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Diane's Diary5/5 Saturday We walked over to the internet place today- 1 franc per minute. So, it's about $2USD for 15 minutes. The girl was very nice & charged us less than the quoted 1 franc per minute. The keyboard is in French so it's hard to use us but she was very nice & helped us quite a bit. We went onto the websites for our charge cards & bank accounts so in the afternoon I did some accounting. We wanted to eat in the really good French restaurant Auberge de Marin for lunch. We hiked up there but it was closed for lunch. We wound up eating at a place across from the marina. This afternoon Larry replaced the gasket on the main hatch as it was leaking. 5/6 Sunday We worked on the boat the whole day. I took a long walk in the am. We got the dinghy on the dock & cleaned it & used the 303 fabricguard on it. It took us quite awhile to clean it. Glad we got it on the dock- the water is not very clean here & it was already starting to get growth. I also cleaned the cockpit & the cockpit cushions. I moved some things around to get ready to do a major shopping before we leave here. 5/7 Monday We rented a car with S/V Autumn Wind for a few days to sightsee & provision the boat. From here till Trinidad food gets increasingly more expensive so we will restock here. Plus, having a car & being at a dock makes provisioning that much easier. It's very difficult to haul liquids into the dinghy & bring them onto the boat. Anyway, the rental cars are fairly cheap- we got one for 180 francs per day- about $25 USD per day but it's stick shift & no A/C. Old car also. Since I can't drive stick & Larry is a bit rusty, it was better & cheaper for us to split a car rental with another cruiser. Besides we all want to do the same things anyway & we enjoy the company of other cruisers. Since Larry hates food shopping, he stayed back at the boat & I went with S/V Autumn Wind. The car was extremely small anyway so we actually really needed the space. We went to 2 big supermarkets- Leader Price & Euromarche as each has different things. How nice to be in a large clean modern supermarket again. Now, if I could only read French I could now what to buy! Actually, Vivian from Autumn Wind is American but speaks fluent French so she was a big help. Most of the people shopping in the store are also willing to help out. We stopped at a Chinese restaurant for lunch. Delicious! The first time I have had Chinese food since we left the US. Sometimes I get tired of Caribbean food & yearn for a good old American pizza & hamburger. They have pizza here but it's no the same. Larry worked on rebedding the windless since we have had a major leak & our bedding was getting wet. It's much easier for us to do it at the dock. We spent so much time shopping that we missed happy hour! This is something we try never to do. Then I had to unpack the stuff. Autumn Wind invited us over for a fondue dinner. 5/8 Tuesday Today is another French holiday- they have about 4 in May. That means the stores are only open for a few hours in the AM & usually close by noon. We went shopping back to the Euromarche for awhile. Then we went up to the Jardin De Balata- beautiful flower gardens, which we all really enjoyed. We brought a picnic lunch with us & drove to a park & had lunch. Then it was back to the gardens for a few hours. We got back to the boat around 5pm. We invited Autumn Wind over for dinner - good old American spaghetti & meat sauce. I brought plenty of Brinkman Farms ground beef- it's very good except it can't be formed into meatballs or meatloaf. But it makes great meat sauce, tacos etc. I'm glad I brought it as it's difficult to get ground beef down here. They don't even have it in the French supermarkets. 5/9 Wednesday I ordered flowers for Mom for her birthday & Mother's Day & flowers for Aunt Mary for Mother's Day also. Phone calls are very difficult to make. First off, we don't speak French. You have to buy a prepaid calling card & the recorded voice only speaks French. So, it's easier if you can find someone who speaks French & English so they can help you make the call. You have to wait until they can come to the phone with you, there are only 4 pay phones (& one doesn't work) & you have to wait to make your call. Since it's difficult for us to call, we rarely make phone calls. Plus, it's expensive also. But, I wanted to make sure they both got flowers & felt it was important. Afterwards, we all piled in the car & drove over to St. Francois & toured the Clement Plantation. They don't make rum here anymore but do have samples. It's a beautiful plantation with all sorts of gardens plus the remains of the rum distillery. Its chief claim to fame is the summit meeting held here after the Gulf War was over between President Bush & the French President Mitterand. They have all sorts of pictures & a video of the summit. We went to lunch at Kai No No restaurant near the water with a good view of all the reefs surrounding the entrance. No wonder they don't recommend any anchorages on this side of the island- no way I would want to cross those reefs! We stoped at a souvenir store. Then it was back to finish food shopping. We bought about 6 cases of wine all together. We won't be back in the French islands for some time so this wine has to last us for awhile. Everyone has told us the wine is terrible & expensive in the other islands so we decided to stock up here. We also ordered 5 cases of Martinque beer called beer Lorraine for about $15 USD per case from the marina provisioning store. It's the same price as the supermarkets & they deliver it to the boat for free. Hope this all lasts for awhile! We probably won't be provisioning anywhere else until Trinidad. With all the provisioning we did we spent over $600 USD. We sure contributed to the local economy! Anyway, we didn't get back to the boat until around 7:30 & still had to unload the stuff from the car, haul it to the boat, & put it away. Paul suggested we all go to pizza for dinner. I didn't want to go as we were all tired but Larry suggested we go & I'm glad we did. It was just a very long day for all of us & the heat certainly gets to you! Actually, the pizza at the restaurant on the beach was pretty good. One of the best we have had to date. |