Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest Park – 06° 10’ 18” N 99° 46’ 20” E

By Kate and Sean -

…or The Lake of the Pregnant Maiden.

A truly tragic legend involving love at first sight, mermaid tears and a dead infant leads to the belief that water from this lake has magical fertility powers.  Lordy!  Susan and I were very careful.

Geologically, it is very cool.  The lake is fresh water but separated from the sea by a small band of rocks.  It would be very beautiful with the towering limestone cliffs and hanging jungles if it were not for the tourist pontoons, swimming areas and paddle boats in the shape of swans and cartoon ducks!  Fortunately for our fertility, we were not enticed to swim in the greenish looking water, donned in the mandatory lifejacket within the pontooned swimming area.

As the next wave of tourist boats arrived to disgorge their passengers, we putted off in the dinghy to explore the small beaches and the rock wall separating the lake from the sea.  We clamboured up and over the rocks to the lake and risked life and limb on the crumbling platform and staircase that had been closed for maintenance.  An explore around a small island then back to Popeye for a swim and a chardonnay.


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Check out our most popular posts!

Moving Aboard - 49° 38' 27" N 01° 37' 00" E

By Kate and Sean -
Image
Wow, that was a big week.  We are exhausted. ... and smitten! Monday was a paperwork day, but aboard Chinook.  We went over the contract, item by item, to ensure that everything the contract stated would be delivered.  There were a few things missing or incomplete (mixups in ordering, vendor delivery timing issues) but they were noted with written assurances that they would be delivered, changed out or corrected.  This all needed to be clearly stated before we transfer the lion's share of the purchase amount to Garcia. Signing and double-checking the contract Anything that wasn't in place, was incomplete or not working properly would be dealt with by the warranty team.   There was no refuting that they had delivered A boat. We had no idea how she sailed and there was no way that a single day of inspection would allow anyone to check every bit of the more-than-5000-person-hours of labour that went into this sleek looking vessel. The "Grin and Grab" p
Read more

Leaving Chinook and heading back to Canada - 49° 38' 27" N 01° 37' 00" E

By Kate and Sean -
Image
 Yep, you read correctly.  Our plans have changed, as plans often do and our 2024 is looking somewhat different from what we wrote in a previous post - A Rough Plan for 2024 .  Chinook will be left safe and sound at Port Chantereyne Marina - with her Garcia friends! We still plan to head to the UK and Ireland after Easter and will spend until mid-June cruising around, exploring the area and putting Chinook through her paces.  Our plan is to sail to Alderney, just off the coast of Normandy, on Easter Monday or Tuesday.  It is a short hop but has some major tides that can run up to 10kn so we need to time our departure well.  We bought the "Aurigny' (Alderney to the English-speakers) courtesy flag from the local chandlers here in Cherbourg We will then cross the English Channel to Portsmouth and work our way west along the coast of England to Wales and Scotland before heading south along the eastern Irish coast.  We need to be back in Cherbourg by mid-June for the 3-month warran
Read more

Garcia Boatyard - 49° 38' 48" N 01 35' 47" E

By -
Image
When we rocked up to the Garcia office for our Monday morning meeting, we couldn't help but notice that a mast-less Exploration 45 was parked outside the shed door where we had previously seen our hull parked.  Could this be o-u-r boat? Nice boat.  Could it be ours??? Marie, our project manager, confirmed that it was our boat!  Although we had come to the yard to put the Boat Show goodies that we had acquired into Garcia-provided storage, we were meeting with Christophe, the after-sales guy to go over spare parts and after-delivery emergency equipment that we were putting on our order.  We would not be getting a look ON BOARD this marvellous aluminium creature.  We would just be admiring through the meeting room window.  Our boat tour was tomorrow. The next day, we had mistakenly thought that the meeting was at 11 am, rather than the scheduled 10 am.  at 10:15 we received a text message from a puzzled Marie.  "Are you coming for the meeting?  Don't you want to
Read more