An Egg-strordinary Easter

What do you do on Easter Sunday when it is raining, everything is shut, the courrier still hasn't arrived and you are saving money? 

You decorate eggs and are very thankfull to you lovely friend Mim for giving you a giant Lindt bunny before you left. Num num num. 

Left -Javis' Egg, Right Tia's Egg 'Evil Fred'.

Happy Easter everyone

Tia and Jarvis, Over and Out

Playing the Waiting Game

Waiting for the postman to come as a kid was always one of the best activities of the morning. He was part of the routine. You got up and got ready, you had breakfast, the postman came and then you left the house and went about you day. Perfect! As I got older this regular friendly face who delivered my letters (mainly others letter that I opened anyways) turned up more infrequently, and became many different faces. Getting your post was more guess work and hoping. You sent things a week in advance for someones birthday and mutiple weeks in advance for Christmas with it often ending up being a 'New Years' card anyways.
Then there was the courrier service....  Be it Mr UPS, Mr Fed Ex or Miss Parcel Force (a bit of sexual equlality and all), items just seem to travel about by their own whims. Turning up late, out of hours or not at all are now the norm back home and, although I did expect more challenges to this process abroad, I did not plan for others such as, Mr 'Spanish Time' and Miss '6 day public holiday', to add to the turmoil of the event and play such an influencial part when we joined the ranks of yachties getting International post.

After an 'incident' with the Kindle's screen encountering my elbow with a lot of force behind it, it is needless to say it was well and truely broken. We were not keen on replacing it however as after having a 9 hour stint at the airport frieght zone in Morocco when we needed to receive post before, we were very keen to not have to have anything delivered to us again. However 20 days of crossing the Ocean with only a very limited supply of books???  Not very appealing. We thought with the magical forces of Amazon and UPS combined, and that we were giving them 2 weeks notice on a, and i quote, "2-4 day international priority delivery", not much could go wrong. Yet here we still are in Las Palmas, with everything now shut down for Easter still Kindle-less. Normally i'd happily (ok not completely happily) wait it out, but we are now getting into the countdown for the Atlantic Crossing. The last few people who are crossing this side of the Hurricane season are steadily stocking up and shipping out leaving our little boat sitting playing the waiting game. Don't get me wrong, we have worked out that we can get there up until the second week in June and we'dl be fine but, officially June is classed as the start of Hurricane season and we will be cutting it fine if we don't leave in the next week. So with Jarvis' trusty 'switch-myself-off-unless-plugged-in' phone we will continue to wait for Customs to call (we have politely been asked to stop emailing/calling them).. what can go wrong???


On happier notes 'Boat of the Marina' is back and what a corker we have for you at Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. One of those ones that was spotted out the corner of my eye, i bring you:- 'HIPPIE BOAT'.

Hippie Boat

Also bringing you a special one that shows its a small world after all. After sailing over 1500M, the yacht opposite us on our pontoon is from Harwich.What are the chances!

Other news and advice from our little world:-

• If you can't find a Tattoo place on an island, a sterilised needle and ink work perfectly fine
• Just because it looks like a lime doesn't mean it is. DO NOT eat it!
• When the food delivery men beat you back to your boat, you know you have officially become a dordaler 
• Finally, wear yellow - you will match everything:-

Matching Bumble bees

UBER dog!

 Tia and Jarvis, Over and Out!

This is my island in the sun

Warm, sunny Islands. Coconuts hanging on Palm Trees. White sand and crystle blue seas. Cheap beer and good company.  Paradise??? Yes. I think it very well could be!

Our first taste of Paradise came in the form of Lanzarote. We had a good sail there from Morocco. It took four days (our longest consective time at sea so far) and we arrived safe and sound without any problems or excitment (of the bad braking variety) to complain of. At 4:00am on the 13th April we dropped anchor in a little natural bay in Puerto Naos, just outside the captial of Aricefe.

From friends I had always heard it be refered to as 'Lanzagrottie' but this was so far from the truth. It was super clean everywhere (More litter collectors than i have seen anywhere) and the weather was beatiful - between 25 and 30 degrees at all times - and the warmth lasted long into the evening. The volcanic rocks that the island is made up of were still radiating warmth enough to be in t-shirt and shorts at 9:30pm at night, this made it perfect weather to take out our BBQ for its first trial run on the first night. To date it has just been sitting in the back cabin being longingly looked at every now and then by Jarvis. I think the Australian DNA for BBQs runs deep.

With so little time on the Island before moving on we booked ourselves on a little tour of the South part of the island for the day. It was really good; great value for money, informative and let us see all the main attractions on Lanzarote, but one day was definately enough time to spend in the 'tourist Zone'. Being ushered around like cattle and frowned at if we went over our 7minute allotted toilet break. Tours defintaley have their positives but this was a good reminded that they have their down sides too and that we are very lucky to be doing this all at our own pace.

We took a Camel ride up the Montanas de Fuego and got a grumpy old lady camel called Sigera who rode more like a bucking bronco than a camel but it was brilliant fun and I believe she liked Jarvis a little too much. The tour wound its way around the mountains where a restaurant topped the view as all the food there is cooked by the heat from the Volcano itself - very cool! Then down to the wine tasting valleys in the middle of the island where, obviously, we had to make sure we got our moneys worth before we moved on. All up very good but we won't be doing another one in a hurry.

The rest of the 4 days were unashamedly spent doing... nothing! Wonderful, sweet nothing. A spot of reading here, a bit of lazing in the sun there. No complaints to be had but nothing exciting to tell.

Our next stop in the beautiful islands was to be Tenerife. I havent been there since i was very little but it looked to be a good point to head south down to Cape Verde to after and we really wanted to climb mount tidie, so after checking all the weather sites (we mainly use Gribs and WindGuru) we got up at 3am (YAWN) set a course for Puerto Colon and set off. We knew to expect some exagered winds due to the channelling effects of the mountains but halfway in the predicted force 4 winds turned into a Gale, the waves were crashing over the boat and everything was coming at us head on. Not comfortable at all. We just gritted our teeth to bare it, after all the whole journey should only have been 24hours max, but we were both very sick and decieded to head for closer shelter in the form of Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. With only 5 miles to go the boom broke free of the main sheet and was swinging violently across the boat above us. We had to lasso it from underneath and tie it down as best we could before any damage was had, we were lucky that the only damage caused by theforce of the swing was one spare hallard line breaking off. 

We powered into Las Palmas at 6:00am this morning and although not our original desitantion I am very glad we came here. The Yachting community here is lovely. Not too touristy but very friendly and we already have plans to go have drinks on a Norwegien boat this evening (secretly to quiz them about the crossing and gain tips). Internet is free, the beach is 100 meters away and i can see the main city from where i am sitting. As we didn;t plan to come here I don't know much about the island but our friend Mr Google will be able to help us im sure. We hear its even pretty cheap to take a ferry over to Tenerife so we might still get to climb that mountain after all.

Tia and Jarvis, Over and Out.

Bye Bye Flower

Drum roll please *dum dum dum dum dum*

The evil, dreaded flower has finaly gone. Thanks to a bit of elbow grease and some wet-dry sandpaper she has now vamoosed without any damage to the hull. Impressive me thinks as all the experts said it wouldn't work.
Photographic evidence of this miracle below (Still waiting on the official name change form.. so close!):-

Going...

...going...

...so-long!!

One step closer to being Croc Bones...

Tia and Jarvis, Over and Out!

Haggling, Harrasing and Head over Handle bars

Question: How many differnt experiences can you get into three days?!

Answer:- A lot

The train journey from Mohammedia to Marrakech was an experience all on it own. It was meant to be a 3 hour journey but became 4 and a half. The train was so packed that I spent the time pushed into an empty fire hydrant spot with three suitcases jammed between my legs, a small child resting against me and partaking in the strange 'to-me-to-you' game of passing bags and people back and forth. People would litterally climb over you to walk to one end of the carriage and then turn around and make the climb back. Im not sure if this was their way to pass the time of not but we were oh so happy when the train finally pulled into the station at about 3pm and we were free from the hussle and bussle... or so we thought!

We settled on a hotel straight out of the guide book for the first night and the made our way through the stream of motorbikes, scootors, 'petite taxis' and horse carriages that wind their way through the roads, pavements and any spare space that can herald them towards their destination, towards the main square which is thankfully, more or less traffic free.

The square is the heart of the Medina there and holds as a centre stage for all the main sights to be seen. Snake charmers and street theatre play a major attraction and there are traditional water carriers and bands that weave through the crowd. We we pulled into a small food stall in the centre of the square and ate some of the couscous tagines as we watched the sun set - very beautiful.

We were still pretty hyped so we made our way into the maze of souqs (sections of the market) and were immediatly imersed into a constant 'non merci'. The harrasing is pretty bad there and everyone wants to be your guide and friend but 'no money for me, no money... i just show you to my friend who you will buy from, yes?'. It definately gets a bit much after a while and I can see why the guide book suggests breaks from the centre. I did find a gorgeous leather bag that I happily haggled for. Not sure if i did well or not. He started at 150dh and i got him down to 100dh... probably could have done better but it was my first haggle attempt so not to shabby.

The next day we planned to have a day out of the city and go out to the mountains, walk around and hike a bit. We found the taxi point which was heaving and tried to haggle with the man for the journey... he wouldn't go down below 400dh for a one way journey (£40) so we went to head back to the bus station to try the price there instead. As we went to dodge the traffic a guy came belting around the corner on a bike and ran me down. I don't really remember it but Jarvis tells me he blinked and then I was 8 meters further away. The traffic kept on coming so Jarvis had to grab me and pull me off to one side. Annoyingly i couldn't really walk. My hip and foot were painful to move and that pretty much put an end to the days hike! Grrrrrr... evil bike!

Instead we though we'd wander around the Medina and managed to get lost. Only 4 hours of wandering later did we get back to the centre. We picked up a few more bargains along the way. Jarvis got a fetching local hat and 'genuine leather for you my friend' shoes. It had been a long day so we relented and went to one of 4 places in town where you could get a beer. A place called 'KosyBar'. It was very gorgeous but just tourists and the price difference was crazy. You can get a full meal here for two people for around £4. In the bar one small beer was £5. We settled for one each and headed back to our hotel. (Sadly we didn't get the one on the roof.. it was raining).

On the last day we decided to be propper tourists. We visited the palace -beautiful, the tombs- kinda boring, and the jewish quarter - awesome! We got talking to a 'herbal seller' who took us into his shop and took us through all of the spices, herbs, pot etc and told us what they were for. He even gave us some fresh pepermint tea with added menthol crystals which was sting-the-eyes strong and gave us gifts (a pot which you wet and it becomes lipstick and little reeds which are toothpicks) for thanking him to practice his english (yes, i am also sure it was a bit of a con - but it was brilliant and he was very kind). We also bought some Jasmin balls to kill the evil moths that are eating our clothes, some amazing smelling spices for rice and Jarvis got more Ginsing than we could carry. Not even sure what its for... anyone????

We spent the rest of the day watching the world go by in the 'Cyber Park' to avoid the harrassing. Its awesome, they have free internet hotspot monitors build into the trees! Very cool! Then it was home time and thankfully we got a seat - HORRAY!!

Tia and Jarvis, Over and Out!

Having a Time Out

It has been a brilliant week in Morocco. A very relaxing week and I am so grateful for that. Having company for a while was just what we needed and it gave us that push we needed to down tools for a bit and chill out.

We went to see Casablanca and sadly it was really dissapointing. Cranes, big holes in the ground (two massive ones giving the view from Pete and Suz's hotel room) and an exceptional amount of traffic everywhere (crossing the road is a once in a lifetime experience). The Medina (their 'old town' markets) was compact and very windy but I was personally over the experience when we saw a pet stall in the centre selling puppies - there were 5 of them and they were squashed into a hampster cage - horrible! All up I wouldn't reccommend it. The only highlight was the first taste of traditional Moroccan food - Chicken and Lamb Tajines all-round. Num num num!

The next day we spent in Rabat which had an awful lot more to offer. A fantastic mix of old and new, beautiful buildings and the most bizzare things for sale in their Medina.  We saw cardboard boxes of tortoises for sale everywhere, some of the best knock-off designer brands i've seen and an oddly dressed man in a sombrero selling water out of a sheepskin. The markets has heaped piles of all the spices you can think of; amazing colours and smells filling the air (and covering some less pleasent ones) - really beautiful and freshly squeezed orange juice stalls on most corners. We had a guide thrust upon us and were fully jipped by his final 'fee', but he was exceptionally informative and showed us all around the back quarters of Rabat. Their mosque all of the best views and decorative buildings and, my favourite part, told us why so many buildings are painted blue... mosquitoes don't like it. Random fact of the day!

I think Jarvis' highlights for Rabat were a bit different to mine:-

1. He found and bought a 'local music' CD - thankfully it has so far only been played once on the boat. The chanting gets a bit much after a while
2. There was protesting going on in the centre of the city. Big signs, lots of shouting and clapping.. Jarvis went and merged into one of the 'mob' for a bit.
3. We saw a local kid try to beat up a fisherman with a steel pipe, pretty scary but unmissable - from a safe distance that is.

 Now our company has left us *sniff* we are looking to go see Marakesh tomorrow and stay there overnight. Pete kindly left us his Lonely Planet book so we are all infomationed-up. Looks light we can rent a mattress on a roof for £2 and sleep out under the stars, too tempting an offer to miss I think!

Tia and Jarvis, Over and Out!