WAY POINT - navigating, WEIGH POINT - fishing, WHEY POINT - yoghurting Booby Aboard! …..Swimming the Equator!…..Back to the Galapagos….Eau de Sea Lion (Odour Sea Lion)…….but…. WHERE DO BIRDS PUT THEIR FEET WHEN THEY’RE FLYING? ..especially those big gum-booted pelicans………altho’ sometimes I can see pelicans’ feet, they tuck them back like they are holding their big, fish-filled, pot bellies in…but for all the other birds, nada…… And talking birds, last night on my watch, 4am - 6am, a [View Full Entry]

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Another day, another family, another roast pig……the sound of a thousand tiny balls, bearing…..thoughtlessly efficient design…..back on board….and so much less…..than last time! Life in Cuba, the people, the country, can be described in many, many ways, but I can tell you one thing for nothing…it is NEVER boring! nunca aburrido! Not that I get bored easily, as you know, I mean, I spent time staring out, just above the horizon, I could have done the hare krishna thing, I’m easily amused, but here, you know who wept! It is a constantl [View Full Entry]

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WELCOME TO THE HOTEL INGLATERA….such a lovely place….such a lovely face It’s a wonder all the women aren’t pregnant and all the men asleep. Cuba runs on sex, fuelled by rum, coffee and tobacco, [View Full Entry]

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Sailing down the Colombian coast, big, grey, dusky mountains so close by. The mist is rising up the gullies and ridges, looks like bushfire smoke, wreathed in the trees, slowly tearing itself away, spiralling up to join the massive thunderhead, taking up half the sky, a gigantic slow motion explosion, billowing out, twisting and contorting, blindingly white, so pure and perfect, a larger-than-life, laundry detergent commercial. Spooky bit of mainland Colombia here. The Darien. Impassable, no roads, incredibly steep mountains, dangerous swamps and lots of people with guns: Colombian police a [View Full Entry]

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I’d bought a new rod and reel, I didn’t want to be catching whales, or anything bigger than I could eat, so I went for a medium size reel with 200m of 50lb line. I chose this reel because it has a little arm that swings back and forth, laying out the line as it’s reeled in. The old reel was slightly larger but I had to be guiding the line onto the reel with finger or thumb. This was exceedingly difficult when reeling in something substantial. Hey, even the little tunas fight like fury! Anyway, the first time out [View Full Entry]

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After dinner one night, sitting out back, dark, swirling water, swells rolling thru’, it’s so much spookier at night, the foreboding-meter ratchets up to 11, I chuck a piece of leftover bread out the back…suddenly a massive splash, flash of silver and gone!…quick!!….out with the line…. bit of somescrap on the hook and in….the line didn’t get 10’ down and whack…big fight…this one’s a real goer…..the handline is slipping thru’ dinner greasy fingers…I can’t hold it when it runs…slowly [View Full Entry]

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Here we go again, see if this works!!............A VELCRO PARTING FROM PUERTO LA CRUZ AND MORE… A sad day as we leave PLC…after 8 weeks of boredom, frustration and general stir-craziness it was a day to look forward to…but then I realised what I was leaving…the espanol lessons, the gym, the good friends, the pool, the bars, the restaurants, the golf course…the markets, the people……it was a velcro parting…the boat was welded to the dock……we left with a wrench……..I feel I’ll be back! But here we are n [View Full Entry]

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In this episode: Winter in the bar, constant contrasts, plumbing the unfathomable - the Venezuelan toilet system, security, the effects of too much gravity, the Marina and the Development, Puerto Ordaz, Caracas revisited, another rum factory, the bus, the neighbourhood (there it goes), getting published and more grammatically strangled pithiness. At least my español is improving and I have ñ on the keyboard! yes, the time is slippping away...I've got no idea any more about anything ...but my conscience has been prickling lately so it must be close to blog o'clock...I've been keeping some no [View Full Entry]

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Come back in the trip? Return to Canaima and the fabulous Falls... So we got to Puerto La Cruz (PLC) and got a berth at a marina…have we been there?…....Michael wanted to shout us a trip...very nice gesture.....so we went and saw the delightful Keigla who squeezed us into a 3 day excursione to Canaima…it started out with her squeezing us into a kamikaze taxi at 4am….an old shitbox chevy with the back seat from hell, you know, riding the bum-cracking bar in the middle or cramping in the lopsided sags on the sides….and a driver who, to be fair, probably [View Full Entry]

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JOE WAS COMING TOMORROW TO MEET WITH OYSTERS AT A FART PARTY What I meant to say was I’M COMING WITH MY GIRLFRIEND AND MEETING THE OTHERS AT THE FESTIVAL Ahh language!…If one is, as I am, verging on the bereft when it comes to speaking espanol…even on the computer I can’t find the bizzo that should go over the ‘n’…then conversations on the telephone are nigh on impossible!…however, as some testament to endurance over competence I did manage, this morning, to get us into a marina….fortunately, as we approached this enormously expa [View Full Entry]

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