Our Christmas present:
A tour of “ROMPEMAR” Pershing 90, an amazing mega yacht that even had a dumb waiter in the galley.
Our Christmas present for
We had an incredible stainless steel ladder built. It attaches to the stanchions next to the boarding gate. It swings down or up, locks with a pin up or down, and fits right close to the life lines. Merry Christmas!
The Maremares Marina was deserted this summer, only 
Christmas approached and the marina finally came to life and the usual 4 to 6 people potluck turned into a 14 person Christmas feast. We had a wonderful time. Chris and Luima are back for three months, Gerie and John on T’Zaddi came to visit their boat for one month and Bill and Debbie Dock Queen from 
I would cook a turkey let alone two, but for my first time ever cooking them they came out wonderful. Bill and Debbie have been engaged since 2003 and to the question when they’ll get married she said they haven’t found the right time or place yet, so I responded: “How about this New Years Eve?” Smoke started coming out of her ears and after a few seconds of thinking she said “Why not we got engaged on New Years Eve” and so we had 5 days to plan. They were both excited about the wedding. Gerie and I were the bridesmaids and Sid the captain did the honor. It was a beautiful ceremony and was held in the cockpit of Dock Queen. Since Bill doesn’t want to wear a ring they exchanged a rose. At the end Sid looked stern at Bill and told him that he had the right to remain silent ect…ect…….and then “You may kiss the bride” and after the romantic kiss Sid handcuffed them together, it was really kewl.
Jim and Jenny on Three Keys left for the States in October and since
they needed somebody to take care of their boat and two cats and at the same time we needed a place to stay when replacing the cabin sole. It was a perfect situation for all of us. Different reasons delayed boat work and since Jim and Jenny were going to return middle of December with friends Sharon and Andy (It’s Good) we decided that we needed to rent another
house. How adventurous or complicated can it get to rent a house, well, we found the perfect house, the owner needed somebody at the house for security while he was in Spain, so we rented the house for the month of
January. Three days after the house deal, Jenny sent us an email that they couldn’t make it until end of January. Andy and Sharon had to postpone their trip as well. But by then it was too late to get out of the deal as we had to pay in advance and the owner had left for
January second we moved to the house, which is about a 5 minute dinghy ride away in the
Las Villas area, the richest housing area in the El Morro project with the biggest and most expensive 
villas a really nice place. The house is absolutely too big for us, it makes the house we rented last January look like a shack. It has 5 bedrooms, 6 baths and the living room is so big everything you say returns in an echo, or even worse, today I said: Tomorrow I’m going to cook a Chateau Brian” and Sid asked “when are you going to call Leo?” It also has a huge patio overlooking the beautiful garden with coconut palms, papaya trees, a noni tree
(http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/noni.htm), tasty tomato bushes, a lime tree full with juicy limes, different type of basil bushes, rosemary, oregano, culantro, lots and lots of different hot peppers and unique tropical fl
owers, one of them looses the purple flowers every night but is in full bloom again the next morning. One of my favorite a canopy of grapevines shading the pool and keeping it very cool actually almost too cool; the first night at the house we went skinny dipping, but it was so co
ld we only got waste deep into the water, but it was nice. My all time favorite is the two parrots. We hadn’t moved into the house yet as it was infested with mosquitoes, so the second evening Sid fumigated it really good and as he went to air it out the next morning, he noticed that somebody had moved into the house. In the living room he found a huge container full with baby stuff, cooking utensils and suite cases. I went straight upstairs into our bedroom and there I found a family of four. Later two more appeared out of a second bedroom and when the owner’s bedroom door opened and one more person walked out. I told the intruders to get out of the house or I will call the police. The guy that just came out of the owner’s bedroom, which by the way was locked wanted to know who we were and 
how many of us. It took me just one guess who he was. Gustav the owner had told us that the nephew of his ex girlfriend keeps using the house when he is not there, partying and trashing it and that he didn’t want him there. Gustav made it clear that no one but us will be in the house. So the nephew calls Gustav in Spain questioning him about us, after that I had a chance to talk to Gustav and he actually told us that the nephew had the right to be there and was there for the weekends, well that was not OK with us. Sid finally told the owner to refund our money we’re moving out to which he replied that this was not the deal. Neither was the deal to live with 4 adults and two infants and our bedroom occupied. Ten minutes later we were back in our 
old slip in Maremares. Now we had the dilemma where to stay while working on the boat, as Sharon and Andy are arriving and Helene and Peter announced a visit, where would we have them stay. Five days later Gustav called and
really apologized to us and promised that the house was all ours, so the next day we moved back to the house. So we’ve been in the house ever since and love it, although we still sleep on the boat. Sharon and Andy arrived and so we didn’t have to drive twice to Maremares to feed the cats anymore.
The teak work fell through as the carpenter wouldn’t let us buy the teak with him and he wanted 20% more then what the original price was, so we didn’t trust him anymore. Sid decided to do the job himself and since he couldn’t find any marine plywood he epoxyed normal plywood and replaced the old subfloor. He did a great job. Since our 18 months boat visa is running out the end of February we decided to sail to
We really enjoy the house and had a couple nice dinners for friends and a few days 
ago we had a pool party for the two girls of Adrian, one of the marina workers who lives in a Barrio. We had 
presents for the kids and they had fun playing in the pool all day long. Jean picked me up at seven that morning, drove to the local market to buy fish for his famous fish soup. I’ve been to the market so many times but never realized that there was a whole different section to it, it was awesome. He bought plantains, a whole bunch of root vegetables I have no idea of what they are other than yucca. Back at the house he showed me how to prepare the soup. The only thing I 
didn’t like was the dried salted fish that he bought; it d
idn’t look appealing and smelled really, really bad, so I was a bit reluctant 
about the soup. He cooked the soup
in two huge pots over the fire on the BBQ pit and end result was a very delicious rich fish soup. Would I cook it, yes but I definitely would leave the fishy tasting dried fish out.
The wonderful world of animals:
After one dinghy trip to Redonda I found a beautiful Morpho butterfly in the dinghy. A friend who used to work with butterflies told me that they only live for 25 hours, not much time and sure enough a few hours later he died but gave me the chance to take some up close photos.
The two cats we were taking care of for
Jim and Jenny, Miz and Guapo are feral cats they took in. Miz is still a bit wild but really
warmed up to us. One evening we were all sitting under the tree of knowledge when I heard a cat’s meow that wouldn’t stop and came closer and closer, when I looked up the dock I saw little Miz running towards me meowing up a storm and something was dangling from her mouth. She stopped in front of me then went straight up the ramp and looked at me like she wanted me to open the door, a mouse was dangling in her mouth and when she sat the mouse on the floor it took off and went right under the door. How on earth will I be able to get the mouse off Three Keys was my thought but Guapo came to the rescue and chased the little present Miz brought over board.
The first time we left for the house Guapo sat on our dock steps and sadly looked at us as we sailed away. The second time leaving he actually tried to jump on our boat, he didn't want us to leave and the sad look he gave us broke our hearts.
The second day at the house we had a new pet on board a beautiful green iguana and I had a chance to film him when he escaped, it was too funny to watch him run away. Today another one came to inspect
The parrots are really fun to watch and especially to listen to, they actually talk to each other, quite amazing all the noises they can make. We also noticed that they talk and scream like kids and wondered where they learned it until the first Sunday when the neighbor kids were having fun in the pool. Unfortunately the birds were in a really small cage, the floor was rotted and the holes they were chewing up were 
getting bigger and 
bigger and it was just a matter of days before they could escape, so Sid built them a new cage. They moved from the barrios into Las Villas that’s all I can say, the cage is really huge now and they are much happier parrots. The gardener that is taking care of them was only fed them grapes and pasta, now they get fresh fruits and seeds every day. I hate to leave knowing that they will not get the care anymore we’ve given them.
I haven’t written anything lately about politics, El Presidente is cracking down on the black market, no website is allowed to post the price, nobody is allowed to talk about it, email, phone and violators will be punished. The market came down too and so all the people who exchange the money for us cruisers don’t want to change now because they don’t make such a good profit anymore, amazing how fast greed sets in. The list of things El Presidente takes of the shelf is growing and sadly it’s all the staple food people live on, milk, butter, sugar, flour, rice, eggs, beef, pork, chicken (no supermarket carries chicken, the other meats come sporadically, eggs, sugar and chicken can be found in the local markets), black beans a trade for a Venezuela, toilette paper, and in three weeks coffee will be off limits as well. It seems that he wants to control everything. We heard from a person who talked to one of the higher ranking military officers who owns a boat at Maremares that right after El Presidente lost the election that he ordered the military to shoot the students, the military disobeyed his order, he now knows that he’s not the almighty anymore. Also the deal with the Colombian hostages, they say that he paid the terrorists 500 mil dollars to release the hostages, I'm sure the price is just a rumor. We have learned that El Presidente has no original thought of his own he copies everybody, Mao with the red little booklet he uses in his speeches waving it as Mao did. Last October he came out with a CD with him singing as a former president did. He turned the clock back by half an hour as some countries did in the
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