On Thanksgiving evening, a group gathered to go to an Australian restaurant. The Australian chef had arranged to do a traditional Thanksgiving feast with a bit of Colombian flare. The small restaurant was filled with cruisers, oil field workers and Colombian school teachers. Though each group tended to stay to themselves, the restaurant had a warm, happy atmosphere. Football (American style) was also playing on the TV so all the Texans in the crowd were happy to see the Texas / Texas A&M game. The feast included the traditional turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry sauce and the Colombian flare was the lovely pumpkin soup, vegetable mix and rum and lemonade cocktail. It was a fun evening.
Friday, we went to a local dentist for a teeth cleaning. It was okay – though not as thorough as our St. Petersburg dentist's. But it was good to get it done and it was reasonably priced. Then, Michael continued to work on the wiring of the new arch. He was making great progress with the wind generator now working, the radar hooked up and the anchor light working. He continued with the GPS, safety light and stern navigation light. Barbara headed for Casa de Queso – the cheese house. This is a local man who makes his own Italian style cheeses. Good, hard cheese in Colombia is hard to find at a reasonable price and we had heard about this place. So, together with "Miss Kitty" she headed via cab to Bosque where the place is located. It was an interesting shop and Barbara bought some cheddar-like cheese, smoked provolone and some buffalo mozzarella. Before we depart for the cheese-less San Blas, we'll probably make another stop there.
On Saturday, we got caught in a monster rain storm. We've never seen rain dump quite so hard so quickly. We were just walking back from a Home Center store where we had to return a light we had purchased earlier in the week. About six blocks from the dinghy dock, it started to rain, then it poured. We ducked into an open air, covered restaurant along with lots of others. It was lunch time so we ordered the "comida corriente" (meal of the day) and found a relatively dry place to sit. And we watched it rain and rain and rain. It was coming off the roof like a fire hose running at full speed. The streets (which have trouble dealing with even lighter rainfall were turning into rivers. We enjoyed watching a delivery kid on a bicycle coming back and forth wetter and wetter. Hope he was being well tipped for his efforts. He was soaked.
We finally gave up and made a run for it getting as far as the grocery store. Many of the streets we crossed were calf deep in water with a strong current. It was crazy. We got back to the boat soaked and the dinghy was barely floating it was so filled with water.
On Sunday, we had organized a nautical flea market. We promoted it all week on the morning radio net (Barbara getting back into her promo writing mindset). We had lots of stuff to get off the boat – an alternator, a prop that we rescued from a landfill (someone was just going to throw it out so we said we'd get rid of it and had tried to give it away in three different countries – here we managed to actually sell it and make 40,000 pesos!), old line (quickly grabbed), an old fender (not guitar), small bits and pieces. We managed to get rid of a few things and came back with less than we left with. Michael was good and didn't buy anything (a first for a nautical flea market for him).
Sunday evening was the weekly barbeque and potluck. Club Nautico lights a large charcoal grill and everyone brings their main course to cook and a side dish to share.
It was a busy Thanksgiving weekend for the crew of Astarte. We hope yours was filled with family, friends, food, football and Friday Christmas shopping. We're thankful for all our family, friends and readers.
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