AlexandrA comes home

Greetings from The Galapagos! We have arrived safe and await Sandy's arrival tomorrow after her visit to Matsu Pitsu in Peru.

Well first of all I need to report Max for child abuse to myself. The language barrier for the first time in my adult life has gone south for me. I have never forgiven Max for feeding me black pudding as a youngster. I have never eaten offal since. No kidneys, liver, brains, black pudding, nothing. Well today we had lunch in the town on the main island of Santa Cruz. Speaking NO Spanish I had the lunch special. It started with a terrific shank soup. Next was a curry style dish with rice. Being first to finish the soup, as I generally am with all matters eating, I hoed into the mixture. A little unusual texture, not a totally unpleasant taste but not wanting seconds either. Eating more and more I could not make out the texture of the main ingredient. It wasn't meat like chicken and wasn't like a vegetable. I kept eating with that sinking sickly feeling, 'what the hell was I eating'. I did remark 'this better not be tripe'! Maxi was silent. The doubt of not knowing quickly quelled my hunger as I finished the rice leaving the remainder. Max remarked, 'you really don't want to know what it is'. "No I don't but its tripe isn't it". "Yep"! Shit! poisoned! Truly as I gulped the remaining Coke a little bit came back up. Not good. I have consciously avoided every offal for ever and I have poisoned my self. Yuck!

Well to the trip and away from my digestion woes. Definitely the Pacific one and me none for fishing. Lost 2 lures and caught exactly 0.00000 fish unless you can call the flying fish hitting me in the chest while dining on a catch, (unless others were present I would never tell of this but I cannot hide. The bloody thing was not even as big as my lures). The last 24 hours saw us to run into no wind and motoring at 6 knots to get here. We did have some nice sailing with light winds before then, we were carrying 7-8 knots under sail with only around 12 knots of wind for a couple of days. It's so good when, on a long leg to get to the half way point and start counting down, it truly seems so much quicker. On the way into Santa Cruz we were joined by a turtle and a day out, a school of large dolphins. They raced to the boat jumping and doing somersaults from the water. They were really big buggers, seemed about 8 feet long. Maxi had a sail fish sighting next to the boat too.

Upon anchoring were saw what we had been told to keep an eye out for, seals in the harbor. We had been warned previously that if you have a cat the seals like to walk them selves up the back steps into your cockpit for a sleep. One frolicked at a boat adjacent to us and when we went ashore there were 2 sun baking on the pontoon jetty. I assume they are fur seals as they looked very woolly. An agent cold called to the boat shortly after we anchored and returned with 2 officials to do the majority of the entry paperwork. Our now agent, Carlos introduced us to Carlos the inspector to make sure we did not have any plants or animals on board, we were also introduced to our government man in military style uniform and magnificently shiny shoes which i complimented him on. His name, obviously Carlos too. We mashed through the official stuff with plenty of sign language and gestures to get the information across, always plenty of smiles too. Ashore we went on the water taxi, $1 USD per person. I did not have high expectations of what to find. Wow! What a beautiful and well thought out town that far exceeded my thoughts. Paved streets, underground power, nice street lights, and no shitty crappy gift shops. Nice cafes and restaurants with cheap eats and drinks. Smiling people, no speeding divers, kids on bikes and the town central at the jetty end was a sunken concrete area with volley ball courts and skate and bike bits for the kids, nice swings and slides for the little kids, nicely finished timber on the jetty, got the picture? I will send some. It had grown dark as I finally had down loaded the 118 emails since Panama and the town centre now had 200-300 people watching and playing volleyball, riding their bikes and skate boards, a really nice atmosphere. Over and out for the momento. No seals in the cockpit yet!