VERNAL EQUINOX; PLANS, PLANS
La Guardia, Isla de Margarita, Venezuela, Friday, March 23, 2007

Vernal equinox

The vernal equinox has arrived. Just after Christmas and even into February, we used to get a light shower in the pre-dawn. La Guardia is in the shadow of some high hills about ten to twenty kilometres at the eastern end of the island, up there by Playa el Agua, the island’s best-known beach. The hill residents get quite a lot more rain than either the peripheral beaches or those of us in the rain shadow. Almost every day still, large tropical clouds build up around the mountain tops, but little of it now comes our way. We have not had a drop of rain for at least six weeks now and there won’t be any more until July or August when the second rainy season comes. Macanao is west of us and basically never gets any rain. It’s a desert even though you occasionally see a few of those tropical clouds gathered like a crown around the peaks of Macanao’s one or two 800-metre peaks. Except for a few small fishing villages, hardly anybody lives out there either.

Isla de Margarita lies slightly over 10º north of the equator so there is some small difference between the length of winter and summer days. The sun rises a little before seven o’clock in the morning now whereas, around Christmas, it was starting to come over the eastern hills a little after seven. But there’s really not much difference, is there?

After the Christmas rainy season, the local vegetation entered a modest growth spurt. Some of the small trees around started bearing flowers and we have now reached the stage of seed pods. Those magnificently huge mango trees around the village were loaded with fruit. But that seems now to be passed. Other trees and shrubs seem to be bearing fruit and little flowers almost constantly.

(Interestingly, the tropical fruit trees are largely ignored by the locals. The fishermen eat their fish and otherwise everybody goes shopping. And we have yet to see any sign whatsoever of a household garden: no vegetables or orchards. I suppose that the soil – basically beach sand around here and quite saline – is unsuitable. And I suppose the people here have never had a tradition of gardening. Venezuela, which has a lot of arable land on the mainland, still imports half of its food. Of course, most of it comes from Norteamerica. You can find Washington apples at SIGO!)

I am sure that Gustavo, the man who shows up occasionally at my door in the evening to bring me limes, mangos, coconuts and other fruits, has scavenged the fruit somewhere. Gustavo is about 40 and dirt poor. I am sure he is a heavy drug user and desperate for a little cash. He has a little girl, Ariana, 4, and he tells me he needs the money to buy “pan” (bread). Maybe he does but I always buy from him even though we now have so many limes that Kathleen complains we have no more room in the fridge. But I can’t resist buying from Gustavo so we pass limes around to Paula and Jens and anybody else we can find. Too bad the mangos seem to be over now.

To be frank, the native flora on Margarita is not really about flowers. In our part of the island it is about cacti and other desert plants. Most of the blossoms you see around town (there are no flowers outside of town) come from planted shrubs like bougainvillea (called trinitaria here) and frangipani (a Caribbean term; around here it’s called dogbane in English and plumeira, I think). After several visits to the garden centre over in Asunción, I was advised by a Canadian guy I met there, himself a garden designer, to forget flowers in the tropics and go for a variety of leaf colours and shapes when planning the plants for the patio at Casa Venamor. He also gave me the tip to forget about above-ground planters, etc, and just go for lots of potted plant: they are inexpensive and provide lots of flexibility. I have been following his advice. (See photograph.)

The locals tell us that we are now entering one of the two hottest periods of the year. At the equinox the sun is directly above the equator, which about 600 Nm south of us. In the next few weeks the sun will come to be directly overhead and daytime temperatures will rise under cloudless skies. As the sun works it way north to the Tropic of Cancer (i.e. about the level of Havana, Cuba, or Mazatlán and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico) it is no longer directly over Venezuela and the daytime temperatures cool off a bit. We go through the same cycle in the fall.

We notice that noontime temperatures are getting to feel hotter and for some reason we have been getting some rain. The locals tell us it is definitely not typical for Margarita to get any rain at all. Some days recently have remained overcast nearly all day and humid. We stay out of the heat at noon, rinse off frequently during the day under our patio shower and sometimes take a siesta. The steady NE Trade Winds that up till now have cooled our days and evenings have now disappeared and the air is much stiller. Everything now seems a little more hot and humid although, in reality, the temperatures are much the same. It just seems more tropical now.

The twenty bougainvilleas (trinitaria) that I planted along the outside wall are not doing well. We did plant an earth ball with the plants, we water them occasionally and we have even fertilized them a bit. It is a wonder that anything at all grows in that sand and it does not help that Chicken Man and his customers throw their garbage around. This litter is everywhere in Latin America and is in almost every visitor’s opinion one of the negatives. But trinitaria is a tough weed. I am hoping that the plants are just busy putting down very deep roots as the date palm in the empty lot next to the Chicken Shack has also done. So has the other tropical fruit tree in that vacant yard (locals call it “nono”, but I do not know what its English name is; it has big beautiful leaves and small ugly fruit. I attach a picture.)

Plans, plans

To be frank we are starting to get itchy feet again. We have been here for nearly five months. My writing and our internet projects absorb our time. Stepping in for Jens at the posada is fun too. We had family visitors from New Year’s until into February while Kathleen was in Germany and at present Kris and John are visiting us from Portland for ten days. In February, Kris’s mother, Carol, will also be here for a week. She is one of the owners of the house and we are looking forward to meeting her. All our other visitors from Canada, the U.S.A. and Europe now seemed to have pooped out, all for quite good reasons. But we are disappointed anyway.

So now, with only six to eight weeks left to go on Margarita, we start pitching our thoughts forward. When we came here we thought we would spend the time here fattening the cruising kitty including setting aside money for a new suit of sails before we head for the South Pacific. That meant putting off the crossing until the spring of 2008 instead of sailing from Ecuador this spring, i.e. in a month or two. Then we wondered if we could perhaps spend six months in Ecuador again and sail to French Polynesia in September. The idea would be to spend six months there before continuing along on the “Coconut Milk Run” to New Zealand. By cruising French Polynesia for a few months in the off season we would have more time the following season to investigate other archipelagos along the Coconut Milk Run to Tonga and then New Zealand. We wouldn’t be so rushed.

The French, as we understand it, currently allow non-European vessels six months (European boats can stay for a year). Of course, although The Marquesas are only on the northern fringe of the tropical storm belt (sort of like the Sea of Cortés) there is always some risk of a tropical storm there. Gambier Island, farther south near the Tropic of Capricorn and largely out of the hurricane zone, is another alternative: it’s about 750 Nm south from the Marquesas. Unfortunately, you are still in French Polynesia and, after six months there over the stormy season, we would have no time left under our French cruising permit to visit the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, the Society Islands, Tahiti, etc. That would be a great pity.

On top of all this, Kathleen has been invited to teach conducting at the conservatory of the Universitad de dos Hemisferos, part of the Catholic University of Ecuador in Quito, the largest liberal arts institution in Ecuador. We are not at all yet sure what the dates will be or what the time commitment will turn into. This is all still up in the air at present and all has to be negotiated.

So, maybe we shall stay here in Venezuela until mid-May so we can re-enter Ecuador having been gone six months, stay there six months, find something else to do for the six months from autumn 2007 till Easter 2008 and then take off for the Marquesas in the spring of that year. Stay tuned.