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Great friends, great times!!!

“Holy Snap” as Martha would say, it is hard to believe that it has been almost a week since Don and Martha left. They were fabulous travel buddies and we had many laughs. Peter especially misses Don’s perfect cup of tea in the morning and the fact that he is the only person who makes a sandwich as well as Peter does (and takes equally as long!). Somehow I just don’t get the excitement over a sandwich!!!! Peter’s thrilled that after a many searches at various little stores, he has managed to find some sandwich meat (although I really don’t think bologna counts).

Don and Martha taking the water taxi on another snorkelling adventure.

Our final adventure with Don and Martha was spending a half day on a private taxi tour to the highlands where we saw a lava tunnel, some sinkholes and the highlight being the turtle farm where the giant tortoises wander at their leisure. I was blown away to walk along with a 200 year old turtle – seriously, I’m still in awe! Our final evening Don and Martha treated us to a fancy dinner out and in typical fun style, the restaurant didn’t have any power, so they made do with a generator. We will miss you two – thanks for being such great crew (okay so I’m not destined to become the next great poet).

Di and Martha sharing one of many laughs. This ancient one made us feel like teenagers.

This past week we have been kept busy getting ready for our next guests…Doug and his 11-year old daughter Shelby who arrive tomorrow. As I write this they are hanging out at the Miami airport after an overnight flight from Vancouver…they will arrive in Guayaquil, Equador tonight and then fly in tomorrow around noon. They have had a rough start to their trip as they lost their travel documents and $1,000 U.S. in cash at the airport.. Luckily their passports and wallet were in a safe place with them and I was able to send them flight information…thank goodness for e-tickets and internet cafes.

I’m still fighting this persistent cold, which has prevented us from going diving. I’m trying not to feel too sorry for myself as I pass the many dive shops in town. Methinks I’ll have to wait until the South Pacific – not such a terrible hardship after all.

There are often up to 9 sea lions on this boat next to us.

We are enjoying being part of the community here in the harbour. We’ve gotten to know a lot of the water taxi folks and watch with great amusement as the sea lions lounge on the neighbouring boats. One tried to make himself at home on our swim platform but Peter scared him off. Too bad Martha missed it.

Common wisdom says that most accidents happen while at anchor and not while tossing in the open ocean. We experienced this firsthand as we had a near miss with one of the Gap cruise boats yesterday. Their stern anchor started dragging and they came within 10 feet of smashing in to us in this fairly unprotected anchorage. We couldn’t move as they were over our stern anchor and they couldn’t start their boat because their Captain was on land, so they got in the dinghies and fended off their boat for an hour until the Captain could come to the rescue.

A little too close for comfort!

During this week, we also accepted an offer on the sale of our house. It is conditional until June 29th, which is pretty well our deadline before we set sail. Fortunately, we’ve had this week to email back and forth and get the endless details taken care of. Here’s hoping all the subjects get removed and we can cross that off our list before we head out to the open ocean. Oh yeah, the latest weather report says that the tradewinds are unseasonably LIGHT – which means that our potentially 30 day sail out in the wild blue yonder could turn out to be even longer. I’ll try not to think about that – just yet!

I’ll update the blog again after Doug and Shelby have arrived and just before we leave.

Not bad looking for a 200 year old.

Until next time…..try to imagine living 24/7 in a 46 foot boat in the middle of the ocean for 30 days or more – Doug and Peter can’t wait – Shelby and I are reserving judgement. "Whatever will be, will be" (okay I won’t be a songwriter either)