Sept 1. Still in Margarita

Shop, shop, shop til you drop, that's seems the be the motto here. Ever since we've arrived I've been shopping all day long. Found the biggest fabric store ever, Sid was even impressed. We bought 30 yards of nice Suede for our salon, 10 yards of nagahyde (can anybody tell me how to spell this and what is a naga?) and 4 different fun colored rayon fabrics to make some dresses and the total was 190 bucks. The grocery stores are awesome too and make our biggest grocery stores look like mini markets and offer the most incredible gourmet foods. Rattan has 4 isles with just chocolates, most of them Swiss chocolates so I felt right at home. The thinnest T-bone steak I could find was 1 1/2 inches thick and cost each 3 bucks, now it can't get any better than that. The restaurants are wonderful and incredibly cheap. Unfortunately we're told that in Puerto La Cruz everything is a lot more expensive, booze can be almost double the price. So we will load up here. Getting money in Venezuela can be tricky, they want the US dollar but will only exchange 20 to 100 dollar bills, forget the tens and fives. Best ist to exchange the money on the black market as the banks don't give the real value. One also has to be very careful to use credit cards or ATM as there are a lot of scams. On the mainland we will be able to use our personal checks and are the safest way to make payments. This is the place to shop for bottom paint for the boat too as it is a lot cheaper than on the mainland. So we'll be here a couple extra days to do all the shopping. By the way the position report is down for the moment and couldn't be repaired due to Ernesto, so not sure when it will be fixed. If you like to find out where we are go on Google Earth and find our position there, we are at 10'56'94' N and 063'49'69' W.