Las Palmas

When we arrived to Las Palmas we still had no idea who the captain was going to take as crew to Cap Verde. We landed, bought some food and headed to have meeting with the other intended crew of the ship. During shopping we found out that the expenses of the cruise were much higher than what we originally had thought. So far I have been paying for food something around 10e a day, for this boat expenses were over 17e. At the meeting it turned out that the other crew was as loosely informed as we were. The Italian guy had acquired a boat already and the girl from belgium was not too eager to join. It was up to us to decide if we wanted to join the boat. As the atmosphere was a bit tense, captain obviously quite indececive, language of boat was France and expenses a bit too high I decided to jump the boat. Thomas did the same after me and boat ended up with just two person going to Cap Verde in the end.

Night at the beach

We slept the night in the boat and next morning had early start in the harbour meeting with all boats in order to join. We made few contacts with promising boats and it was already late evening when we finished the days work. In the city was WOMAD festival going on and after some dinner we headed to the festival. Music was great but people seemed to be mostly interested in getting drunk. We did not find any place to sleep so at 4 in the night the best alternative was the beach in the north peninsula of the city. Night was not cold but some small drizzles did occur.

Morning view

Beach hotel

In the morning I felt quite tired and after a small lunch and chilling in the park we tried to find internet access for searching accomodation. After failing in that we decided to head to a squat house which the belgian girl had recommended.

Stone on beach

Auditorium

Surfer

La Tomatera was buzzling with life although they said there had been much more people before. They had recently introduced a set of rules in order to organize the house a bit. We were allowed to stay for one week as the previous guests had just left. La Tomatera had interesting mixture of people living in a community kind of resembling a large falimy, including mostly artists, hippies and lunatics. I felt comfortable there and was looking forward to the soon to be occupation of another nearby house for the community.

Entrance hall

Toilet with water

Alice in wonderland in Spanish

Livingroom

We spent one evening painting the walls

Night vision

Thomas plays guitar much better than flute

My fingerprints in the wings

Someone added rainbow arch for dancing couple

My favourite drawing in the house 

Everyone were still sleeping when I headed for the boat

I got a email of one boat i had been hoping to join and they welcomed me aboard. It was quite hard decicion for me to choose between luxurious passage overseas and possibility of being a part of building the community. I chose the passage as I knew it would be hard to find as good one later.

For long time I have concidered myself as an excellent chef but When I had my first lunch in the boat it was the first time ever I have questioned my skills in making food. The standards our boat has in cuisine are amazingly high. The olive oil they brought from Italy is by far the best I have ever tasted, the guava marmalade was truly incredible and wine also top notch. Mariantoinette is professional chef and that can not be missed.

In the last few days we prepared the boat for the passage and trained a bit lifting the sails. Next sunday starts my first big ocean crossing.

The ARC starts on sunday