With our dock slip in Puerto La Cruz booked for an entire month and not being able to take any trips to the interior of Venezuela because we didn't feel comfortable leaving our 6 pets, we had plenty of time to explore the city as there didn't seem to be any day trips available. Puerto La Cruz is a regular destination for cruisers, especially in hurricane season, and, as such, has a full complement of services available to boaters. At Bahia Redonda services included weekly bus trips into town for provisioning, a laundry, a small grocery store onsite and public phones.

One of our first errands was taking my little male cat, Tiki, by taxi (these were available at the street entrance to the marina) to the vet who was a Dutchman and so spoke a little English, a rare commodity there outside of the marina, and I was able to tell him about Tiki's eating problem. He gave me liquid vitamins which seemed to help for a while, and Tiki started to gain weight.

Unfortunately his improvement only lasted a couple of weeks and then we had the very sad task of returning to the vet to have him put to sleep. By that time he wasn't grooming, eating or even purring and was extremely thin so I made the only humane decision I could for him. He was 15. This was also my first experience with being there while the vet gave him the shot, and I found it so comforting that I now ask to be there when the animal is put down.

We also took the provisioning bus into a major shopping area near the marina. The bus made regular stops at a grocery store, hardware store, home improvement store, and a branch of Citicorp before winding up the tour at a deli/bakery where we got some of the best Sicilian style bread I've ever eaten, and I'm not much of a bread eater.

In addition to going on the provisioning bus, we also took the public bus into the center of Puerto La Cruz. You may recall that I'm originally from the heart of Manhattan in NYC, and Puerto La Cruz reminded me of nothing so much as the way Third Avenue used to look when the El train was still in existence. Of course Puerto La Cruz has no El but the street scene is the same: very crowded, hot and dirty with lots of small shops lining the streets where you could find goods even cheaper than the stores in the shopping area near the marina.

The first time we went into town on the public bus, Charlie needed cash and decided to use an ATM located right near where we got off the bus. Now he was used to the machines in the U.S. which keep your card until the end of the transaction so when this machine spit the card right back out, he put it in again, and again, and again until the machine kept the card and wouldn't give it back. Remember there was a huge language barrier here as very few people spoke English. We went inside the bank where Charlie finally found someone he could explain his predicament to, and he finally got the card back. Very lucky for him.

We also made many trips to a large mall near the marina. To reach the mall we took the dinghy from the marina through a series of canals along which were some very expensive-looking houses and a couple of townhouse projects built to resemble houses on European canals. I even learned enough Spanish that I was able to make the waiter in a restaurant in the mall understand that I wanted to take my leftovers with me. I was greatly pleased.

Another fun thing we did was go to one of the small local restaurants on the beach near the marina for fresh fried fish and beer. For $2 or $3 we got more food than we could eat and drink, and the fish was caught locally, most likely by one of the fishermen whose boats were moored in front of the restaurant.

To be continued.