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Diane's Diary4/5 Thursday The alternator guy came at 9am but couldn't repair the alternator himself. He said it would have to go to a machine shop. He drives Larry over there with it as it is too far to walk. Rose takes me to the grocery store in the afternoon. She doesn't have anyone else to speak English with other than her son so I know she enjoys having us around. She is dying for some books in English so I give her some. We stop by the alternator place but it still isn't ready & won't be finished until the am. Oh, well, looks like we'll be staying a few days as when it is fixed we want to make sure it's running properly before we leave. Guy kindly helps Larry with the 220 volt electricity, they lend us an adapter & we buy some other parts. If it wasn't for their help & loaning us the equipment, we would not have had electricity at the dock. We really appreciated all their help. 4/6 Friday Guy stopped by the alternator shop & picked it up for us. Larry spent a few hours reinstalling it & it works!! The repair cost $50 USD & we feel we got off cheap. We needed the alternator to charge the batteries so would have paid anything to get it fixed within reason. While Larry was working on the boat & I was done below we suddenly heard English voices. English- we haven't heard that spoken in a few days other than to ourselves!! We quickly tell them we speak English & are also Americans. We invite them over. Stephanie & Tom from Mima are planning on being here a few days. Great- they are even willing to split a car rental for tomorrow. 4/7 Saturday We rented a car with Mima today to explore the island. Since the car rentals are for 24 hrs & they are closed tomorrow Rose helps us negiotate a better rate so we decide to keep the car for 2 days. All the cars are stick & gas is $4USD gallon! Tom drove as Larry is not too great at handling stick & I can't drive it at all. We drive up to the Soufiere volcano & had a fantastic view. It was actually cold & chilly up there & felt good to us!! We also drove to the Chutes de Cabrit waterfall. The park was very crowded since it was a weekend plus school is closed for the next 2 weeks for Easter. Unfortunately, we had our Teva sandals on & these were not appropriate to wear to hike to the waterfall so I only went halfway there. Larry & Stephanie walked partially the but the trail went uphill, & got even muddier so they stopped also. WE drove to a rum factory but it seemed like a tourist trap- $6USD to sample rum & see the "tour" so we didn't bother. We circumnavigated the entire island of Basse Terre. We had a beautiful exhausting day & we were all ready for a good nights sleep. Unfortunately, Rose & Guy invited us over to their sons birthday party that evening so even though we were exhausted we knew we couldn't miss it. We drove Jon to the party also. The party didn't start until around 8 & we didn't get home till almost 1am.Dinner was not served til around 10pm. Now on this trip we usually go to bed very early around 9pm as we are up when the sun rises by 6am. So I was falling asleep at he party. We all had a great time. It was very interesting to see how a middle class Guadeloupan family lives. All I can say is the middle class in the US is far more affluent. 4/8 Sunday We were up at the same time this morning- 6am as usual but were extremely tired from the party. We were going to drive around & see the other side of the island but were all exhausted. Instead, we went to the big Cora supermarket. Larry stayed at the boat & I did a major provisioning. I bought almost 2.5 cases of wine in Guadeloupe all together. I didn't spend over $6USD per bottle & most were around $3-4USD.I spent about $250USD shopping. I stocked up on diet soda as we were told to stock up on it whenever we can as It's difficult to find DIET soda. In the afternnon, we took another drive with the car across the natural park road that divides Basse Terre in half. We did some hiking in the rainforest & it was great. Wasn't as crowded either so we were able to hear the birds. The car used $30 worth of gas so with the car rental cost divided by two couples it was only $45 USD for each couple. Not bad for 2 days use of an AIR conditioned car. 4/9 Monday We were both tired from the last 2 days activities so we decided to stay in the marina for a few more days. We hadn't had a chance to wash the boat down yet & want to do some boat maintenance. So we stayed on the boat the entire day cleaning. I washed the boat down- with boat soap even! Larry cleaned all the stantions as they were starting to get rusty. Then, I waxed all the stantions. We were exhausted when we finished with all that heat. 4/10 Tuesday We worked on the boat until 11:15 am when Mima came over & we all went to lunch. We had takeout & then were going to leave. We had lunch on Mima since they had AC- what a luxury!! However, they told us it was Easter holiday weekend this coming weekend starting on Good Friday for the next 4 days. This meant we couldn't clear into Dominica until Tuesday or pay overtime charges. So we decided we might as well stay in the marina a few days longer & work on boat repairs, go to the Saintes for a few days & on to Dominica on Tuesday weather permitting. We stayed on Mima til around 3pm- AC is just great. In the afternoon, I took a nap, Larry updated his logs & printed out my Excel spreadsheet for food items. 4/11 Wednesday Laundry is very expensive in the French islands- about $7 USD per load for just a wash! So, since we had unlimited water, I decided to hand wash the laundry. I have never done loads of hand washing before today & it literally took me hours to do it. Getting all the soap out is definitely the hardest part. I must have rinsed each "load" about 5 times!! Larry & Tom removed the barnacles from the hull of the dinghy. We also washed it & put fabric protector on it. After all this work, we decided to eat lunch out. We went back to work on the dinghy after lunch. We also decided to clean the bilge while we had the fresh water. It's a good thing we did as lots of junk came out of it. The automatic bilge pump was clogged with debris from the previous owner- little pieces of wood, sail ties. Etc. It took us several hours to clean it. 4/12 Thursday The wind really blew last night & today in the marina. David Jones, the weather forecaster, said it was going to blow today & tomorrow. No sense going to the Saintes as they are a group of islands totally unprotected so we decide to stay in the marina. I waxed about half the topsides of the boat. I also got the remnants of the electrical tape off the bow- wait a pain to remove the remaining tape! Larry worked on fixing the automatic bilge pump. I also read & updated my logs. We invited Mima over for dinner as they had us over one night also. We all had a good time at dinner & have really enjoyed their company. |