Saturday 3 August 2013

The mysterious business of what we do all day

For those of you watching the spot this week, you will have noticed that we have been on the move nearly every day. We have been going about the business of finding food, acquiring water, having laundry done, and checking in with customs and immigration to be legitimate visitors of this country. While you might do all this in the space of an afternoon, it is taking us days to get this all done, and we're not even finished yet.

The difficulties lie in the fact that not all the services are in the same place, nor do we have the language facilities to find out easily where they are and how to get what we need. Last weekend we were in a community were we could get some basic groceries and laundry done, Monday's project was to fill up the boat with water at another island (which took ALL day), and Tuesday and Wednesday we made our way to the western side of the San Blas, where we thought we could get money, but it did not work out for us. And tomorrow's project will be to visit immigration. (And then we will try again to get some money.) So every day has involved waking up and eating breakfast, getting the boat ready to move, pulling up the anchor and motoring for two to three hours, putting down the anchor in a new spot and making sure we are secure, maybe a quick swim if the water looks nice or going ashore to do what needs doing, making dinner, reading or watching DVD tv for a couple of hours, and then we head to bed and start it all over again the next day. It's been a tough life. (wink, wink)

Right now we are anchored in the East Lemmon Cays, a very popular anchorage. Unlike anywhere else we've been since we left Sapzurro, we've seen lots of boats coming and going and there are five anchored quite close by. There are beautiful little sandy islands all around us, which look like what you might imagine when you think "deserted island," but these ones have Kuna huts or lots of backpacker type people who are dropped off by boats and spend the night in tents under coconut palms. It's one day in the same place, a bit of a break before we start off again tomorrow.