Tuesday  April 6, 1999    Bahia Redonda - Puerto la Cruz, Venezuela

Hello virtual travelers !
I am writing you these lines as the technician for our NERA Inmarsat B terminal has arrived and began to work on our unit.  We also received a call from NERA in Norway early this morning to check what the status is.   So far we are happy with the customer service.  Lets hope that the tech can solve our problem. It seems that he does not have the right spareparts in Venezuela, which would be bad news.... But he brought a whole below-deck unit and he will replace that to check whether that gives us any improvement.


Pelican in Mochima National Park

Well, where do I start ?   We left Cumana last Thursday to explore the Mochima National Park, which has a great reputation for beauty and unspoiled nature.    But we also heard that the Easter-Weekend is probably the busiest time of the year for this area.   And we found the last to be true.  As you can see in yesterdays picture, most beaches were chock-a-block full with people.  But the Venezuelan do not seem to mind.  In fact they seem to gather wherever people are.   We saw some beaches almost empty and the next one (not even half a mile away) was completely overflown with people.    Also most boats seem to carry the whole family.  Some 30-45 footers had 20 or more people on them.  Since not everybody found room on the ship, some just slept on the beach...


Conch in Tortuga

Attempting to escape the crowds we steered the STARSHIP northwest for about 60 miles to the sandy island of Tortuga.   But even there were quite a few boats.   Some local fishermen told us, that they get more boats during this weekend than during the whole summer.

Local fishermen filling up their watertanks in Tortuga

They came right up to the STARSHIP after we anchored and requested water.  Apparently the supply ship has not come in for a while and the local Venezuelan boats just had enough for themselves.   Well, we happily have our two Village Marine 800 gallons/day watermakers, so we were more than happy to help them out.    In the back of our mind we were also hoping to get some lobsters out of it, but politely waited for some to bring up that topic.   And sure enough, after all tanks were filled up and we gave them some STARSHIP T-Shirts (that cost us 10 US$ each ), they offered to sell us some lobsters.  At US$ 10 per kilo (2.2lbs) !     How generous !     I still remember our lobster encounter in Guadeloupe (Mexico), where the fishermen gave us 13 lobster for free and we return gave them all kinds of things that were useful for them....   They insisted that that was the normal price for all tourist boats and that it was fair, but we did not feel like eating lobster any more....    They finally gave us two small lobster, but not without asking for two more T-Shirts.  Just to be nice we agreed, so we ended up trading 50 dollars worth of T-Shirts for 8 dollars worth of lobster.....And free water on top of that (but that really does not count).  So much for Venezuelan fishermen.

Big Jelly fish that we saw in Mochima National Park (Photo taken through the water from the Startender)

After two days in Tortuga we headed back to the mainland to meet our technician.  He is still working hard...

There is a chance that you will not see another update until Saturday morning (April 10,99).   As I mentioned a couple of days ago, my birthday present for DJ was a trip into the hiterlands of Venezuela.   Well if things clear up today, we most likely will leave later on this afternoon.  The good news is, that I am pretty sure we will return with nice wildlife pictures for you to look at.

Having said that, I will leave you now !  See you soon !

Michael