Part two wednesday 3rd July 2013
So after a bit of drama anchoring yesterday, not us either the chain decided to tangle itself in the anchor locker, and then got Jammed in the tube thingy, well I guess I don't have to tell you what The Captain, felt about this, after pulling all the V Berth apart dismantling almost everything in there, me I was at the helm, stopping the boat from running into other boats, and staying well out of The Captains way, he just kept going back and forwards getting more and more tools, and he had to work in there in extreme heat, the heat is so bad here, I have no idea how hot it is, but man it's miserable, and it rains about every hour or so, and that just makes the heat worse.
So after The Captain got the Anchor down, and calmed down some from hating every body and everything, we needed a cold drink, actually a stiff drink but that had to wait as we needed to go ashore and clear into this Country.
We have been putting bottles of water in the little freezer and they come out so cold it's great, so I go and get us a couple of coldies...hahah
And everything in the freezer is thawed out...OMG
It was my turn now, I was ready to just leave the damn boat and walk away. I was so so angry.
So we just had cool water then gathered up are passports and all our papers and headed to shore.
So what can I say about, Portobello, the first thing is we so should of taken some Spanish lessons... :-/
No one speaks English, it is just a little town at the foot of a jungle, serious, they have Jaguars, monkeys that are called Howling Monkeys, and Crocodiles.
Yeap so no swimming here, they actually say that these crocs, even go through the locks in the canal, and joke about that they are the only things that go through and not have to pay.
The Jaguars and crocs we have not seen yet, and the Monkeys either but we have heard the monkeys, they make a sound like a dog howling when it's been hurt, it's sends your teeth on edge.
And the place well it's so third world, it shocking, run down, dirty, poverty you name it, and really does not feel safe at all.
So we get to the dock, if you can call it that, and two locals meet us help us tie up the Dingy then charge us $3.00 to watch our boat...hahaha
But in very broken English they under stand that we need to go to customs, so one of them walks us there, we try and have a conversation with him but most was just the three of us laughing at each other, as we had no idea what he was saying and he had no idea what we were saying.
But we made it to customs, he then walked away and I'm thinking man I hope our dingy will still be there when we get back, as there was no way I,m swimming with the Crocs back to the boat.
We were just about to walk into Customs when I looked over and what we assumed was a bank and there is these two guys standing there with rifles, I think they were security guards, at least I hoped so.
So we scurry into the Customs office as quick as we can, and the lady there can not speak a word of English not one bit, great
Lucky there was another guy checking in that could speak some, so that was a help, but we were told that she was closed for the day, so come back tomorrow.
So we decided to have a walk around and check this place out, we had read up a lot about it, coming here and the pictures made it look so good, and talking about these little restaurants here and there, that are very nice and it's a quant little town.
Man it's a dive, and the restaurants are just run down shacks, that there is no way I would eat in any of them.
They do have lots of forts as they were attacked by pirates in the past so there is a lot of history here.
To top it all off they have the famous statue of The Black Jesus.
Yeap you heard right its in this really old Church, and as we were looking for a local bar, that we were told by the fridge guy is really good, we stumbled onto the Church, not that you could really miss it, it's the biggest building here well almost.
So I dragged The Captain in to have a look.
Talk about over the top with gold and garish trimming, it's actually behind glass, but we managed to get some photos. Was not sure if we were allowed but I did anyway.
Now this you have to google, serious, every year thousands of people make a pilgrimage to here some walk over 200 miles and the last mile most walk on there knees, to ask for forgiveness for there sins.
I'll let you look up all the rest, but google The statue of the Black Jesus of Portobello.
So we eventually find a local bar not the one we wanted, but this one at least had English speaking people and free wifi.
So caught up all all our stuff on the Internet, than made our way back to the boat and yeap dingy still there, come back and just about passed out both of us from the heat and lack of sleep and the couple of drinks we had.
Well tomorrow is another day.