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Diane's DiaryJuly 28 Monday I started checking on flights to go home. If I can get a good fare I may go. Cinnamon is our responsibility and I know my parents don't want to have to make a decision as to put him to sleep or not. Plus, it's very hard communicating with everyone by phone, as we have to go down to Plaza Mayor to use the phone since the marina phone in the minimarket is broken. These cheap Internet phones cost about .06 per minute to call the US compared to about quadruple that using a regular phone. Plaza Mayor is about a 15-minute dinghy ride or 10-minute cab ride so it's not very convenient when trying to use the phone. We can only communicate with the vet by email since he's hard to get to by phone. Remember, there's no phone number for someone to call us back at! Anyway, I checked with the local travel agent, called AA in the states (we can do this for free) and finally learned there was a AA office right here in PLC so I called them. Since the B is fixed at 1600 and we exchange on money on the black market at 2500, it's actually not too expensive for us right now. I can get a 3day advance purchase roundtrip ticket for around $450 and fly from Barcelona- Caracas- Miami- NY all in 1 day. So, I will wait till Thursday when I call Mom and Dad back to see how he's doing. Once we leave for the out islands, it will be very difficult for me to get home. Also, the plane ticket will be more expensive in Bonaire since we don't have the good exchange rate we have here. July 29 Tuesday I defrosted the freezer- I know you all think this is very exciting but it actually takes a lot of time. I do it the way my Nanny used to - boil the water and put it in the freezer. Of course, this means everything must come out of the freezer and the refrigerator section so it's actually pretty time consuming. Here in the marina with the AC going, the temp is much cooler so it doesn't have to be defrosted as often as at anchor. Of course, we probably go in and out of the refrigerator more at anchor since it's hot and we need to drink a lot of fluids. The USD is down right now to about 2200- 2400 depending on where you get it. The government is selling bonds in USD denomination so the locals are buying the bonds instead of going to the black market. This should only last a short time - a week or two but is not good since I may want to go home and need to cash at least $500 to buy my plane ticket. Anyway, I also updated my Excel finance spreadsheet. July 30 Wednesday I went to Exito supermarket with Tom and Steph in the am. I took a short nap in the PM and than we went to the Maremares free weekly cocktail party. Tonight they had it in the bar and it was great because it's air conditioned there. Usually it's outside and it's so hot out since there's little breeze in the complex. July 31 Thursday S/V Texas Reb came in today- we haven't seen them in a long time. They only came into the marina as their dinghy motor quit working so they needed to repair it. Anyway, I went with Larry to Makro this morning. After lunch, I went with Texas Reb via taxi to Plaza Mayor so I could call Mom and Dad. Cinnamon seems to be doing OK with his second shot but the vet said he would email me. He definitely has kidney disease though so this isn't good. I'm going to wait a few days to see how he is doing before I decide if I should go home. Texas Reb, Mima, Brian from Full Monty and us ordered Domino's pizza and sat by the pool with it. Unfortunately, it started to really pour out but we had mostly all eaten. Larry volunteered to take Mima home - the dinghy was already up on a halyard for the night but he took it down. It was raining buckets of water. He was thoroughly drenched when he came back. Still we all had a good time even with the rain. August 1 Friday Larry and I went to EPA this morning- a smaller version of Home Depo. We wanted to get throw rugs to put on the varnish on the floor but we couldn't find any. After lunch (of leftover pizza), Larry went over to Mima and I did some emails. I made some biscuit mix along with a beef dish for dinner. It really started to rain very hard so Larry stayed over at Mima's to have drinks. Elia had a drink with me since it was raining too hard for him to leave. Elias brought us the movie "Looking for Nemo" to watch. Unfortunately, we definitely lost some translation since all kids movies are dubbed in Spanish. However, we enjoyed watching it anyway. August 2 Saturday I made some chili this morning while Larry went to the monthly swap meet at the small supermarket here in the marina. I vacuumed and cleaned up the boat. Elias told us of a store in downtown PLC that may have the rugs we want so off we went. Sure enough they had them. They are just cheap rugs but that's OK as we don't need expensive rugs down here. We also got 2 wooden carved names for the boat- 1 says Destiny and the other Venezuela. Don't know where we are going to put it on the boat yet. August 3 Sunday I made bacon and eggs and pressure-cooked beans for the chili in the AM. In the afternoon, I washed 2 rugs and did 18 emails- WOW! We went through a bunch of magazines and threw a bunch of stuff out. I was feeding the stray cats in the marina but am now feeding the stray dogs also as another cruiser who was doing it left. It really is very sad about all the stray animals down here. But cruisers are real softies and someone always volunteers to feed them. The dog had 6 puppies but only 2 are left- don't know what happened to the other 4. Anyway, she is so skinny it is really very sad- I really feel badly for them all. The cats too are not well but no one takes care of the animals and they all probably have diseases. Anyway, at least I hope the cruisers are doing the right thing in taking care of them. August 4 Monday Larry and I went to the urologist this morning as his brother Eric said he should get his prostate checked. We were not very impressed with the doctor and question whether he really knew what he was doing as we both did not have a good impression of him. He said Larry didn't have anything to worry about. We went to Plaza Mayor afterwards, did some shopping, and had lunch. I also wrote a few letters and mailed them to the US with someone who was returning there. I washed some more rugs out, as they were filthy. We are getting an enormous amount of dust here in PLC and it gets into the boat a lot also. August 5 Tuesday Both Steph and Denny from White Tiger stopped by the boat. We heard a noise coming from the refrigerator so Larry had to take everything out from under the sink to see what the problem was. Fortunately, it only needed to be tightened. We finally got to move everything back underneath the table - we keep 2 large crates of food and rum under it. We had to take everything off the floor so Elias could varnish it and Larry wanted to make sure it was really cured before we put everything back. Anyway, there was a lot of sanding dust under the table so it took a while to clean everything up before we could put stuff back. Finally, the boat is getting back to normal again. Elias brought us the Jim Carey movie "God for 1 day". I usually don't like Jim Carey but this movie wasn't bad at all. It's so nice watching first run movies right on our own boat. August 6 Wednesday I went to Plaza Mayor again and called Mom and Dad. Cinnamon seems to be doing better but I made the decision to just go home anyway. I haven't been back in the US in over a year and I need to see myself how he is doing and talk wit the vet. I am very worried about him and think this is the beginning of the end - after all he is 18.5 years old! So, I made the plane reservations and will fly out on August 11 and return on August 26. That should give me enough time to see what's going on with Mr. C, visit people and go shopping. It sounds like 2 weeks is a long time but I know it will go very fast as I have a lot of shopping to do for Larry. He wants naturally, a lot of boat parts. We went to the Maremares weekly cocktail party tonight and unfortunately did not put on bug spray. We got bitten alive! Larry had almost 20 bites on 1 ankle alone. Next time we have to remember the bug spray! August 7 Thursday I waited for a friend of Arnaldo to come exchange money with me this morning but he did not show. He wanted to come in the afternoon but wanted to give me a check that I would have to go cash! Obviously, I was not going to accept this so looked for someone else to exchange the money with. Since the government is issuing US dollar denominated bonds, the USD is down to 2200 at some spots. I did manage to get 2550 but that was because I wanted to exchange over $500. Anyway, all this took until lunchtime. I have to go pay for my ticket today as I only had 24 hours to pay. So, I took the bus (foolish with all that cash- I didn't even think about it. But there seemed to be no taxis and the bus was right there. Thankfully, I had on my money belt so no one knew I had the money on me) downtown to the AA office. They were busy so I went to the seamstress Emma to leave off my chair cushions. She is going to make covers of the material I have for only $2 US each cover. I can't even do it at that price so we'll let her do it. Afterwards, I went back to the AA office to get my plane tickets. They were busy and only 1 girl was working so I had to wait a while. Finally, the other girl came back from lunch and I got my ticket. But I was there for quite a long time. I did some souvenir shopping for gifts to bring home and finally got back to the boat around 6pm. Elias stayed for drinks and didn't wind up leaving till 8 so we had a very late dinner. August 8 Friday I went back to Plaza Mayor to call my parents and let them know I bought the plane ticket and will see them on Tuesday. I also bought Larry some food from the supermarket for when I'm gone. I bought some phone cards for Larry and for me to take with me on my trip. I will call Giulio from Caracas and need to call Larry when I arrive back in Caracas. I stayed for lunch at the mall. I also brought my laundry in so it would be finished before I leave. I went back at 5pm to pick it up. We went through a bunch of magazines and threw a whole bunch out. We know I will be bringing more back with me when I come back so we wanted to get rid of some! August 9 Saturday Packing day! It's amazing how long it takes to find everything I needed to bring back with me. It took me almost the whole day to find everything with Larry's help of course. Just things like long pants (ouch! I haven't worn these since the last time I was home!) Luggage, luggage locks, passport etc. These are not things we use to often so they were packed away. August 10 Sunday I took it easy today as I know tomorrow will be a long day. I leave here at 6am and don't get into JFK until 8:30pm so it's a very long day. I am excited about going home to see everyone though as it's been so long. I hope Mr. C is OK but I'll soon see. Anyway, I basically took it easy today and did some updates to my logs. I also finished some last minute packing. Tomorrow I will be in the land of milk and honey- at least that's how most Americans still think of the US! |