Wednesday 22nd April 2015
The internet works
here on 2XS, in our sheltered lagoon in Port Carmen. But only intermittently…it is a teensy bit
frustrating (please ignore the sound of gritted teeth…)
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| Downtown Danao |
But I have managed
to find out a bit about Danao (pop. approx. 120,000. Its main claim to fame is – the gun industry,
which began in 1905 and continues to this day.
And…it is a good place to catch a ferry to the Camotes Islands.
Yesterday we
didn’t go to Danao, NON-tourist Mecca of Cebu island.
I spent the
morning swimming, and then getting back in to scrub and scrape.
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| From a distance you can't see the slime and the grunge... |
All of the
underside of the boat is covered with…well, with a fringing reef! Little fish lie here, and follow us
faithfully across the sea, ditto tiny crablets.
I have been quite
brutal, on the the one quarter of the hulls I have scraped, this far. Small fish and crablets gently waft to the
bottom of the sea, along with a whole lot of slime, and barnacles. I climbed out of the water and said, idly, Maybe I need a shower? Pete, who was worming busily on his computer,
glanced at me, and then focused properly, in dismay. Yes! A shower!
I was, apparently, covered in slime and grunge…
Yesterday we went
for quite a long trip in the little dinghy, looking for the boatyard where they
construct Mumby catamarans. Tim Mumby,
originally from Sydney and Brisbane, has set up a busy little yard where they
are constructing and/or renovating about nine new boats, all aluminum, of his
design. Pete bought some lengths of
spare aluminium from him, to deliver to Alex, for the Solar Panel Frame
project.
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| Alex (father of ten!) with Pete plus aluminium |
We stopped at
Zeke’s Bar for cold drinks on the way back.
The bar is so very beautiful, all solid gleaming golden wood, but…they
only have beer. And gin, but no tonic…There
is a lovely big, new kitchen but…no food!
Yet another Mystery of the Sea!
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| Mango |
We renewed
acquaintance with Mango, a very nice big dog who lives with on a small yacht in
the “marina” with David, and David told me dreadful stories about Milton
Freedman, Pol Pot, Marcos, the list went on…
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| David |
Today we went back
into Danao, squeezed into a motortricylce with about five other people. We found another very big supermarket, mostly
selling packets of snack food. While we
were looking for tinned tomatoes and baked beans – they weren’t in the tinned vegetables
section, mysteriously, but there they were, near the tinned corned beef (another
huge consumer item here) – we found ourselves the object of fascination for three young girls. They were totally enthralled by us and kept coming
up close to stare, unblinking, at our strange, strange faces. I broke the ice by taking out my camera and asking
them to pose – they were delighted and sprang into pose mode immediately.
We had dinner in a restaurant attached to the local Shell station - Mojos. Pete had the most amazingly colourful banana split for desert…
It is very very hot…I came back to the boat and spent an hour and a half underneath, in the shade, doing my 1k swim and then scraping the hulls some more. I came out, once again, looking as if I had been swimming in pea soup… Pete, in the meantime, had gone back to Mumby’s boatyard to get another bit of aluminium to take to Alex, for the solar panel frame. I think I had a nicer time of it…
It is very very hot…I came back to the boat and spent an hour and a half underneath, in the shade, doing my 1k swim and then scraping the hulls some more. I came out, once again, looking as if I had been swimming in pea soup… Pete, in the meantime, had gone back to Mumby’s boatyard to get another bit of aluminium to take to Alex, for the solar panel frame. I think I had a nicer time of it…
Pete’s hand is
much better. He no longer needs the splint
and he can bend his knuckle without it all opening up again. But…the other night he slipped as he was getting
into the dinghy and cut his hand on a wet, muddy, dirty concrete step at Zekes’s
Bar… It is now infected; red lines are travelling up his inner arm… He is taking
strong antibiotics and seems to be winning the fight but it is all very
unpleasant. It hurts very badly, I know. I have a tiny scrape on my right foot, not infected,
and it hurts badly enough(these things are much worse in the tropics) to wake
me at night. Pete’s cut is much worse; he
is very good not to be complaining!
Today’s birthday
My friend, Barbara Lobban
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| Barbara, in between Annie and Susan |
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