Tag Archives: living on a boat

Mercado Público: “The” Fresh Fruit, Veggie, Meat, & Fish Market

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Colombians are very entrepreneurial people selling fruits, vegetables, hats, tchotchkes, clothing, services, cardboard and just about anything.  There are pop up stands, rolling carts, booths, small stores, and large stores selling your heart’s desire.  Do you need a Mercado Público?

Fruits & veggies can be bought on the street by various vendors selling them off push carts or bikes with carts.  This allows them to  easily move their goods around to high traffic areas.

The largest food market we have encountered is called Mercado Público.  The market fills a two story building that takes up the entire block.  And in fact, it is so large that it spills out onto the neighboring streets.  Matt, Mia (from “Itchy Foot”), and I visited this market one morning which was absolutely overwhelming to all of our senses.

We visited the outside fish market first.  There are lot of fisherman selling a variety of fish that have been cut and cleaned for you.  You could get a great fish, if you knew what you were looking at and could put up with the assault on your nose.

Entering the two story building on the first floor you see that it is divided into two sections for fish and meat. We decided to continue to torture our noses by finishing up the fish area.

As we completed the fish section, we crossed over to the meat section which has all meats except chicken.  Where the fish attacked our sense of smell, the meat besieged our vision!  I get it, I eat meat and meat comes from animals.  I am not a vegetarian, but I do not eat red meat (for health reasons).  But, seeing the meat market almost made me change my ways.

We did not make the entire round as you’ve seen one pig’s head and foot you’ve seen them all.  We moved upstairs to the fruit and veggie market which was far more pleasant to see and smell.  In fact, some of it was mouth watering to be around!

In addition to food, you can also buy some pets.  We found a few vendors selling birds in the main building and then stumbled across the pet store street.  In this area, they group like vendors together to make it easier for shoppers.

STREET SECTIONS:

  • pet street
  • hardware street
  • fabric street
  • auto street

Cruiser

Cruisers Helping Cruisers

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I find it hard to explain my relationships with other cruisers to my land lubber friends – do other cruisers have this problem too?  One type of relationship does not demean the other in any way, but they are uniquely different.

With other cruisers you have a shared way of life, comparable highs and lows, and similar problems and solutions to those problems (be it mechanical, electrical, plumbing, etc…).  You are thrust together into a situation where you know the other is transient and will move on and you may or may not see them again for months or years. Yet, you instinctively find yourself bonding and relying on other cruisers rather quickly.

In the small sailing community of Bonaire (there are 42 moorings), Matt and I have had to good fortune to meet, assist, benefit from, and enjoy many new cruiser friendships.  It is a community, where like so many other cruising communities, where you rely on others to help you.  And I just wanted to share a few examples of cruisers helping cruisers:

  1. Cindy, Jane, and Rose walk me daily (yes, I need to be walked to keep my joints from barking and having a regular walking group motivates us all).
  2. On one of our walks I mentioned our Splendide washer/dryer issue and Cindy on Tranquility mentioned she has had the same problem with her machine and might have spare parts.  Their machine has given up and they generously gifted us with multiple spare parts enabling us to repair our machine without having to ship parts from the U.S.
  3. About a week later, the fridge/freezer compressor decided to take a hiatus on Cindy’s boat, so we stored frozen tuna, salmon, steak and shrimp in our freezer until their compressor arrived – it was a challenge not to cook up some of that amazing fish!
  4. Jane has had some engine issues right when she needed to move into the marina to do rigging work.  Cindy, Lee, Matt, and I used our dinghies as propulsion (a whopping 3 km/hour) to get them to the marina and Dan and Rose assisted with docking – everything went smoothly!
  5. Moorings are far and few between this year with so many boats here from the hurricane ravaged islands and Bonaire’s 50th regatta anniversary, so when one boat moves another is on it immediately. Some moorings are temporary and you cannot be on them during the regatta, other moorings are better for smaller or shorter boats, and yet other spots have better moorings (concrete blocks vs. sand screws).  So, we pre-arranged a mooring swap:  when Cheetah II went into the marina, Sugar Shack took their mooring and Badger’s Set took our mooring.
  6. Wifi is a hot commodity on a boat and we are constantly shuffling to see where we can get the best signal.  Matt helped Ad Astra with some cables and connectors until they were set up and then worked with them to diagnosis and repair their wash down pump, engine, and compressor.
  7. Ad Astra has generously taken Matt and I out on several dive excursions, filled our tanks, taught us tricks and tips for better diving, loaned us equipment and oh so much more!
  8. Matt lent his muscles to Mara who is replacing their main sail and needed assistance removing their old sail since it is big and bulky.
  9. Pay it Forward:  Matt is always one of the first people in the water when a dinghy is in trouble offering a tow.  You never know when you will need one yourself.
  10. Earlier this year, Matt and I had taken our dinghy to shore (St. Barth’s) to go on a big hike and the tide came up sweeping Sweet N Low into the sea.  Many other boaters rushed to our aid (unbeknownst to us) to retrieve her and place her safely back on shore. Pay it forward.
  11. Bonaire did not have a forum where other cruisers could communicate (no morning net or Facebook page), so I created a Bonaire Cruisers Facebook group for information sharing.
  12. Matt and I met our friends Exit Strategy (Rose and Dan) and Jane at a dive site called “Cliff” but someone was already on that mooring, so we took another mooring that was fairly close.  Typically you are not supposed to tie two boats up to one mooring, but our dinghies are small so we thought why not.  We assembled our gear, jumped in and began our dive.  When Jane came up, she noticed that the dinghies were missing, WTF?  Some locals shouted that they were drifting away so she flagged a dive boat that picked Matt up so that they could retrieve the dinghies.  Luckily they had two huge engines and were able to get them before they made it to Venezuela – they had drifted several miles before Matt retrieved them.

 

Dive boat retrieving our dinghies that floated away.

Dive boat retrieving our dinghies that floated away.

This is all in addition to the shared recipe’s (thank you Exit Strategy and Noel’s Delight), tips for cleaning, cooking, baking, and sewing.  Life on a boat is so much easier with the feedback and guidance of others.

If it is not one thing it’s another as things break on a boat and parts are not always easy to come by on a remote island.  Having other cruisers to rely on makes it so much easier.

Good friends!

Me, Cindy and Jane.

A Lighthouse, Shipwrecks, & Dolphins

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We got up early the next morning to swim ashore and go exploring before the herds of people arrived.  The water here is gorgeous, clean, clear, and cool.  Underwater we were treated to several flounders, box face puffers, an eel, turtles, and tons of tangs.  They didn’t seem to be bothered by the tons of dead choral and sea fans on the bottom of the ocean. We unknowingly, brought a buffet to Klein as the fish loved the remaining soft algae on the bottom of our boat.  After our swim, we dropped off our snorkel gear ashore and headed toward the lighthouse.

Great sign, but unfortunately it is all in Dutch.

Mermaid Tours makes so much money they invested in “$” rims for their trailer.

The original lighthouse was destroyed in a storm so they built this 2nd lighthouse in 1850.   It used to be a vibrant coral pink lighthouse which is now abandoned with graffiti written surfaces.  The wooden staircase is still in tact and has 5 flights of 11 stairs each that take you to the top.  Below are two rooms that used to house the lighthouse keepers with no natural source of running water, it must have been a desolate place to live and work.

Walk to the lighthouse on Klein Curacao.

Front of the lighthouse.

The windward side of the island is a graveyard for boats.  Looming on the beach is the hulking rusted remains of an oil tanker named Maria Bianca Guidesman, which ran aground in the 1960’s.  She gradually eroded away by the merciless waters and now only half of her stern is left.

Matt walking toward the shipwrecks.

Part of the stern of the tanker.

 

Tanker parts strewn along the windward coast.

More pieces of the tanker dotting the coast line.

Right next to this old wreck is a fairly new wreck of a once beautiful Super Amel.  Not sure what happened, but she has no keel and very little bottom left.

Matt climbed aboard the Super Amel.

By the time we walked back to the other side of the island and retrieved our snorkel gear, the beaches were crowded with visitors so we headed back to the boat. The rest of the day was dedicated to chores.  Matt had a 4200 project from hell (that is a type of glue) which turned into multiple projects and I hit the water line.  Over the last few days, Matt had cleaned the lines, props, anchor chain and barnacles, so I decided it was my turn to clean the water line.  It is not a difficult project, just tiring as there is not much to hold to while you are trying to swim and scrub the side of the boat (while not removing any of the ablative paint) in a fairly strong current.  It was pretty green on the interior hulls which required several scrubbing passes.  In the meantime, we had 6 day charter boats come to the island (Mermaid, Jonalisa To, Breeze, All Boat Charters, Queen Ann, and a sailboat with a crappy sail bag that you couldn’t read). Lucky for us, they all headed back around 4p and left us to our little piece of paradise.

Sugar Shack on anchor at Klein Curacao.

The next day, Matt made breakfast as I battened down the interior in preparation for the bumpy ride back to Bonaire.  We left about 845am, raised the main and pulled the jib with 2 reefs in both and headed out.  Coming around the south side of the island we had gusts up to 25-28 knots and seas at 2-3 meters.  With the engines (1500 RPMs) and sails up we averaged about 4-5 knots, a little slower than we are used to but it made the trip more comfortable and dry.  About 10 miles into our 23 mile motor sail, the waves and wind calmed down a bit allowing us to increase our engines (up to 1800 RPMs) and speed to about 5-6 knots which shaved off 2 hours on our trip.  It was a beautiful day, blue sky, puffy clouds, several birds, but no fish on the hook.  We trolled the entire way and caught nothing, not even a nibble.  We did however, get a huge pod of dolphins which stayed with us for over 20 minutes.

Over 2 dozen dolphins came to play with us.

So cute to watch them surf with our bows.

 

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Thoroughly happy with the dolphin sighting, we pulled into Bonaire only to discover there were no moorings available.  Since you cannot anchor anywhere on the island this proved to be a problem.  Matt dropped the dinghy and drove around until he found a temporary mooring.  It is not an “official” mooring, but it will do for a few days until another one opens up.

After checking the mooring and cooling off for a bit we headed in to clear into the country and have a cold one at Karel’s Bar.