Forced relaxation

Puerto Amistad, Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador

As seems so typical of our time on the boat, again we are in a waiting mode.  For the last week, Juan, the marina dude, has been hinting that there may be a boat leaving and we are now first in line for their mooring - something that our insurance company would be very happy to see.  In fact, the holding here in the estuary is extremely good; I doubt that anything short of a typhoon would dislodge our anchor, but our insurance company insists that we cannot leave the boat unattended at anchor for more than 12 hours at a time - a mooring, no matter how questionable it may be, is no problem - leave it for years if you want!  Go figure!

In order to not miss an opportunity for a mooring, we have not ventured far afield.  We walk around the town and watch sunsets from the seawall, eat out at a couple of reasonably nice restaurants and generally just hang around with the other cruisers.  There are several boats here for which the crew stay on board for the season, others who use this as a base for exploring much of South America.  Still others are just passing through, on their way to the South Seas or the Galapagos islands, or south along the coast of Ecuador, Peru and Chile.  For us, we would like to at least see some of Ecuador before we leave for Canada for a few months.  Our visas are good for 90 days within a 12-month period - sitting here biding our time feels like we are wasting the precious time we are allowed to stay in the country. We are anxious to get moored and get moving.  Juan says maybe tomorrow.

A note about the weather here.  A lot of the time it is somewhat overcast, although the sun usually peeks through for a little while every day.  Sometimes the sky looks very threatening, but we have not had any actual rain.  The temperatures are considerably cooler than in Panama, and especially cooler than El Salvador and Nicaragua.  Most of the time, there is a light breeze blowing, making it quite comfortable for sitting around on the boat.  And the best part is "No lightning!"  All in all, this appears to be a great place to leave the boat for a while.  The marina provides a security patrol, even for the boats at anchor, and generally the people in the town seem very nice - it is just a very calm, safe place to spend some time.

As soon as we have the boat secured, we will be taking a bus to the city of Quito, where we will be picking up a fly and cruise package to the Galapagos islands - should be an adventure...

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