Cruiser chores

We spent most of Friday taking care of normal cruiser chores here in Tumaco. We loaded everyone in Nakia's dinghy including laundry and laptops from both boats, and did the rusty old hulk dinghy landing again. This time the tide was even lower and we had to use a second set of pilings to climb across on. We walked about a mile to the hotel area on the nearby tourist beach where we negotiated a price for our laundry at the Hotel Barranquilla. They don't normally take in personal laundry and had no concept of charging by kilo/pound. Instead they charge by the piece, which in past experience has proved exorbitant. So we waited while the woman counted out her idea of what constituted a "piece" (one shirt; two pillowcases; one bandana and a hand towel; one queen sized sheet). It seemed arbitrary to me, but it came out to a fair price of around $5 per bag. There wasn't a machine in sight, and I have to wonder if the per piece pricing is because they'll be doing it by hand.

We then went upstairs to the hotel restaurant to use their wireless internet. We spent several hours there (they must only open for dinner because we were the only customers), and then went next door to La Barracuda for another vegan (Eric and Sherrell are vegans and we liked the sound of what they ordered) almuerzo of beans, rice, and patacones (plantains cut crosswise, smashed, and fried, but not greasy) with a generous helping of the local aji, or hot sauce.

We walked back to the pier where John ran the laptops out to the boats, and we all went for a walk through the nearest neighborhood on the road to central Tumaco. Many of the houses in this area are built on stilts with raised wooden walk ways connecting them over the estuarial land. The wooden houses were interspersed with small tiendas selling the basics and we managed to find one guy selling ice cream. There wasn't much to the place so by the time we got to the Navy base we were ready to turn around and return to the boats.

Here's a link to a news story John found about what was actually going on when we were in town on Wednesday:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/colombia-riots-over-pyramid-swindles-1017961.html

Today we plan to see if there's a Saturday market. It turns out that Monday is a holiday, so we think we will do the checkout process on Tuesday for a Wednesday departure for Isla Gorgona about a 100 miles up the coast.

Linda and John