Saturday April 20th
Took it easy and the morning and stayed on board to do the dishes. After that I went into town to see if I could by some groceries. As expected there wasn’t all that much available. Though there was one kiosk (CUC store, expensive for Cubans) where I bought some pasta, olives (one of the luxuries I allow myself), some beer, and they even had some sort of chocolate bars as snacks. The vegetable stand had a limited supply, no onions or bell peppers. But, they had egg plant, don’t think I had seen that before. So I bought two, and it will be some egg plant for the coming days.
Also had another failure in the attempt to keep some kind of milk product in the fridge. The soy yogurt (guess technically that might not even be a milk product) had gone sour, so did the concentrated milk. Since I have been out of cereal for over week, and the oatmeal is also running out, I might as well not worry about the whole milk thing for a while.
When I came back from the store it was just past eleven. I had pretty much seen the town, and going for a bike ride did not appeal to me (considering that `main street’ already had some major holes in it). So I decided to do attempt some sailing, next town over (La Coloma) was a little over 25 miles away, and the wind seem to be ok. Told the guarda frontera (a very young guy, that did not seem to understand much, nor did I understand him) that I wanted to leave at noon. So he got on the radio to try to call (on the radio, most gf’s have a VHF radio) the higher ups. Guess they had already gone out for lunch, and it took until past 1:30 before I was finished with the paper work.
Motored out of the laguna and carefully made my way over the bar, the tide must have been a little higher (it was rising now) and made it out without too much of a sweat (being able to follow yesterdays track on the gps also made things easier).
Early on it looked like I was going to make one or more tacks to make it to my destination. But the wind kept turning further south (and increased a bit) so it turned out to be a very nice sail. Got all the sails up and was doing a good 5 knots most of the time. Since I am now in the shallower waters protected by the coral reefs outside there is no ocean well around here: it was like sailing a nice smooth lake. Of course the waters were the usual variations of blue, and clear. Sometimes it does feel like I am on vacation.
The wind ran out when I was about 10 miles to go, so the last two hours was on the engine. The town is at the mouth of the Coloma river, so for a change the water started to color brownish and lost its clearness. There was a well marked channel heading in, shallower than advertised, but deep enough to stay out of trouble. Got my hook down right at 8 o’clock, just before dark. By the time I had the engine on the dinghy and picked up the gf (one of them even spoke a few words of English) the mosquitoes were out in large quantities. Though, I must say that they are very bad around sunset, that last for about an hour, and than things quieted down again (luckily).
After supper I was listening to some music from across the river, sounded like some kind of party (but, from Puerta Esperanza I know the where there is loud music, there is not necessary a party). Instead of listening to it from the boat I decided to have a look at it. So, jumped in the dinghy, moored it to the gf dock and walked out. Turns out that there was quite an industrial complex there (especially compared to what I had seen lately). Some bigger buildings, I imagine for sorts of fish processing, and a large building with the noise of a generator (probably part of the cooling system). Went out the gate and walked to where the music was coming from. Turns out that there was some sort of playback show in the back yard of a restaurant. Mostly teenagers around, and a few older people. Don’t know if it was like that all night, but the part I have seen it were man, dressed up as females, play backing on some suggestive (I guess, can’t understand the words) songs. Guess that was the local entertainment in town, quite funny in a way. Hung out there for a little while and headed back to the boat before midnight.