Miria, a new anchorage for us

We left Salardup a few days ago as with the high winds the anchorage became a bit choppy. We moved four miles East and we are now anchored off the island of Miria in the Central Naguarandup Cayes. Miria is more of a mangrove island and while there are some palm trees on the long and narrow island there are no beaches. In the past few days we've enjoyed taking dingy rides and exploring the neighboring islands of Guariadup and Iskindup but our favorite island seems to be Nabadup. Nabadup is a small island full of palm trees and has a beautiful sandy beach all the way around it. The snorkeling on the north side is spectacular. Jan and David (Winterlude) went with David and I one afternoon and we saw crabs and a great assortment of fish. I was partnered up with David (Winterlude), he had his speargun and I was spotting fish for him. We located a nice shelf about 20 feet down a deep wall. David made a couple dives to confirm that a big fish good enough for dinner existed and then came back up to the surface to load his spear gun. While he was pulling back on the rubber bands a large nurse shark swam up from the depths to just a couple feet below David. I tried to get David's attention but it's awfully hard to say anything with a snorkel in one's mouth and the face in the water. It didn't take long for David to figure out there was a shark under him and we both bolted out of the area. As we swam away we both kept looking behind us but the nurse shark had no interest in us at all.

Yesterday we received an unexpected but pleasant visitor, the veggie boat! The veggie boat is a launcha or open boat about 20 feet long which is loaded full of fresh produce and other supplies, it usually visits the anchorages once a week during boating season which I guess is now starting. As it's been two and a half months since we last went to a grocery store we've been running low on provisions so needless to say this was a welcomed event for us. We loaded up with eggs, oranges, grapefruit, grapes, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, water melon, pineapple and chickens. The veggie boat also had eggplant, celery, cabbage, sodas, beer and wine.

We also had three young men stop by in a dugout yesterday who had a successful day catching lobster of which we bought some. Jan and David came over yesterday evening for a few hours for happy hour and we talked about everything including future plans. We both decided that we should take the opportunity this cruising season to visit areas of the San Blas that we haven't yet seen. With over 384 islands this shouldn't be hard to do. There was even some talk about possibly heading back to Cartagena for a month as David and Jan had only stopped by there for a week and never really got to experience the beautiful city. Who knows, maybe we'll head back that way for a short bit but there's still so much here that we would like to see that there may not be enough time to do both.