This morning was put aside for cleaning and scrubbing on the boat, ie, some housekeeping, The deep freeze needed a complete clean out, this took a few hours, Aileen was not happy with Skipper using her hairdrier to defrost the ice, but it had to be done, and proved to be a very usefull tool for a slow tortous job. Aileen did a load of washing in that wonderfull ss Bosh washing machine. plus cleaning out the forward cabins,
We also booked ourselves into the " Oyster " regatta in Granada in April , this should be a great event, However it does clash with the final World ARC rally in St. Lucia, so we are trying to figure out how we can be in 2 places at one time.
After lunch, we took off on a tour of the city in one of their tour buses, ( Aileen loves bus tours, but skipper ! ) In fact the whole trip was only ok, just stopping at a couple of places, The first being the Basicalla " Do Bonfim "a very famous place of pilgrimage. and was the most interesting stop. From there , our next stop was in a little harbour called Ribeira, where we had great ice cream for small money ( in comparison to what we seem to pay everywhere else. ) The tour took us through some very high density residential areas, where the red brick shacks were just piled one on top of the other in no particular order, For skipper, it looked great, mixed in with some real modern highrise office blocks, but it must be rough living there. and the sanitary smells are very evident.
Later , like 2 hours later, having driven all around the city with little or no information about anything, we got off the bus at the " Salvador Mall " Now, this was a very big shopping Mall. and at least it is air conditioned, The lady was visably very excited at being let loose in a Shopping Mall such as this, now there are things around here that are good value, but not the electrical stuff.
Skipper got his mobile sorted, while Aileen toured the Book Shops, and god knows what, then we explored the supermarket, bought a limited amount of provisions and took a taxi back to the boat around 21.00 hrs, ( almost 5 hours in there, phew !)
Back on the marina, we met Helman and Sylvia from " Destiny " and invited them on board " A Lady" as we had some photo's of them recieving their prizes at the prize giving night, plus a few other photo's. We had a few scoops of " Midleton Rare " whiskey while we chatted about all sorts of things as well as listen / watch a DVD by " Andre Rieu" a German vilonist, generally , we had a very relaxing and late night,
Helman explained that " Hanse" yachts are expanding all over Europe and buying some top class boat companies, Thats interesting at a time when many of these companies are going out of buisness as a result of the recession. As they say, " Watch this space "
Thats it for now,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde ( Skipper )