Cycling, travel, scams and other stuff
Got up at 8am for a dive. Pretty impressed with myself. The dive was even better than the last one and saw my first crayfish.
Met the other boys for a pretty quiet lunch and then went back to bed for the afternoon.
Did the coffee and internet thing. Put loads more pictures on my flickr site. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hubbers/sets/.
Met up with the boys at the Mad Mongoose. They had been drinking rum (when in Rome) and coke all day watching the cricket on tv. They have found out why the local rum and cokes are so murderously strong. Coke is imported. But rum is made locally and as such is much cheaper. I joined the ride which ended up with me crawling in around 5am.
This morsel of information came form a local bar girl that self confessed ladies man, Runty, has been working his magic on. The other night he was at the bar and the publican asked him what he wanted. With his usual charm he loudly proclaimed that he wanted to be served by the hot bar girl. To which the barman replied “Do you mean my daughter?”
The nicknames of the crew are changing. Woza is now being referred to as Woza the Joke Murderer. No joke is so funny that Woza can’t murder it when he is on the rums. Judge had been through a couple of changes. He quit his bank manager job a few weeks prior to departure to prepare himself for the long days doing nothing. As a result he is extremely brown. I am trying to get his name changed to Judge Patel. He is angling for Jamal which he thinks has a more west indian feel. Some of the other boys want his nickname changed to The Hoff after it was discovered that he boasted to a local paper in New Zealand that he was the strongest swimmer in the group and his job was to save anyone who went overboard. Beige the big guy of the group is being called The Belly and his nickname has been incorporated into one of our regular songs. The original song goes something like this:
There is only one (insert name of cricket player who has just done something good)
There is only one (same name)
He’s walking along, singing a song in a Kiwi wonderland.
Beige’s version goes:
There is only two Fat Bellies
There is only two Fat Bellies
One is Runty’s bar in Hamilton
The other is a person with feelings
If you don’t find this funny now have a few stiff rums and I swear you will be in fits of laughter.
The guys with girlfriends on the trip are all missing their partners. The single boys on the trip have a different problem altogether. You see the cricket world cup hasn’t attracted many women to Antigua. Also the vast majority of crew on the expensive yachts here are men. This has earned the island the long held nickname of Mantigua.
Rum will also make you breath fire. Hummus met the local fire breathing nutters on the way to the club. He convinced them that they should give him a go. I’ll put the video on my revver site in the next few days.
Rum can also get you wedding invites. An English couple we met last night invited us to Jolly Beach for their wedding on Sunday. For some unexplainable reason Runty swapped his grubby backpackers shirt with the English guys expensive branded shirt. Runty plans to wear his nice new shirt to the wedding.
Rum will also make you send inapropriate texts. Runty was so smashed when he got home last night he sent the following text to every female in his phone: what are you wearing? please send photos. His mum was not impressed, she told him to stop drinking so much and behaving like and idiot. The bad news for me is I have been using his phone since mine unexpectedly stopped working in the first week on tour. This means that either my girlfriend or my mum (Runty wasn’t sure which) will have received this text. Mum if you are reading this and you got Runty’s text, don’t send him any photos, he is up to no good.
Is there anything rum can’t do?
Got shit for going to bed early. Most of the boat were out till the very early hours getting wasted. Our skipper, Woza, was almost unwakable and as pissed as a chook on the way to the game.
Massive trouble picking up our tickets from the players as no one seemed to know where the main gate was. Finally got in 10 overs into the game. The brand new Sir Viv Richards Stadium was an awesome venue and even has a designated party zone with a SWIMMING POOL for cooling off in!!! Our tickets were up by the press area with the toffs. There was even a waiter serviced, air conditioned lunch provided. I enquired if we were elidgible to partake in the fine dining at the lunch break but aparently we were not ‘dignitaries’. Unbelievable.
Bundy said he saw me on television for a full five seconds. The New Zealand commentator, Ian Smith, said I looked studious. Bundy said I looked bored!
We held the Windies to a meagre 177 which we easilly chased with over 10 overs to spare. Not the worlds most exciting game but a vital win on the way to a semi final spot.
Ended the day in the Port England pubs celebrating loudly. By this stage Woza was hugging and kissing everyone in sight telling them that it’s not every day you beat the Windies in the West Indies and that this was as good as the time NZ beat the Saffas in Johanesburg at the last world cup. How many guys could say they had been to both games? This was followed by more hugging and kissing.
Massive treat for cricket fans when we saw the reggae band with Curtly Ambrose and Richie Richardson in it.
Out till the very early hours to redeem myself for the previous nights softness.
The boys got up at 6am to get a good start on the long sail to Antigua. We took a look at Jolly Bay on the West of the island but it looked a bit tame for our needs so we headed around to English Harbour and parked our yacht next to the super yachts. And when I say super I mean SUPER. The two biggest ones next to us are worth more than New Zealand.
Parking or mooring as the say in boating circles was tricky to say the least and we attracted the attention of all the crew on the surrounding yachts. Partly because they probably found it funny but probably also because they were afraid that we were going to crash into them. Not sure what the yachting term is for this. In the end a friendly fellow yachtie nudged us into place with his rubber dinghy.
One of the great things about yachting is that yachties are all really friendly to each other. Yachting is one of those circles where it is totally acceptable to wave to other yachties (like hiking and driving buses). This is way cool.
Antigua is an English island so all the keys are back in the correct place on the keyboard. Now my blog will just have all the regular typos again :)
The Aussies on the boat next to us invited us over for a beer and a guided tour tonight, The six of them are sharing a boat with 5 crew. It’s 110 foot long and costs each of them 1100 Australian dollars a night!!! They said they all got it past their wives by booking it two years ago.
Got an early night in preparation for the big game against the West Indies.
Runty, Hummus, Woza, Beige and I went diving this morning. Good visibility with lots of little fishies and bright corals to photograph. Really pleased with the waterproof case that I got for my camera, even if it did cost nearly as much as the camera itself.
The French diving team were really funny and very friendly. They smoked when we did the BRIEFing and then on the ride out to the dive. They had another smoke just before the dive to tide them over and as soon as we got out of the water they lit up again. I’d wager that if it were possible to smoke underwater they would have had two or three there to.
Lunch at a great little French restaurant on the bay. Great food served with a frown. Very French. The food on the islands so far has been spectacular.
I have finally managed to get some photos online. Internet connections are pretty slow here but I have managed to get some up from out time in St Lucia.
More great sailing from Portsmouth to Dominica. Couldn`t find the southern port so we put the foot down a we were aiming for so we sailed until the late afternoon to Deshaies a popular port for yachties in northern Dominica. Our hard work means we have tomorrow off before the last push to St Johns in Antigua.
From day two I have totally mastered the art of napping while sailing. Toddie has it down to an even finer art and is able to cram in two naps per leg. We needed it today as the wind blew all the yachts in our very calm overnight bay parallel to the shore and we were all rocked awake at 6am. We have learned that even the calmest bay will cause heavy rocking if your yacht is on the wrong angle. That being said the whole the rocking thing makes it amazingly easy to get to sleep at night.
I can honestly say that I totally have my sea legs. So much so that I some times find the land swaying while I am on shore. I should add that I feel this while sober as well as smashed.
Sailed to Dominica with more fantastic nature buzzery on the way spotting lying fish and a we watched hungry pelican fishing for dinner as we anchored up.
Before we even had the boat in the water a local guy had paddled up to our yacht and asked us if we needed any beer, ice, fruit or ganga. Usually the local ganga rep lets us get on the shore before they make their sales pitch.
Portsmouth is very run down. Took a walk through town which looked like a tonado had hit it. Two large wrecks are washed up on the shore here.
Several “houses” are made from containers which I guess came from these wrecks. Later on our tour we saw a 150 strong parade/rally for Jesus. The poor certainly love god but from the way he blows their houses over I am not sure the relationship is reciprocal.
For dinner we dined at Big Papa`s Restaurant. Big Papa is quite the business man. He has built the biggest jetty in town outside his restaurnt and he does a great trade with the yachties.
Today’s sailing went Much smoother. Nobody was sick.
Beige tried to catch some fish trawling with a rod with six pound nylon and the thick string used to test the depth if the electronic depth gadget is suffed. In my opinion he was most likely to catch a tiny fish or a short sighted one. Neither eventuated.
Made it to St Pierre at the top of Martinique for more swimming etc. Massive nature buzz as a huge sea turtle spent some time cruising off the back of our boat tonight.
St Pierre is a cosy little village in need of a little love as some of the buildings are quite run down. You get the feeling that if Martinique was an English town developers would have moved in and turned all the run down buildings into pubs with full English breakfasts and live premiership football.
Two things are really bugging me at the moment:
Will blog more when back on a propper keybord.
Bloody French.
People have asked me how the sailing is going. Well the truth of the matter is we haven’t left St Lucia as all of our pool matches are based here. Today we are heading off at midday for Martinique on our way to our first Super 8 match against the Windies in Antigua. The plan is to anchor up at secluded beaches and chill.
Super 8 is the round after the pool matches. Initially there were 4 pools with 4 teams in each. After playing everyone in your pool the top two teams progress to the super 8 round where they play everyone except the other team that was in their pool. In our case that is England. The bonus is that our victory over the English means that we already have 2 points in the bank for the super 8 round.
After the Super 8 matches the top four teams go through to the semi final round which is a straight knockout.
The first days sailing was um interesting. We had had a big night the night before and we hadn’t even left the harbour before poor Runty was feeding the fishes his breakfast and probably some leftover rum over the back of the boat. Once we got into the straight between St Lucia and Martinique Judge was following suit over the port side of the boat. I thought this was quite funny until it got even choppier. This is where the real comedy started. I drank a Berocca for breakfast and let it loose in a huge stream of bright yellow vomit next to Judge. Beige said he was alright until then but when he saw the yellow vomit he lost his guts over the starboard side which was caught in the wind and landed on Woza who was skippering the boat. Woza, Hummus and Toddie were not sick at all.
The journey to St Annes in Martinique took five hours during which time I felt sick on and off. Runty said he felt sick the whole time and considered flying for the rest of the tournament. When we dropped anchor we all went for a swin off the back of the boat to was the smell of our sick off us. Or in Woza’s case he washed off Beige’s sick.
Broke international law and took the dinghy into St Annes to buy matches.
Beige and I were on the island for less than two minutes before we offered ganga mon.
Martinique isn’t playing cricket with the rest of the West Indies because Martinique is French. This means that they don’t play English sports, they use Euros and they require a seperate visa. We only had five US dollars and it took us several attempts to get one of the graduates from the Paris School of Customer Servise to take our money. The lady who evenyually helped did it with a bitter scowl that would have earned her an A+ on her final exam.
Today we easilly beat Canada in an average performance.
But get this …
Bob Woolmer, the Pakistan coach died in his hotel room on Sunday. We have heard all sorts of crazy rumours all week but it didn’t seem apropriate to comment on someones death on a blog based on rumour and speculation. Tonight the local cops held a press conference and said that it was a full on murder investigation and that he was STRANGLED!!! This is massive. Not only have we witnessed the biggest cricketing upset of all time but the coach of the upset team has been strangled to death in his hotel room!!!
The island rumour mill has been going crazy and it has been said that the whole Pakistan team has been finger printed and no Pakistani nationals are aloud to leave the island!
So far the local police seem to be struggling with the investigation. It took almost a week to figue out that the broken bone in the neck and the bruises might mean Bob was strangled. They have even asked the person who did it to give themselves up. Which to my mind seems a little naive.
To help the local police with their clusoesque investigations I have it narrowed down to three groups of likely suspects.
The Pakistani team and management are suspect group number one. They are staying at the same hotel so they have access but probabibly not the motive. Still I am not ruling out a “Murder on the Orient Express” style group effort at thsi early stage.
The second possible group are the shadowy bookies who have been bribing players and fixing matches for years. Several teams and players have been implicated but few have been convicted. There have even been a couple of players suspended or banned for life as was the case for Hanse Cronje the South African captain who took money to underperform in a match in India. He later died in a suspicious plane crash. It seems unlikely that the bookies killed Bob for not making the Super 8 round since this is sport and no one can promise to win all the time. But there is a rumour that Bob was half way through writing a book and that there may have been some explosive facts in there about match fixing that maybe some people didn’t want known. And what better time to knock him off than when Pakistan catastrophically fail to progress out of their pool at the World Cup and loads of angry fans to point the finger of blame at?
The final and most likely group of suspects are the fans who must have spent thousands of Pakistani Rupees to come to the world cup.
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