A quiet week on Galt until Saturday arrived. Our contractors have been busy working off the boat so it was just us on the boat this week until the cabinets were ready for install on Saturday. Bill had worked all week on the galley floor in preparation of the arrival of the first set of cabinets. I spent time ripping out the old ceiling material in the front cabin. A portion of it had been ruined by a leak in the forward hatch. Considering I hate the original ceiling material on the boat (rotted old foam covered with beige vinyl), ripping it out was a pleasure. A dirty, dusty pleasure but still quite satisfying. Next steps on my project will involve prepping the ceiling for paint and trying to make it look better without putting a lot of money and effort into the project. Considering we use the front cabin for storage and no one ever sleeps there, good enough will be good enough. The cabinet builder showed up Saturday and we guess he expected the install to take a couple of hours. Six hours later he was still not done. As with most things boat, no surface in the galley was even so he would try unsuccessfully to fit the cabinet, take it up on deck and shave a bit off, try to refit, back up on deck for more shaving and so on. Bill made him stop at 5:30pm so we could eat and have a break from the constant buzz of the saw. He wanted to return on Sunday to work again but Bill convinced him we all needed a break for a day. So tomorrow, the buzzing will commence!
Our tourist event this week was a visit to the Convento de la Popa here in Cartagena. It was built in the 1600s by Augustine monks. The small chapel was beautiful and the entire structure was reminiscent of our time in Spain. The Convento was located on the highest hill in Cartagena and had amazing views of the city. I did not realize how sprawling Cartagena is! We were lucky to get some good pictures before the clouds and rain made an appearance. We have had several thunderstorms this week with some excellent lightning shows. The storms do not seem to put a damper on the fireworks in Cartagena. The Colombians are obsessed with fireworks. Almost every night around 9pm, we get a fireworks display of some sort. Not small fireworks like you see from the roadside stands in South Carolina but large displays of fireworks. At first, we would wonder if we had missed a Colombian holiday….now we know fireworks just seem to be an everyday event. The Colombians also seem to be obsessed with food item containers being pouches instead of jars and bottles (Bill says the official name is “flexible packaging” because, of course, he knows this very useful information in life). If you have seen the applesauce packages made for toddlers that have the cap you remove to suck out the applesauce, that is the same package. Sour cream, mustard, ketchup and even jelly come in these packages. When I opened my jelly this week, all the jelly juice squeezed out onto the plate so it was like grape juice. I am not finding this style of packaging very functional! I managed to find an imported jelly that was in a jar so from now on, I can reuse the jar for my “nonflexible packaging!” We will be busy this week getting ready for our trip to Ecuador midweek. Our flight leaves at the lovely hour of 6am so there will be little sleep that morning. Bill is currently working on the chore of finding a taxi that will be around at that ungodly hour. We did not time our Ecuador trip well as their elections are taking place today. One candidate was assassinated last week so we are hoping that any protests or issues will be done by the time we land. Gotta love South American politics! They are a passionate bunch! ***No blog will be posted until we return from Ecuador
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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