Los Testigos to Margarita

Los Testigos

The first anchorage on Los Testigos

¡Hola de Venezuela! ¿Qué tal estás? Since our trip down into the Orinoco Delta, we were yet again, stuck in Trinidad awaiting spares, this time for our propeller, however, the supplier was marvelous and these finally arrived out from New Zealand. Paul was able to do all the necessary underwater so, thankfully, we didn’t have to haul out again.

We eventually dropped the lines, shook out those white flappy things with all the trings attached, wondering if we still knew what to do with them and, voilà, we did, so we headed off overnight to Los Testigos (The Witnesses), a tiny group of islands belonging to Venezuela about 40 miles north of the Peninsula de Paria. The total population is only around 160 and most are fishermen. The islands have no air or ferry services so visiting yachts are about the only outsiders they receive. What a gorgeous spot! We anchored in a couple of different locations and enjoyed exploring around this relatively dry landscape – a great change from the rains and humidity of Trinidad.

Scenes around the island

We had planned to stay only a couple of days but, one of the great things about cruising is, ‘who needs to stick to plans?’

Margarita

After 5 days, we set off for the island of Margarita, Venezuela’s largest and also a duty-free port. It is the most popular holiday destination for the Venezuelan people and offers huge 5-star hotels, shopping centres, casinos, vibrant night life and lovely beaches. We’re currently anchored off the town of Porlamar where we have met up with old friends and made many new.

A quick side trip (it took us 3 days there & back) took us, winding through numerous islands, over to Puerto La Cruz on the mainland to drop off our chain & anchor for regalvanising, a good spot to do so. Our chain was embarrassing us by leaving long, dirty, brown streaks in the water. A friend has offered to bring it back to us in Porlamar so we returned here to wait out the time. At least here, we can enjoy jumping off the back of the boat into cleanish waters. There are over 100 yachts in the anchorage so social life can be quite active. Our activities here included an extraordinary amount of socialising as Happy Hour was a popular daily function and who are we to shun such activities?! We also managed to take in a couple of movies, something we hadn't managed to do since Brazil.

Venezuela is a Spanish-speaking nation influenced by Indian civilization and has had, in recent years, both economic and political problems. We haven’t been around and about long enough to comment on either, however in general, the people are a good-looking lot and extremely friendly and we love the vibe. There is to be a general election in a couple of weeks but it appears to be little more than a one-man race with Chavez in the lead.

Celebrating our 2nd anniversary with Sunshine

Oil is a major resource and fuel is incredibly cheap. Only we could do this – upon returning from Puerto La Cruz against wind & current, navigating past islands, sand banks & coral heads, we were having to motor, against all of Paul’s credos (we’re a SAIL boat after all!) and, yes, we ran out of fuel! Fortunately, a little wind came up after sunset so we managed to tack back & forth to Porlamar giving us two firsts in one go; arriving in an anchorage at night and dropping anchor whilst under sail. Never too old to learn!

We then proceeded to fill our tanks: 500 litres diesel + 45 litres petrol which came to the vast total of $40 (R300)! And that was from the fuel boat service which comes to your boat charging four times the price one would pay at the fuel dock. However, going to the fuel dock is not recommended for a deep keel boat and not worth the aggro and potential damage. Friends on a large power boat have come over from Trinidad especially to buy fuel as they can get almost a year’s worth of motoring from a single fill!

Beef is also reasonably priced so, for the first time, we have made some biltong (spicy beef jerky for the non-SA gang) which is drying nicely up on the stern railings. Thanks ‘Sunshine' for the inspiration and recipe – hope ours is as good.

Our stay in Puerto La Cruz was extremely brief, just enough time to arrange for the galvanizing and to join a few friends for happy hour. As always happens when Calypso arrives somewhere new and interesting, it was a public holiday! We did manage a couple of hours in the dinghy wandering around the many miles of waterways and canals in the huge El Morro marina complex. There are hundreds of luxury homes built on stilts, a little a la Venice but with quite a different flavour. Not sure I’d choose to live near such stagnant water but the concept is quite something.

Happy hour & singalong with Keith

Plans (you know, those things that get changed as soon as they’re made) are to visit more islands eg. La Blanquilla, Los Roques & the Aves before moving on to Bonaire. Reports of these islands make them a ‘must see’ and we look forward to some great snorkeling & diving.

St. Maarten to the Orinoco Delta

St Maarten to Trinidad

I’m afraid our emails took a bit of a back seat for a while and I apologize for this one being so long. I think I last wrote a general email just after arriving in St Maarten however, shortly thereafter, I received news from my sister in Canada that my Mom had had a serious heart attack and was about to undergo a triple by-pass – not a minor thing for an 85 year old woman!

I had been intending to fly back to Canada later on in the year so just fast forwarded things a little. We dashed back down the island chain as we needed to get Calypso to a safer anchorage during the hurricane season where Paul could work on her during my absence. Fortunately, my niece, a flight attendant, was able to organise me a flight out of Trinidad very quickly.

The French Side.......
The trip down was something else! We roared along at quite a pace, often 9–11 knots, punching into heavy seas. I’ve always loved waterfalls, but when they are a feature of one’s anchor locker, they become a bit worrisome to say the least. The bilge pump worked overtime en route! However, Calypso is a solid boat and handled the conditions well.

We stopped briefly at St Lucia as I had two crowns waiting to be fitted and the dentist was such a star, fitting me in immediately so we could get on our way quickly. Next, we dashed down to Grenada just for an overnight stop and shared a few drinks with friends there before heading off on the last leg to Trinidad . All of it was a bit boisterous but we arrived in good time for me to pack and fly out a couple of days later.
Anchorage at Simpson Bay (Dutch Side)

Strolling the French side with Cooee Too

Canada

I arrived in Toronto to find my mother still in intensive care as she’d had a few return trips to ICU due to complications. All in all, she came through a severe heart attack, followed by a serious operation and is still getting her strength back. I extended my return to Trinidad by a further month to help my sister put Mom’s condominium on the market and move her into a retirement residence. We had a rather busy couple of months organising this and I sincerely hope she feels happy and settled into her new environment. I was able to catch up with a couple of old school friends briefly which was great but, sadly, wasn’t able to take the time to visit friends in Ottawa and Montreal. Next time! I did manage to get a little sailing in on Lake Ontario thanks to my brother-in-law who does some racing and also a few deliveries. It was a strange sensation sailing on a lake. Although lake waters can get equally as choppy as the seas, the movement is somehow quite different.

By the time I left, my Mom was settled into her new apartment and progressing slowly on the road to recovery. I hated to leave but I'd been away for two months and time was marching on.

My Mom's 85th Birthday...............................................................................Pubbing with old school friends

Sailing past Toronto.....................................................................................Oakville Yacht Squadron
Sailing past Toronto.....................................................................................Oakville Yacht Squadron

Trinidad

Whilst I was away, Paul tackled a myriad of boat jobs. For those of you who own one, you will know that there is ALWAYS a myriad of boat jobs. For those who don’t, picture in your mind house maintenance, and then multiply it at least tenfold, but before you do that, shrink it, bounce it around a bit and make every conceivable part inaccessible – this gives a tiny hint of what maintaining a sailboat is all about! I arrived back to a bright clean bottom, new cockpit table, new dinghy davits and a whole host of other things fixed, replaced, cleaned or chucked overboard. Yup, he’d been really busy!

The Orinoco Delta

I had only just stepped back in Trinidad when we upped anchor and headed off to the Orinoco Delta with a couple of other boats. Paul had been chatting to various other cruisers who had either been or were planning to go so a group of us took off to head across the Serpent’s Mouth towards the huge river mouth.

Talk about getting away from it all! Magnificent, peaceful, remote and well worth the experience. We took Calypso 50 miles inland, stopping each night wherever it took our fancy. A dozen times in our dinghy, we paddled down tiny tributaries, ducking fallen branches and vines, chopped our way with machetes, powered through thick water hyacinth, and wondered if we were the first humans to have ever travelled right there! It is so easy to believe that this were so! We saw parrots, macaws, parakeets, southern screamers, toucans, scarlet ibis, woodpeckers and many birds we haven’t been able to put names to yet. We discovered that parrots & macaws always travel in pairs – parakeets are obviously a bit more social, they seem to travel in groups. We woke to the sounds of howler monkeys and saw them early in the morning high in the trees, waking and stretching before moving off into the undergrowth. We also found the little capuchin monkey and even saw a tarantula! The rivers are home to two types of fresh water dolphins, the Boto, one of the largest and the Tucuxi, one of the smallest. Neither is particularly attractive but they often slowly played around us in the muddy waters. No anacondas to be seen though. Our days were full of adventuring down one river or the other or simply exploring the swamps in our dinghies.

The Orinoco Delta is inhabited by the Warao Indians (Warao means people of the canoe). An extremely friendly & delightful race of people who rowed out to us in their dugout canoes to wave, smile and sometimes to trade their basketwork with whatever you had to offer. For this reason, we deliberately took pencils, books, crayons, kiddies things and traded old clothes. Even tiny children handled the canoes as though they’d been born in them (some probably had!) We were invited to one of the villages which was quite an experience. Their homes are built on stilts over the wetlands or mangrove swamps, with no outer or inner walls. They sleep in handmade hammocks (and when I say handmade, I mean totally, even down to the string they are woven with!) Roofs are plaited palm leaves and cooking fires appeared to be built on flat stones on the floor. No hint of having reached the 20^th Century let alone the 21^st!


One of our trips took us through a small river connecting two of the larger tributaries. This was quite something as we were not in our dinghies but in our sailboats, winding our way through a narrow path about 20 miles long with overhanging branches, fallen trees, huge floating logs and shallow waters! Paul likened it to threading a needle, a little nerve-racking but quite an enjoyable experience!

I can honestly say that this has been one of our major highlights to date. If I were to find anything negative to say about it, it would be the bugs, the damned bugs! Mosquitoes, no-see-ums and deer flies! The biggest decision of the day was; do I put the sunscreen on first or the anti-bug spray? Cream or spray? In the end, it’s necessary to plaster yourself with both so you just hope they work either way! Paul has come away with nasty sores and swollen ankles which must all stem from too many mosquito bites which have turned rather ghastly.

We returned to Trinidad to find our friends, Bronte & Helmke on Cooee Too and, a couple of days later, we were there to welcome, at long last, our South African friends, Otto & Lillian on Vagabond, after three months of crossing the Atlantic! Well done Vagabond!

As I finish this, we are at anchor, just for the weekend, with Cooee Too on a small island off Trinidad . Bronte, as always, has caught a small tuna so we’ll be indulging in sushi tonight! And Helmke just has to be the ace sushi chef! The great life carries on but it’s back to work tomorrow as Calypso has a few electrical problems and we’ve just discovered that we have a broken part on our prop which makes reversing rather difficult. The list never seems to come to an end!

Beyond St Lucia to St Maarten

Having finally dragged ourselves away from St Lucia, we are now floating around various islands further northwest. Currently the island of choice is Barbuda, a beautiful, flat island belonging to Antigua surrounded by coral reefs and with the most incredible long beaches of fine pinkish sand, clear waters and stingrays gliding in the shallows. It is all but deserted on the southern coast as it appears that the holiday accommodation is closed up for hurricane season. We sailed up from Antigua with ‘Cooee Too’, a great couple we’d originally met in Tobago last year. Bronte is an extremely keen (and very productive) spear-fisherman and Helmke makes incredible sushi, so our stomachs are full and life is wonderful!!

We left St Lucia stopping at St Pierre in Martinique for a couple of days. This was a thriving town of 30,000 in the late 1800’s but was destroyed by the volcano, Mt. Pelée in 1902. There were only two survivors, a cobbler who was in his cellar and an imprisoned murderer in a stone cell (pictured on the right). Many ruins still remain and some of the current buildings share a wall with these ruins. A lovely little town, very French with all the niceties that go along with it e.g. fresh baguettes, brie cheese, pates and wine!! Need I mention that I’ve gained some weight of late!

Our next stop was the start of the Leeward Islands, Dominica, a luxuriously green mountainous island with wonderful rain forests. It has no great beaches so is not a very touristy location, however, for those interested in hikes and bird watching, this is the place. We, unfortunately, arrived on Easter weekend when everyone was on holiday but plan to revisit at a later stage to make the most of the inland regions. We took a canoe trip up a very picturesque river with the most incredible trees. Sadly, all our photos are on a five year old film which is all we have available right now, hence, not the best quality and certainly don't do these islands justice.

Continuing northwards, we arrived at Iles des Saintes, a group of French islands (back to the baguettes & brie) which were tremendous. We only dared stay a couple of days as Paul needs a visa - we tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, however, we did manage to wander around the village which we loved and to do a bit of snorkelling on one of the uninhabited islands. These are definitely on our ‘must return to’ list. The French certainly have that special way of life.

Then, an overnight stop in Guadeloupe (also French) but didn’t go ashore – we’ll wait until Paul has his visa before spending any time here. This was possibly the most rolly anchorage we've ever experienced, very uncomfortable so we left as soon as the sun came up after a rather sleepless night.

Next it was Antigua in time for the classic boat races where we met up with our friends, Phil & Di, again. The old-style vessels were spectacular with all their sails, a great race to get out there to watch. After the classics it was Antigua Race Week which draws quite a few hundred boats from everywhere. The atmosphere at the harbour was fabulous with lots of activities, music, food, people, drinks and fun. We followed the race up north to Dickenson Bay and Jolly Harbour for a couple of days before returning to English Harbour in the south. Our Scottish Christmas/New Year friends won their class and their fleet thus a Rolex watch. If there had been a prize for drinking and partying, they would have won those also. Well done ‘Jus³ Do It’!

We were keen to get moving on but had to wait another couple of weeks for Paul’s Dutch Antilles visa which he needs to get into St Maarten and the ABC's. Meanwhile, we ducked over to Montserrat for a couple of days (without passport and without exit permit from Antigua, but they were very friendly and very kind so let us in). Again, we went with ‘Cooee Too’. We hired a taxi and guide for the day, a wonderful gentleman who took us to see the volcano and the destruction of the capital, Plymouth, over the past ten years. Montserrat is such a small island and now more than half the area is closed off (the exclusion zone) due to continuing volcanic activity. The mountain still spews forth ash at around two cubic metres per second which covers everything in its downwind path. The city of Plymouth is tragic - huge areas are deeply buried in ash and lava and one can see rooftops peeking out along the sides of the flow. Everything is gray.

Further north, the rainwater has brought down a river of volcanic sand and boulders covering up what was once a beautiful golf course. The island is actually changing shape as more shoaling takes place after each rain. The volcano is quite active at the moment and it is speculated that it will blow again shortly. They have had continual eruptions and activity since 1995 but the worst was 1997 and then, in 2003, the volcanic dome collapsed covering the whole island in thick ash. The original population of 11,000 is now down to 4,500, all living on the north of the island. However, they are the friendliest people we have come across in the Caribbean so far despite these tragedies.

Today, we plan to head a little further north up the west coast of Barbuda just for the fun of it and then we have to think about moving on to St Maarten as we’ve so much to do. We’ve still got to revisit St Lucia before heading south again and hurricane season is not far off.

PS: Since writing the above, we have arrived in St Maarten and are busy with boat related maintenance. After several months of not having a camera (our digital died whilst still in St Lucia) we have been able to replace it so I’m a very happy camper again. If the cameras get much smaller, I’ll be able to wear one as jewellery e.g. an earring or nose stud or something! We have finally met up with quite a few boats from our old yacht club - this is a very popular spot for South Africans.

PHOTO GALLERY:

Scenes of Iles de Saintes

Montserrat

Barbuda