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Diane's DiaryFebruary 9 Wednesday I fried up some chopped meat to make a baked ziti tonight. I also made bacon and eggs for breakfast, brownies and pasta for the baked ziti. I'll put the ziti together later this afternoon. We are having David from Sylvester over again for dinner. I also made a taco salad for lunch. Larry will start preparing the handrails to Cetol them- they need to be sanded down first. Sv Infinity lent us some excellent old DVD movies to watch. Hopefully, we'll be able to burn a lot of old movies as we bought a DVD burner. We paid about $150 for the burner and another $100 for the software. The bad weather is still around Venezuela - 9 of the 13 states have been declared a disaster zone. Many people have lost their lives, homes and businesses. It even hit the news in the US so you know it has to be bad to go that far! Many mudslides and road closures all around Venezuela so this is not a good time to travel right now. I went shopping via our dinghy this afternoon to PLC as it has been predicted the bad weather may head our way. Regardless if it does or not, since the roads are closed we probably won't get any food deliveries here in PLC so we might as well stock up for a few days. February 10 Thursday I picked up the laundry; counted it to make sure it was all there, put it away and did some hand laundry this morning. After lunch I made a wonderful Caesar salad dressing that came out pretty good. We called West Marine several times - just wish we could get the order placed soon and that we did it over a month ago so it would already be here. As it is, it will take 2-3 weeks from Miami to Caracas and than less than a week to get it to PLC. Of course it has to get to Miami first so this will take at least another week. I did some logs and finances in the pm. We also called West Marine to get our order placed. Larry is unfortunately adding and deleting items so it makes things more confusing. I wish he would have had the list compiled before he started making all these changes. I walked 2 laps this afternoon. February 11 Friday Larry worked on the Cetol handrails today. We can't go to Caracas this weekend because the main road is closed- we can go the detour but it's really a long way out of our way. The bus normally takes 5 hours but the detour makes it 10-12 hours so it really adds a lot to the trip. We really need to get there to renew Larry's passport and pick up our new computer. Hopefully, we can go next weekend but we'll have to see. We went to the restaurant to eat dinner tonight. We were going to eat by ourselves but S/V Jacobite saw us and ate with us also. February 12 Saturday I went with Jeannie to the little seafood market near the marina. I got some shrimp- they were smaller than normal and were not that fresh but Jeannie said they were OK to buy if we used them today. Jeannie used to work in a fish market so she's a great person to bring to the store, as she knows if the fish is fresh or not. I also got two dozen eggs, as we have not been able to purchase eggs in the supermarket at all. I cleaned the shrimp when we got back. Since I only bought around a pound of shrimp, it didn't take that long. I went to Happy Hours after lunch as she helped me do our taxes. It looks like we will owe some money this year and we were only in the US a total of 3 weeks last year! Seems like we shouldn't have to pay anything since we didn't even live there and have no residence. But since we "claim" my parents house for billing purposes only, we have what NY claims is an official residence and thus will have to pay NYS taxes. Anyway, I left Happy Hours at 3pm and went with David on Sylvester to Plaza Mayor to exchange some money. We are dealing with a store there that regularly gives us more for the exchange rate than we are getting in the marina so it's worth it for us to go. We get about 50 B more per dollar so if we cash $500 USD it's 50,000 B more which is either 1 or 2 meals at the restaurant so it's worth the dinghy ride. We also stopped at Unicasa to pick up a few groceries. February 13 Sunday I made some cheese omelets for breakfast this morning. There has been no local English language newspaper in the store since the floods in Venezuela started. Many of the roads are closed so I guess we won't be getting deliveries for a while. Things are very bad across many parts of Venezuela though with lots of mudslides throughout the country and many people have lost their lives, businesses and homes. It's sounds like it's a repeat of the '99 floods that devastated much of the country. The problem is Venezuela does not have any social programs to help the poor so they are left to their own devices. Unfortunately, rich Venezuelans are not known for their charity toward those less fortunate people. Poverty here is widespread and the government doesn't do much if anything to help. It's a shame as Venezuela is such a rich country yet they don't do anything to help the poor. When Chavez came into power he did do some things to help the poor and that's why many of the poor like him so much. Chavez has done more to help the poor than any other past President has. However, the poor don't understand Chavez' communist tendencies and how he has reduced democracy in this country. I guess from their viewpoint all they care about is if they can put food on the table and don't care about anything else. This is where the rich have failed the poor in educating them about all of this. I played dominoes this afternoon but got a 350. Actually, the score should have been much lower but we had a new girl at our table that kept taking the wrong number of tiles and thus went out quicker than everyone else. I walked 2 laps in the afternoon. I made a new dish for dinner tonight- "bar-b-que" chicken in the pressure cooker with black beans that came out very good. I will definitely have to make it again. February 14 Monday Valentine's Day Larry had to go to EPA store this morning and bought me back a beautiful rose for Valentine's Day. That was very much appreciated and I really enjoyed it. Roses are one of my favorite flowers. I had to call Fidelity Funds in the US to get things together for our tax return. I called Giulio at the office and got no answer so was a little worried. We have been hearing about the bad floods in Caracas so hope everything is OK with his factory and that it hasn't been affected. I walked 3 laps in the afternoon. We went to a special Valentine's dinner in the restaurant that night. It was OK but not fantastic. We probably should have just gone to the El Morocco restaurant in downtown PLC but now they probably would have been crowded for the special day. Oh well, we'll have to get back there another day, although it's expensive by PLC standards, it's a lot cheaper than anything in the US and the food is very good. Oh, we spoke to Giulio at home at night and he advised us not to go up to Merida for the time being. Merida state was hit very badly with the floods and many of the roads are closed due to extensive mudslides. February 15 Tuesday I made a bunch of phone calls, as we will go to see Giulio in Caracas this weekend. Our new computer is due to come in and we'll get to see Giulio too. I had to call the hotel several times before we could get confirmed for a reservation as they initially said they had no openings. February 16 Wednesday I went to Makro this morning. Giancarla has invited us to a party they are having at their house Friday night and we wanted to bring some wine. There really is no place to buy wine near the hotel and we wanted to bring something to the party. I also picked up our bus tickets to go to Caracas. We spent several hours in the afternoon packing, as we needed to find things like our bags, warm clothes, long pants etc. Since we never have to use warm clothes around here, these have been packed in our long-term storage area on the boat and we needed to dig them out. We will be leaving on the 7am bus tomorrow morning so we'll have to be up around 5:30am. February 17 Thursday We went to the bus station at 6:15am only to find there was no bus. We exchanged our tickets for the 11:30am bus and thought we would go then. We got a taxi back to the marina. But when we made some inquires after we got back, we found out that another bridge on the road to Caracas failed and that's why the road is closed- again! Right now all the buses have to do a big diversion around it and have to go via Los Llanos. So, a normal 5-hour bus ride becomes 10 hours. We decided to give it a few days and see what happens. It's good we didn't go on the later 11:30am bus, as it would have arrived in Caracas late at night. Since we don't use credit cards here, we don't have a confirmed reservation for our hotel, the hotel already told us they were full, and we were afraid they wouldn't have a room for us if we showed up late at night. Then what would we have done? So it's better for us to take an overnight bus from here and just arrive in Caracas in the daytime. We could fly to Caracas but it's about $90 each plus airport taxes twice and taxi rides to and from the airport so instead of costing about $40 for both of us roundtrip it would then be around $250 just for the transportation alone not counting hotel rooms and food so this is really not in our cruising budget. Anyway, I really did not get a good night's sleep last night as I kept thinking the alarm clock wouldn't go off so I was pretty tired. We didn't do much for the rest of the day. I tried to take a nap but just couldn't sleep. February 18 Friday Since we didn't go to Caracas this weekend I am low on food so I went shopping with 2 other cruisers to CM supermarket. It's about a 10-minute taxi ride away from the marina but their price are noticeably lower than Unicasa and is the store the locals seem to shop at. I was able to get some VCD movies at a small store I have bought at before. The prices are 1000Bs less than the stores at Plaza Mayor so since I bought 7 DVD's I saved 7,000Bs. I split the taxi ride with the others but even if I hadn't, the cheaper price of the DVD's is enough to come here considering the food prices are lower also. Anyway, a cruiser was supposed to meet us at the pool at 5pm to discuss Merida with us as he had just come back. Unfortunately, he didn't show up so I was a little annoyed- he could have just called. February 19 Saturday I went back over to Happy Hours as Norma helped me with the taxes some more since I now had some more information. It looks like we are definitely going to owe taxes so I am not happy about that. It definitely eats into our cruising budget. Plus, we have just placed a large order with West Marine and bought a new computer so we have to watch our spending right now. Anyway, we had Happy Hours over for drinks and appetizers this afternoon as a thank you for helping me so much. I really appreciated her assistance even though she did say we are going to owe the government money! February 20 Sunday Lawrence from S/V Meander came over this morning just as we were finishing breakfast. He was the one who was supposed to meet with us Friday night and never showed up. Anyway, he told us all about Merida since we needed up to date information after the floods. The main town was relatively unaffected, but the outlaying communities were hit very badly. A bus station along with a large bus we just swept away in the waters. Rumors are an entire town was destroyed although the government does not want to acknowledge this. The main road and tunnel into Merida has been closed and will be closed for several months causing a huge diversion around it. We have decided this would not be a very good time to go up there right now. One of the local bus companies here in PLC has stopped running there buses up there right now so that should give you an indication of how bad things are. Anyway, Lawrence talked so much I had to shoo him off the boat so I didn't miss dominoes at 1pm! I played dominoes from 1-4pm than came back and made spaghetti carbonara for dinner. We still are not getting the English newspaper here because it comes from Caracas and the bridge is still closed. February 21 Monday Called Dad today for his birthday. We still have no word on when the Polar tour will be and I am getting really pissed off as I have done a lot of work on this and don't think we will have another tour as has been promised us. Anyway, the wind is really up right now, blowing around 20-25 knots so it's very uncomfortable. Larry was standing on the dock talking to some cruisers when the dock suddenly gave way and he plunged through the dock up to his knee. He got scraped and went immediately to the office to tell them what happened. Obviously the docks should not have just broken like this! If this had happened in the US, the marina would have been scared we would have sued them and would have tried to give him a settlement. Here in Venezuela suing is out of the question! The marina was concerned though and said they would pay for Larry to go to the doctor if he wanted. He decided not to go to a Doctor as he didn't think it was necessary so he just cleaned out the cuts, put an antibiotic on to prevent infections and iced the leg to reduce the swelling. Obviously he was not well enough to go to the potluck so I just cooked some burgers and brought them back to the boat. |