Wednesday 2 June 2010

Picton Castle at sea; Wednesday 2 June 2010 בס"ד

A triple entry... Let's see how it all began. Monday port night watch started at midnight , and other than Jimmy telling me that Chibley had boarded the Doña Luisa I (a container ship on the other side of the pier) and watching a few drunk shipmates stumble in, the watch was uneventful. During my shipcheck, I found [person] on the forepeak ladder, drunk as a skunk, and I helped [person] to the aloha deck, where we had a DDMC before [person] passed out.

In the morning, I stitched up my shorts which had torn and then went to rent a bicycle. I got one for US $10, and went around town. I used an internet cafe and bought one hour of time for US $3. Then I went back to the ship, swapped out my laptop for my hammock, and started biking south along the west shore. I saw the sea salt mounds, slave huts (which were unbelievably small), a multitude of divers pulled over everywhere, and a lighthouse at the southern tip. By the time I had made it there, I was super thirsty and drank all of my water bottle already (only ½ liter). I am used to biking in sweltering heat for hours, but always near somewhere I can pull off real quick to grab a Gatorade. On the south end, there is one road and NOWHERE to buy anything, just painted rocks that name dive locales. I was starting to worry that I might die from dehydration and exposure, but every time I started slowing down, a bird actually flew next to my head and chirped me on. At first I thought it was trying to attack or something, but I soon realized he was my special little buddy and I'd say “Alright little buddy, I can do it” and I'd bike on. After about four and a half hours total I came into Lac Bay, a windsurfer's paradise. I stopped there and had three waters and a gatorade and brought some for the road. I left shortly after, and started easting towards Kralendijk. Along the way I saw several packs(?) of wild donkeys and herds of goats. I had been looking for a place to set up camp, but there is not a single tree on the south end of the island and it's completely flat except for cactus clusters, so when I made it back to Kralendijk, I got a cheap hotel room. I took about twenty showers to get all the sweat and grime and tar and oil and paint and grease and filth and salt off of me, then met up with many shipmates at a pub called Little Havana. The place was quite happening, but only because we were there making it so. I had several pineapple juice & rums, went back to my room, and passed out.

The next morning, that is, Tuesday 1 June 2010, I checked out of the hotel at 1000, returned my bicycle, bought two books on the local creole called Papiamentu (which is not hard to understand since it's based off Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and English) and returned to PC to wait for Dave, Davey, and Julie, who had gone diving. We had made brief plans to meet at noon and rent a Jeep to explore the north end of the island, and so we did. The Jeep rental was US $64 for the day, so US $16 per person plus US $5 gas per person. We headed up to the north shore first, but decided to try and aimlessly drive on the dirt roads. Needless to say, it was was fun, and we got the itch to do more. But we did make it to the north shore, where we stopped to check out old Arawak caves for mystical stargazers, a crazy “boka” in the coast, and eventually drove across the desert-like shore to the entrance of the National Park, which we opted not to enter. Instead we turned south for the village of Rincon, and then towards the flamingo reserve lake. We pulled over on a sweet mountain top that overlooked the village and then again at the flamingo lake. Dave had been driving to this point and then I took over. We left the lake, went to the south end by the oil place, and then drove up a mountain. At the top we found the sickest spot on a massive cliff, and climbed up it a bit for photo ops. We must've been there twenty minutes chilling out when out of nowhere bees started attacking stung me in the face. We all scurried back down as fast as we could, but it wasn't easy because the rocks are quite jagged. I stabbed a good hole in my right foot in the escape. Luckily it didn't hurt or bleed to much. Anyway, we got in the Jeep and took off. After this, it's going to get hard to adequately put into words just how extreme things got, but I'll do my best. We basically were racing down the sketchiest dirt roads, stopping only to do power slides onto even sketchier dirt roads, and then stopping only to drive through the bush. Of course, there were massive amounts of cactus and shrubs and brush flying everywhere, and we nailed huge puddles getting us all soaked inside (we had the top down), and we were airborne more than once. We went in places that seem now entirely inaccessible to people or animals. And we did it extremely fast. I am surprised the Jeep, (which already sounded like it was going to break down any second when we got it) didn't explode. At 1900, we had made it back to PC and gave the Jeep a serious rinse and interior cleaning with buckets and foxtails, since it was absolutely caked in nature. We returned it at 2000, along with Cheri, WT, and Donald, who also rented a Jeep. Theirs broke down just driving nicely on a paved road, so we were happy not to have had that one, because A) we weren't covered for damage on the dirt roads, B) we didn't have a phone to call anybody if we did break down, and C) even if we did, we were so far off the road it would have been impossible to explain to anybody where we were. Anyway, we chilled on a pier for a bit, then I went to the cafe to use the internet again, and I came back to PC. I set up hammock on the aloha deck, but at 0330 I moved back to my bunk.

Today we had all-hands muster at 0800 and shortly before I found I was galley duty for the day. We left Bonaire at 1000, but I was washing dishes and cleaning out the coolers, so I didn't do any sail-handling. Davey, Tammy, and I spend the day doing galley, with the between lunch and dinner break spent reading “The Set of the Sails.” Finished at 1945, and now writing these entries.