After a couple of hours of much needed sleep, Rowan dragged himself to customs and Immigration. There was a new guy at the desk and he promptly told Rowan we were too late, luckily the guy Rowan had woken up came around the corner and said we were fine we had made it on time. Phew!!
We then began to absorb the reality of the marina. It’s like a Disney theme water world park, with the most tasteless wedding cake style architecture. But around it are magnificent lush mountains, we definitely feel like we have hit the tropics. So different from the flat dry islands we have experienced so far. It’s all slightly surreal as everything is closed, so it feels a bit like a movie set (Rowan was reminded of the Truman Show!). For all of that so far the locals have been delightfully friendly and Eddie our harbour master couldn’t be more helpful.
The choppy entrance we came through last night in the dark. Wish that light house had been on!
I have to confess being rather ignorant about this blog that Hannah set up for me to keep in contact with the scattered family and friends, I thought therefor that it was more or less by invitation. To my surprise we got contacted by someone googling Pole Pole’s name that R had met! I have had to go back and edit some of my rather cutting comments about some of the people we have met! So I am going to be respectful of our neighbours here! Now we are stuck here for a while, Rowan has decided to start posting…….. his will be for the wider yachtie world. I will remain aiming for friends and family interest.
It appears that there is only one other passing yachtie like ourselves caught here in the lockdown. They are American and also have a Catamaran, I’m very envious of their scruffy little terrier. They like a lot of yachtie’s have been giving their boat a big scrub down, this side of yachting has definitely not caught R’s imagination! There are a couple of motor home boats with Brits on board that live here permanently and that is about it.
In the afternoon we went for a long walk, it’s obviously a huge resort a few miles away from the nearest town. The resort dominates and looks like it is catering for the package American tourist, we found a cluster of 6 stretch limos in a rather abandoned part of town. The resort is like a huge town, some areas smarter than others, but the overriding thing that struck us was that virtually every road junction had security boxes. some for officiously manned than others. So funny they have maps to guide everyone around and we checked a route home, and about an hour later we found we were back to the furthest point we had walked. So disorientating, but never mind it was soooo good to stretch our legs. The resort was open and appeared to have plenty of American tourists staying, but all the little private places were all closed and a bit ghostly. We did spot a liquor store open, never saw any groceries though. Oh well it will be a merry confinement, although R with his high blood pressure and reading how that makes you C19 vulnerable, is thinking of going teetotal!The beach was a bit tatty and no longer the pristine white beaches we have had so far. It had lots of rather polluted streams running into it sadly, reminding R of his hometown’s Turdy river in East London, S Africa! But it did have lovely trees and tropical vegetation.
We crashed into bed for a well deserved long night’s sleep.
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