Santa Maria (english)

Strange place. On one side of the Island the climat is very dry. On the other, it's humid. On one side the grass is yellow, the flowers barely grow and there is no decent beach. On the other, we can find everything growing in abondance, a waterfall and beaches of white sand. Now guess on which side of the island is the biggest city and the marina. Of course not! Why would they built on the side with water... that would just be silly! Duh? Unfortunalty for us, the only way to get to the other side of the island, since they are no buses is to rent a car or to take a cab. We found out that one of the boat owners lends his car out for 25 Euros a day so we took that option. In retrospect, that should of been the buying price. The old and noisy Toyota did manage to take us around the island nontheless and the other side is very beautifull. It's kind of like Flores but on a smaller scale. In fact, the population is about the same on both islands. Around 4000 people. As for the festivities, well we missed most of it. On Friday, right after we came back from our car tour, we were invited for a diner of Bonito by Dominique and Yves on Rusée de Jersey (yes, they are form Quebec) with the company of Caroline and Jake from Flying Fish (US). Offer very hard to resist. By the time diner was over, it was late an we were too tired to go to the shows. The next day, we went to the site after diner but besides a bunch of people sitting around eating fried sadines, not much was going on. We left à about 22h30 because we felt like intruders and still not much was going on. We had one last drink on the boat and went to bed around 23h and still nothing going on. I woke up at around midnight to the sound of some music. I remember thinking that it would be nice to go watch just before I fell back asleep. Apparently the music lasted from 23h30 to 2h30. On Sunday, we invited Dominique and Yves over for diner and went out in the cockpit to watch the closing firework. I guess that was that.
Our crossing so far is slow and quiet. The wind barely reaches 10 knots. This is hard on the sails. On the good side, our stomach are getting a break since the waves are small. Also, water is not coming on board so we can spend time in the cockpit admiring the scenery or fishing. We haven't caught anything yet but we did get the visit of two whales of a type we have never seen before. One of them swam in front of the boat for a few minutes. We have about 300 nautical miles left to go.