Thursday Dec 10

Hi There!

It is 5:31 am there are thousands of no-see-ums out here. Pisses me off that bugs are allowed in paradise but what can you do...

The rules have gotten tougher here and only one of us was allowed off the boat to go to Customs and Immigration. I was elected. My name appears first on the registration. I had to get directions b because I couldn't remember where it was and a couple of locals had no idea either! So it took a while to get there. It was not a big deal except that I forgot how slow island time can be. They were busy watching Jerry Springer while they were processing me.

The forms the marina attendant gave us were incomplete... they should have been on long paper and the bottom was missing. No biggie... but I missed a lot of spots and felt like an idiot when she kept correcting me. Then I had to walk down to Immigration at the police station which was further down the road. The officer was a complete sweetheart but when it came to Quentin's letter, she was not happy. It was not notarized, so we may have to make sure there is a new NOTARIZED one when he comes back. She asked me to bring Quentin down to see her so she could be assured that he wasn't here under "duress". When Rick asked him if he knew what that meant, he said, "sort of forced to be here? Absolutely not! I love it here!"  Good answer. She was happy with that and we stood and chatted with her for another 20 minutes.

So we wandered down and got the phones hooked up and he has his own phone so we can keep track of him. No-one has implants here for kids...hmmm...Liz, can you get one for him for Christmas??

After that we went over to the beach for a couple of hours so he could scour the beach for sea glass, his new passion?? The supply boat doesn't come in until tomorrow afternoon so no bananas or bread...we wait until then.

We went for dinner at Big John's dinner/ bar/ we sat on the patio and watched the little fish swimming around. They hide there until they are big enough to catch and cook! A shark swam through but I guess they weren't big enough to register on his food meter or he wasn't hungry. I had a chicken salad; Q had a burger, but he did eat some of Rick's Wahoo! And we came home with pound of fish for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will get supplies, change the fuel filter [oh yeah, he found them!!] and get rid of the contaminated fuel. Then I want to go up the hill to visit the dolphin house and Thomas Saunders, the man who makes turtles out of conch feet and coral bits.

Tonight we will just listen to the bar music and mellow out! ttyl