September 10, 2012
When Monday came around, the parade of officials started to come by the boat. By now we had decided to tell the truth about being off the boat as so many people had seen us out and about. They did ask, and we pretty much blurted out that we’d totally been off the boat, that Health had told us we could leave the boat so of course we did, and it was great! I think they weren’t used to such an upfront and aggressive admission. There was a moment of confusion, then they headed on to other topics.
We still had marina people and Immigration to see but we felt comfortable enough now to go to the restaurant above the marina and have lunch while keeping an eye out for them. When the marina people showed up, we just trotted down there and did that process quickly enough that our beer was still cold when we got back.
When the immigration people hadn’t shown up by 2pm, we went downtown to find them. That took some time, but it was a relief to be done with all this and to be truly free. We decided to go celebrate by getting a coffee drink at a nearby cappuccino place. The heat was getting oppressive; so we ended up finishing our drinks quickly and then fleeing to Mc Donald’s, which was nicely air conditioned.
Over our days here, we ended up in town quite a bit as it had decent-sized markets, hardware stores, ATMs, and the place where you had to buy your internet time (for some reason you couldn’t do it online). Town was about a half-mile walk from the marina, and we had a tendency to end up there in the heat of the day. Mc Donald’s became our oasis of cool in this heat as it was one of the few places that was air conditioned. If it was really hot, we might start out there and get cooled off, then quickly run out to the other places we needed to go, then head back to cool off again. We’d then head back to Aggie Grey’s and sit in their coffee house with a large water to cool off again. Then we’d head to the boat, try to find a spot with a bit of breeze, and wait for evening to cool us off yet again. Thankfully it was much cooler here after dark. -Cyndi
(How hot was it? In the boat’s cabin, the one time I looked, I saw it was 98.6F – perfect body temperature. Funny how it didn’t feel perfect. Maybe it was the million percent humidity? -Rich)
