We have been in El Yaque, Margarita for 10 days or so. In fact I am struggling to remember what day it is :0)
 
The weather has been fantastic - sunshine from dawn to dusk - and windy pretty much all of the time. That may sound horrible to some of you, but those of you who windsurf will know that is pretty much the perfect weather. We have been windsurfing every day mostly on 5m sails or less. We've both sailed the smallest boards we've yet been on and made the biggest jumps of our windsurfing career. We are still working towards the elusive planing carve gybe - but we've been practising hard and getting much closer.
 
Other than the windsurfing we have had some encounters with the local wildlife... We've been bitten lots by the local mini mosquitos - I gues they are the equivalent of midges and boy are they persistent. We have just last night managed to rig up our mosquito killer due to technical difficulties with plug sockets and adapters - and the relief of a night without being bitten is fantastic :0) Long may it continue... We have also had frogs in the bedroom one morning. We were on our way out of the door when they hopped having been disturbed by the guys doing the gardening. I managed to catch one (after some concern as to whether it was safe to pick up - could it be poisonous) and shoo its mother (twice the size) out. Meanwhile Dave held on to the bags!! We have a tiny gecko who lives in our room - he hides under the doorpost whenever we go by - I am hoping that he (and the frogs) will eat the mosquitos!! We also have tiny tiny ants - which are not a problem at all - except that they seem to have moved into my laptop which I am sure cannot be good for it!!!
 
Other than that life has been pretty uneventful - El Yaque is pretty small - and is surprisingly quiet. Maybe something to do with Britain and America both cancelling their direct flights here. We flew via Madrid and Caracas - which was fine - just a long trip, although we did stop in Madrid for a couple of days which was lovely.
 
For those of you who have been to Club Vass, Dahab or Margarita, - we've met up with Nancy. She is running the posada (guest house) next door and is as friendly and lovely as ever. She worked for a while at Ricardo Campello's new kit hire centre but decided that she would rather go free lance as an instructor and also run the posada. She has a venezuelan boyfriend now, called Alli, who is a kite surf instructor and seems a really nice chap. So, if any of you are thinking of coming out to visit Margarita then I'd suggest contacting Nancy on facebook (Nancy Tyrie) - I'm sure she'd be more than happy to help!!
 
Well, I think that's about all our news - did I mention we are having a fantastic time - really enjoying the windsurfing and meeting some nice people along the way. Although we have only sailed in the one location conditions have been very different each day - we've had waves, chop, really strong wind, flatter water - we are just waiting for 'flat' water - but I don't think that is likely to happen unless we take a boat over to Coche, the neighbouring island - which actually sounds like a lovely thing to do anyway.
 
This weekend is 'Carnivale' - so that might be fun. Apparently everyone just parties a lot - although up till now we have been really early to bed - so I don't know whether we will manage to stay up!! It might be tricky to windsurf though as apparently the first 20m of the sea will be full of partying venezuelans. Hmmm - maybe a few trips around the island might be a good idea.
 
Anyway, I must go as it is breakfast time and we get breakfast provided on the terrace - lovely.
 
Love to you all
Sarah (and Dave)