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Diane's Diary6/4 Tuesday I went to the writer's group at 10am in Hummingbird Marina. I wrote an article entitled, " Sex, tans & cocktails" that I read to the group. They liked the article & made some helpful suggestions. I am going to submit it to Latitudes & Attitudes magazine after I make some changes the group suggested. When I came back, I vacuumed the forward cabin & oiled it. I updated my logs & did some finances. I made some phone calls & renewed my AT&T prepaid calling card. It cost .28 per minute on the AT&T card vs. .80 with the local Trini phone system. 6/5 Wednesday I went to the Price Smart- the local food warehouse just like Price Club this morning. Since we are leaving soon, we are stocking the boat up since it's easier to provision the boat while it's at a dock. The only other marina we plan to be in is in Puerto La Cruz. Otherwise, we probably won't be in a marina until we get back to the US. I was tired in the afternoon so I laid down for about an hour. I worked on the slipcovers around 4pm until 6pm. We only have 2 slipcovers left to do! 6/6 Thursday I went into downtown Port of Spain this morning for a mammogram. The fee was $40USD here vs. at least $100 back in the US so it was worth doing. Fortunately, I got a clean bill of health. Afterwards, I went shopping for some more material. I also went to the American Airlines office & managed to get frequent flyer tickets back to the US. When I called the US office of American I wasn't able to get the free tickets, yet when I called the local American office here in Trinidad mysteriously, seats were available. Seems kind of funny how I couldn't get them when I called the US directly. Anyway, I was glad to get the tickets as I was getting price quotes of $725USD per ticket to fly home from either here, Venezuela or Curacao not including the almost $200USD to fly from Barcelona VZ to Caracas! Last year we flew home for $400USD each roundtrip so this amount seems absurd. It's almost double what we paid last year. The airlines are screaming about how no one is flying & yet they are charging such high amounts for tickets. We rented a car at 4pm since Larry has to go to the doctor tomorrow to get the stitches removed. We went to Jenny's restaurant with Mima. The food was good although Chinese food is not as cheap here as it is at home. We paid $20USD for the both of us & we all drank water only. 6/7 Friday We drove to the doctor this morning so Larry could get the stitches removed. Fortunately, everything seemed to be OK. We stopped at a repair store to look at our TV but after talking to the technician, it appears to be the SSB radio. He suggested pulling the plug on the TV when we transmit on the SSB to do email. We tried it & it worked so we really didn't have a problem with the TV at all. If we had gotten it looked at, the store wanted $50USD just to give a diagnosis. Since the TV in the US was not that expensive, we weren't even going to have it fixed. After the doctor, we stopped at Adam's Bagels but the bagels were terrible. We decided to take a drive to Maracas Beach even though it was raining on & off all day. From here on the north coast, there are beautiful views of Trinidad but unfortunately the weather was not good with all the rain so visibility was limited. We did have a wonderful shark & bake meal though. We stopped at Linda's Bakery & the Post Office in Carenage as our mail sent from the US in late March is still missing. They made some phone calls & promised to look for it. We'll stop by again next week when we have a car again. After we got back, we went over to Coral Cove & Steph took a ride back with us to make some phone calls & go swimming. There was a free wine & cheese party in the wine store located right near our boat. Naturally, cruisers can never miss a free party so off we went. 6/8 Saturday I made some eggplant this morning. Since it's a lot of work, I tend to make a big tray of it. I went walking on the treadmill at 4pm. Steph came over while I was on the treadmill & we went swimming. For some reason, I got a really bad night sleep & was up reading in the middle of the night. 6/9 Sunday We didn't go to dominoes today as we have too much to do to get the boat ready to leave. I did the laundry all morning. I called Aunt Mary this morning, as she had to put Millie (her cat) to sleep yesterday so I knew she would be upset. We rarely make phone calls since they are so expensive but I knew she was very upset so we called. I think she was really glad we did. In the afternoon, I finished the slipcover I was working on the other day. Only 2 more slipcovers to go! This project took a lot longer than I thought it would. I went swimming in the afternoon. 6/10 Monday & 6/11 Tuesday We had lunch at Joe's Pizza with Mima & after lunch Steph left with Larry & I to go turtle watching at Grand Riveria beach. So we rented a car to drive the 3 hours up there. It was a wonderful drive with great views of the north coast. Since there is no continuous road around the north coast, you have to drive across the island & then go up to the north coast. By the time we gassed up the car, we left Chaguramas around 1:30pm. Since we made lots of stops on the road & got lost when Larry & Steph weren't watching the signs, (I couldn't see them from the back seat), we didn't get up to Grand Rivere until after 5pm. It was a beautiful drive with gorgeous views, but the road was narrow, twisty & went over small one car wooden bridges. I definitely would not want to be on this road at night though. I was glad I didn't have to drive this on the left side of the road. It really throws you off since we learned to drive on the right. Just something like putting the turn signal on is reversed & they both kept putting on the wiper blades when they wanted to put on a turn signal. Anyway, the hotel was right on the beach. Our room was the largest room they had with 3 big double beds so we all shared the same room. The hotel was actually quite nice & much nicer than the more expensive one right across the street. Since it was still light out, we went for a walk on the beach. We got to see some of the hatchlings they had saved to put in the water that night. Birds eat the hatchlings if they come up during the day. We had 2 bottles of wine Steph bought. It was extremely humid so we just sat outside the room & had our drinks. We had brought sandwiches with us & just ate a light dinner of soup & French fries in the hotel. We told the hotel to wake us up when the turtles were on the beach so we all decided to lay down until they called us. Well, less than 5 minutes after we lay down, about 8pm, they called us. The turtles were on the beach! We went with the guide but we had to go with another group, which we weren't too happy about as we thought we would be going by ourselves. The other group had a bunch of kids with them also & we were afraid they would scare the turtles. They would not allow flash pictures on the beach, as they are afraid of scaring the turtles. We understood the reason for this. At the town we went to see the turtles at last year they are seeing a reduction in the number of turtles & don't know whether this is due to using flashlights & flash pictures. Anyway, we got to see some hatchlings coming up as we were allowed to use flashlights as we were walking out to see the turtles. I had the flashlight on when we were allowed to still use it when all of a sudden; I felt something crawling on my feet. I shined the flashlight on it & there were hundreds of baby hatchlings crawling all over us! We all stopped so we wouldn't squish them & picked them all up & put them in the water. The survival rate for these hatchlings is extremely small- only about 10%. Anyway, we saw 27 big turtles that night. We really enjoyed seeing them all but wish we could have seen them better. There was no moon whatsoever so visibility was extremely limited. We would have liked to use our flashlight but understand why we couldn't. Anyway, we only saw 7 turtles last year so it was nice seeing all these turtles. Larry said seeing the turtles are like watching a VW bug coming out of the water! The site certainly was beautiful! We really enjoyed it & were glad we stayed overnight. Anyway, we got back to the hotel room after 10pm & we were all tired. We had fans in the room but the humidity was very high. We had mosquito netting too since there was no window glass & the bugs could freely enter the room. We used the mosquito netting but with the fan on, it kept blowing the net. We all got a restless night sleep. We put in a request for them to wake us if any turtles were still on the beach when it was light out. Sure enough, at 5am, they woke us that a turtle was still on the beach so we all went out. We got to see the turtle in twilight & we all took some pictures even though visibility was limited. It was great seeing one in daylight. After, we went back to the room, had showers, a light breakfast (only fruit, bread, & juice were included in the price) & left the hotel before 8:30am. We wanted to see the lighthouse & take our time going back. We saw the lighthouse, which wasn't worth the extra miles to see as the views were not as good as we expected. Anyway, we had to get the car back before 1pm or pay for another day. We stopped at West Mall quickly & then back at the Post Office to see if they found our mail. Miraculously, they found it! They claimed it just came in the day before but it was obvious they didn't locate it until the Postmaster made some phone calls. Anyway, we were glad to have the mail! Now we have our magazines & Christmas cards for the past 6 months. We got back to the boat in the early pm & just relaxed the rest of the day as we were both tired & read our mail. It was strange reading Christmas cards almost 6 months later. We both lay down & slept for a while. 6/12 Wed I went to Price Club again this morning to provision the boat so we can leave. I have done a little each week. Larry borrowed Mima's sander & sanded the oars & part of the companionway I didn't get to last year. I will put Cetol on it all. I called American Airlines & we changed our flight from 7/24 to 7/23 as our tenants are leaving 7/25. |