Granada for the Holidays

The Holidays are over and we are still in Granada for a few more days, at least that is the plan.  As we sailors say “plans are written in the sand at low tide”, meaning they are subject to change at any time.

We have been taking part in a variety of activities while we are here.  We have participated in several more hashes.  Cori convinced the hash officers that she had been wrongfully accused of misdeeds and they agreed and subjected the accuser to the same punishment Cori had been subjected to.  She was not a happy hasher at that point.  The other hash was in the rain.  We thought it would stop raining in the afternoon and we would only have to deal with mud but were wrong.  It was a long hike in the jungle in the pouring rain, not the most fun.  We have done some touristy stuff such as checking out two of the forts built back in the 1700’s.  Unfortunately they are not in very good condition and not much is being done to preserve them.  We made a trip to the Seven Sisters Waterfalls for a day in the mountains and swimming in the pools.  We only made it to two of the falls but it felt great to be in fresh water instead of salt water.  We have attended several of the music nights at both the Brewery and at Nimrods Rum Shop as well as a trip to the container park.  The container park is close to the University and is sort of a food truck event, except instead of food trucks they have set up shipping containers to work out of with an open bar and seating area in the middle.  It is very popular with the students since the food and drinks are not expensive and very good.  Last weekend we attended the “Pure Granada Music Festival.  It is a completion among six singers for who will perform on the main stage at the big festival in April. There was some pretty good music performed.  This weekend there was a dinghy concert in the next bay.  They set up a barge and floating dock tied to an anchored tug and ferried people out for the show.  Everyone with a dinghy was then tied up to the barge/dock and then others tied off of them as more arrived.  There ended up with better than fifty dinghies tied together and you just climbed from one to the other to move around or to get to the bar on the barge.  There were two singers from the previous weekend and they put on a very good show.  At the end the dinghies all untied from each other and headed back to their boats.  We also went to tour the Spice Island Garden where it was interesting to hear of the medicinal uses for the various spices and plants.  We then visited a botanical garden with over 250 identified plants from around the world.

Those were some of the touristy things we did.

We spent the first week on a mooring ball in Prickly Bay and then moved further along the coast to Clarks Court Bay.  This bay is very popular with the cruisers for its easy access to Hog Island beach, a very popular hangout.  It also has the advantage of being closer for our friend Sperry to pick us up at various times.  Sperry is the local fisherman that we met last year and his wife is the teacher Cori brought supplies over for.  He dropped his kids off to ride with us on the trip around to the new bay, their first sailboat ride except that we motored all of the way.  We were invited to their house for Christmas Day and had a great time and got to eat a number of local foods that were new to us.  We also have been taking their daughter with us on several hashes and the trip to the waterfalls.

Several days leading up to New Year’s we had a rainy spell, but is has passed and everyone is out and about again.  With overcast days and intermittent winds I have had to run the generator more than I had planned.  This gives me the opportunity to make water since the water maker is an energy hog.  It is warm during the night and we try to keep things open for a breeze but we have a hatch just above the bed and it wakes me whenever I feel rain coming in.  Then we have to get up to close the open hatches.    After it passes we will open them up again until it rains again.  One night we were up at least four times to close things and then up again to open when it gets too hot to sleep.  These are just some of the trials and tribulations of cruising in the tropics.

New Year’s came and it was a quiet evening on the boat.  We had invited Sperry and his family to come out to the boat to watch the midnight fireworks but only he and his son were able to come out.  There was supposed to be fireworks off of the private island near us but they evidently got moved to the next bay where he now has a marina.  It also started to rain just at midnight but we did get to see some of the higher displays over the hills.  Around 1:00 am it let up and we got another display that had been postponed due to the rain.  The weather being what is was we invited them to spend the night.  The next day his son got another experience learning to kayak in Cori’s kayak.  I think spending the night on a “yacht” was high on his story list when he got back to school.

We have been here just over a month which is a problem since Customs only gave us a 30 day permit and we were on day 31 when I thought of it.  Today we made the move back to Prickly Bay and picked up a mooring ball and went in to Customs to get an extension and pay an overtime fee for doing this on a Sunday instead of a weekday.