Rum, Beer, Diesel and Dinks

Sunday Ap 19th 10:31am Hugo time . Polamar Margarita. Well it has been a busy 4 days here in Margarita. Shopping here is an experience. On our arrival Wednesday evening we dinked ashore to see Juan...the local "Boat Boy" and get the latest info. There are only 45 or so boats in the anchorage....down from the 50-60 last yr at this time . I explained to Juan that it will get worse as Obama and his pals take the worlds economy down even further. Juan got on his soapbox spouting the wonders of socialism here in Margarita. He explained how the vicious producers were screwing the country. Seems Hugo price fixed the price of white rice here in Venezuela. 90% of the rice consumed here is white rice, the rest...par-boiled, brown, flavored etc in not controlled. So the producers all changed their plantings and produced the exotic rices where they could make a higher profit. Result....no white rice on the shelves. We were here last yr when the rice fiasco was going on. If the producer could not make a profit at the fixed price...well.....why plant it? I have been reading on the news that Hugo and Obama are buddies now....so you people back home get ready to see our government screw with capitalism.
On Thursday P&J, Joyce and I took a cab into town ($ 3 dollars) to change some dollars into B's. We were directed to a men's clothing store,very upscale where we waited for the owner to get off the phone. Was more than happy to get our dollars at the black market rate of 5.5. Remember back in the Testegios...4.5...and last year 3.3 to 1 dollar. The "official rate is 2.15 B's to the dollar. Armed with a 1000 or so B's we started to do our shopping recogniscence. Our mission was to find which store had the cheapest rum, beer and meat. We cabbed from 1 store to the next checking out all the prices. Some products are price controlled, while others are more competitive. Meat for example, is price controlled. If you can figure out what cut is what , you can get some great buys. We stopped at Vemesco the local boat stuff store on the way back. I had tried to buy a dink here last yr, but the number available was zero. AB and Carib were based here in Venezuela last year. The boats are of high quality and very expensive back in the States. I had been in contact with Vemesca for the last year. They had emailed me in November that they had several boats available and did I want one. Hell yes I did, and had to pay for it then...on the spot at 3.3 B's to the dollar...came out to $2200 USD...about 1/2 the US price. Vamesca had only a few boats to sell and since mine was the last they will ever get(AB and Carib have since left Venezuela for a more capitalistic country Colombia) we have named the new dink Hugo. Well they promised to deliver the next day. Friday AM the 2 J's went in on the bus to Sigo's while P and I stopped at Vemesca to change some $'s into B's and then cab bed to catch up with J and Joyce. I was still price comparing the rum, but Phil went on a rum orgy and bought 49 bottles. I bought 3 cases and a few others to sample...no beer Sego was too high. So back to the boat to store our prized rum. Vamesca delivered the dink at 4pm on Friday afternoon.. .damn we missed happy hour at Juan's .18 cent USD for a beer..DAMN.. .Right in the middle of this...the diesel boat appears, we took on 175 gallons of diesel and 10 gallons of gas....total price 72 USD.... would have been over $500 back home. Now if we could make it to the fuel dock... 5 ft draft, we could buy the same for $ 13.00 USD . Damn

Our New Dink

Now we had 2 dinks and 2 outboards...and have to get them both out of the water at night. (theft prevention) We had planned fajitas with P&J but postponed till Saturday night...too much to do. We planned to make a beer run on Saturday AM. Joyce P and I left about 10:30 stopping at the Central Market to check their prices...too high ...so we went on to Rattan an upscale Walmart type store. While I checked and bought a case of Gin...$3.09 a bottle, Phil started filling his cart with beer. He was really pissing off the beer guy. P and I had had a beer tasting the day before. He had about 10 cases, I went for 6 each of Polar Ice and Solara. We then headed for the meat dept. Last year Rattan had a meat dept with butchers taking care of customers. This year all the meat was packaged like the US. Phil starts piling his cart with various packages of meat...remember he is a Brit...they will eat almost anything. meanwhile I found some fillets that were prepackaged 2 in a vac bag. They were about $4.10 a package...a little over 1 pound for 2 fillets or $3.22 a pound. The hamburger was fantastic...we will buy and suckie bag some next week before we leave. About this time Phil finds a scanner where you can find the price of an item. He had the beer guy get all of this kind of beer, well now that Phil found out that it was 30% more, he was putting 4 cases back for the less expensive.We took our overfilled carts and checked out. While Pill is ahead in the rum race, I'm ahead on beer.
While Joyce stowed the beer I put Herbie our 15hp outboard on the new dink. Damn...would not start. I putzed with it for an hour before I found the loose connection...we took a quick ride..too cool. P&J came over at 6:30...I went to fire up the grill and busted the gas connection.... now I had to go to plan B. I had never made fajitas on the stove...but my titanium pans came through.
After dinner we had a scientific rum tasting. We had 6 different priced rums including the 2 lowest price which Phil had 49 bottles stowed in his blige. I had gone for some mid range which I had purchased last year. We tasted and rated the 6 rums. Amazingly we agreed for the most part on which we liked and which we didn't. The lowest rated...well Phil has 49 bottles of that in his bilge. Me...going to take the bus in tomorrow and buy more of the good stuff before Phil snags all of it. Tonight we are having another rum taste test...Joanna thinks the balsamic vinegar I use in my marinade caused the cheap rum that Phil has 49 bottles to fail the test....We will see....