Colors of the Caribbean

Monday 19th July

Location: On route to Los Roques, Venezuela
We left La Blanquila at 10pm last night and had to motor again, as there was still no wind. I went back to bed and left Edi and Bob on watch.
At 4am I took over the watch and Bob and Edi managed to get some sleep. The sea was still relatively flat making it a smooth passage. We did manage to raise the sails for a couple of hours, but the progress was slow, when bringing the sails in we had problems with the in mast furling once again.
We arrived at Los Roques at 3:15pm. These islands would be without a doubt; one of the most incredibly beautiful places on earth, were it not for man! The beauty of these islands is almost indescribable; with colors you could never imagine possible. Remarkably the clouds reflect the colors of the water and the sand. The water is bright aquamarine, and the sand a magnificent pearly pink, the clouds that collect over the islands reflect exactly the same colors as if on a painter’s canvas, I have never in all my years of traveling seen anything like this.
As we approached the anchorage of the little village, we were invaded by hundreds of flies, even paradise it seems, has it’s nemesis.
After check in we motored carefully (it’s very shallow) around to Crasqui and dropped anchor in the sandy bottom. Edi swam off the boat to check our anchor setting, we had a bad experience here 2 years ago when an unexpected southwesterly wind blew up in the night, and we found ourselves almost on the beach.
Motorboats are everywhere here; Crasqui is a very popular anchorage with Venezuelans, especially on weekends, and the place is way too crowded for my liking. The remains of a couple of tumble down buildings are visible just inland, a few feet from the shore that had previously been a hotel and restaurant, but the Inparques shut it down in an attempt to preserve the natural state of the island, unfortunately all that succeeded in doing was to make beach look run down and neglected, creating quite an eye sore.
We had to quickly close up the boat once we had our anchor set, as the millions of mosquitoes that inhabit these islands had noticed our arrival, and were descending upon us in swarms. Shut safely inside the boat we put the air conditioning on and watched a movie while we ate dinner.