptoads had been out for 4 weeks already and had their own
weak spots in their provisions. We gave them some butter and flour and oil
and in return we have had fresh muffins delivered in the morning! Kind of
like an electric bread maker, but you don't have to clean the little
stirring thing.
So we're out here "living the dream". In the
morning the kids do school, I work, Sarah does laundry or bakes or sews or
plans our next route. In afternoon Bronwen and I are often still working
but we all try and play for at least a little while. Daily routine does
get interrupted from time to time with boat jobs. We found that our hot
water tank was seeping. S and I spent a morning removing the hulk of
rust. It will be offered to Neptune in deep water and we will go without
hot for a bit. And the wind generator had its 10th rebuild or so, it is
doing yeoman service out here, providing about a kWh per day. But there
are no complaints: the windsurfing is fantastic, the snorkeling is good,
island exploring always interesting, and sitting and staring at the scene
isn't too bad either.
All for now, Neill and the mellow Margaritas
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