Atlantic Island Voyage: Tobago 1999

Shifra's Log, January 30, 1999
Anse Bateaux, Tobago.


We've been here in the tropical paradise of Tobago for a couple weeks now, I figure it's probably about time I checked in with y'all. Since we are in the Caribbean I thought I would take advantage of the crystal clear water, well preserved reefs, and our multiple sets of dive equipment to finally learn how to scuba dive. It just so happened that the hotel overlooking the bay where we are is not only situated near some of the best diving on Tobago, but it is a "Five-Star PADI Resort". I'm not sure what that means (other than that they can charge more for lessons and we get a GOLD certification card rather than a SILVER one), but they are only a miniscule dinghy ride away so once we got here the entire crew of the Good Ship Tammy Norie started in on dive camp. Each morning at nine o'clock we putted in to the dock with our PADI manuals tucked under our arms, Advanced Open Water Diver course for them, ordinary Open Water Diver course for me. After an excruciatingly boring 3 days of classroom work, not to mention the HOMEWORK (I thought I had finally escaped school!) I was ready to "see the fun and adventure diving offers". Sadlly enough the course didn't offer a ritual torching of the PADI manual, because really, there is nothing I would like more than to see that thing go up in flames. Anyway, despite the cheesy writing in the textbook, diving is incredible. The feeling of being underwater and just hovering is...amazing. I feel like the reef is sort of an added bonus, just feeling the water all around me and watching my bubbles ascend to the surface is enough to give me chills.

Nonetheless, the reef is there and what a bonus it is! I've become accustomed to creatures that have previously only existed in photographs. I've learned that parrotfish aren't just blue, they glow, and trunkfish are even stupider looking in 3D, but most importantly I've learned that no photograph and no drawing could ever hope to capture the mindboggling grace of a manta ray. On my final training dive I had the incredible luck to be visited by one of those exquisite creatures. He/she/it was...wow. The only way I can describe their movement is like the most fluid and graceful bird, but without bones. This manta was about 6 or 7 feet from wingtip to wingtip and seemed just as curious about the 5 oddly colored noisy things that had descended into it's world as those bizarre things were about it. I spent most of my air in a gleeful ten minutes of communing with the manta, we followed it up towards the surface, then down again to the depths. We petted, tickled, and caressed it's back and belly until it got sick of us then followed it around until it was ready for more. It was strange, even from close up it looks like mantas would be velvety smooth, like an eel, but they're not. Their skin is rough, like a cat's tongue or a 5 o'clock shadow, and when you touch them you can feel and see the muscle twitch under your hand. It was such a beautiful experience, the woman who was diving with me came to the surface at last when her tank was completely empty and screamed at the top of her lungs out of sheer joy, even the dive masters were feeling giddy.

Hopefully while we're here I'll get a chance to see another one, keep your fingers crossed for me. 'Till next time,

Shifra T.

Atlantic Island Voyage 1998: Madeira, 31 October

Captain's Log, Halloween, 1998
La Gomera, Canary Islands

With great difficulty we have torn ourselves away from Funchal, after a stay of almost 3 weeks. We got in a total of about 10 levada and mountain walks apiece, and there would be enough for several months more. The blisters are starting to heal. We rented a car for the last 2 days, which opened up a whole new world of more remote walks inaccessible by bus, but for the most part were able to get where we wanted to go cheaply using public buses and our own shanks. We might have stayed even longer, but for the fact that our bilges were starting to smell like the harbor; imagine equal parts septic tank, old motor oil, and fishy salt water. Marina fees were a bit steep, too.

On one of our walks, along the Rabacal Levada, we startled a group of sheep grazing on a very steep slope. We saw them bounding up the hill and heard a splash, which we thought was a rock they'd dislodged. We rounded the bend, and were amazed to see a very young lamb down in the water, bleating wildly and losing ground against the flow of cold, cold water, which was about a foot deep. Without a pause, Shifra took off her shoes, jumped in, and set the poor wee beastie up on the bank. He was just barely able to clamber up to his mum; hard to imagine how he even got up there in the first place. This was on the side of a mountain, 3000 feet up, with slopes averaging about 45 degrees, much steeper in places. Tough sheep they've got there in Madeira. We did observe, by the way, that they all had legs of equal length, unlike the cows of the Azores. Perhaps evolution is not so far advanced in Madeira.

Another highlight of our time in Funchal was the purchase of a barrel of wine. Ziggy, our French friend, had found the shop, and brought back his barrel with great panache. He even went so far as to cut into one of his bulkheads to make a permanent mount. God forbid we should be outdone by a Frenchman. So off we went in search of the nameless, signless shop on one of the backstreets of the old town, and in our very best (unintelligible) Portugese, asked if we could purchase a barrel for our very own.

The old gentleman replied, in a torrent of toothless Portugese, that it was "vinho natural", no additives, stomped by foot in the traditional way, and for domestic consumption only, illegal to export. We would have to take it out in a big sack and tell no one who had sold it to us. This took some time to work out, during which various people came in with plastic jerry cans of various sizes, which he filled with a siphon from one of several immense oak casks, a line of which stretched back into the gloom. In the intervals between other customers, he let us sample some of the vintages, dipping into the casks with a long bamboo cup.

We asked if we had a choice between red and white wine: "ha, ha, we only have MADEIRA wine, which is neither red nor white". Overcome by the rustic wonder of it all, we plunked down our 18,000 escudos (about $100) and watched entranced as he uncorked a bright new 16-liter oak barrel, popped in a funnel, snaked a long hose into the mother cask, sucked on it to start the flow, and ran the pinkish-orange stuff in till the little barrel overflowed. Then he bunged in a large cork, and Bob's Your Uncle. We stuffed it into our largest knapsack, and staggered off (due to the weight, of course) in ridiculous pride. Once home, we screwed in the petcock, and invited all the other boats in the raft-up over for a victory round. Fortunately, there was still quite a bit left afterward. We lash it down while underway, and prop it up in the foc's'le while in harbor. At our fastidious rate of consumption, it should last most of the trip, unless the barrel springs a leak, in which case proper thrift would demand a quick kill.

MR