I had a delightful visit with Charlotte. She has lived a very interesting live in many different countries and speaks a number of languages. It tuned out that the reason she was in the camera store was to have her art printed up for her Christmas cards. She gave me one that I cherish. She wrote in Greek part of the poem :

Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη,να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος 

She did not use these exact words, but it means something like : May your road to Ithaka be long and may the journey be more meaningful than the destination.

She calls me “Odysseus of the Seas”. I like the idea of giving my Third Life a legendary destination. I have covered practically the entire voyage of Odysseus from the Black Sea to the furthest south and west in the Mediterranean.

Another gorgeous day. I was dressed warm this morning but had ice cold hands on the bicycle ride up the hill to the church of San Vicente. It is a very small group at mass, about 30. Father José (Pepe) Ribas does another service in San Carlos later in the morning and one in the evening at San Felipe. This time I have a picture with the head of St. Vincent’s statue showing. Most of the parishioners gather in the church hall for coffee. Yesterday Charlotte had told me that when her husband came to live in San Vicente, in the fifties, there was no road to Ibiza yet. You either had to come by boat or hike a steep narrow trail across the ridge. Later on there was a mule cart trail. The Padre told us, at coffee, the story that when the first cars started to use the new road they would often have to deal in the dark with mule carts without lanterns. At one time a villager called the local constable to confront one of the farmers who did not bother with a light on his caretta. The gendarme asked the farmer: “Why don’t you use  alight?”. The farmer did not answer him but proceeded to take the mule out of his harness and tied him behind the caretta and then he put him self in front of the cart and when the constable repeated his question he pointed across his shoulder and said: “Talk to the ass behind me”. This is a true story and I would not dare doubt the Padre’s version.

On the way back I picked some Prickly Pear Cactus pears and young shoots to make my favorite Mexican vegetable dish, Napolitos. And I gathered more Boletus/Eekhoorntjesbrood, as you can see from the below picture. If I would have shipwrecked here on the main island I could have survived without running into people like Angeles and Moss, etc.

I am sitting in a café with wireless after a 4 mile bike ride uphill from San Vicente to San Carlos. I picked my Boletos/Porcini/Sèpe meal along the road. This is the third gorgeous day in a row. Cool in the shade and cold at night. But the apartment stays warm for the night from the day’s sun.

II am having coffee later at Anita’s Bar with Charlotte. We are going to fight over whether she picked me up or I picked her up at the photo shop last Wednesday. I was really impressed with the designs she was getting copied in the shop, see for her work at:  https://www.google.com/search?q=Charlotte+Mensforth+artist+Ibiza&espv=210&es_sm=93&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=TPqiUtzqAuTT7Aaqp4GQBA&ved=0CEEQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=676

She is Welsh and has lived here most of her life. I am making progress on the lay out of my current writing project. There was a mist hanging over the sea this morning, at sun rise.

Last year we celebrated Sinterklaas at my sister’s home. Lisa , my oldest daughter was visiting Amsterdam and her daughter Corrine.  It is hard for me to get in the spirit because it is an absolute perfect summer day here. I have the sliding doors wide opened to the sea. The surf rolls gently in. The one small boat that had not been moved out of the buoy anchorage last weekend washed up on the beach in last weekend’s storm. Today the one sailboat came back, and several more of the knock about fishing boats are back on their anchors.  Yesterday’s weather was the same. I went into Santa Eueleria with Beatrice. I had the rear tire of the bike fixed. I tried to repair it with a repair kit and pump I had bought but it turned out to need a new valve. I also bought an exterior back up drive for the laptop, a charger for the camera and a new SD-Card, that I have lost.  By the way, the keyboard and mouse on the laptop came back to life, so, I do not need to drag the keyboard and mouse along any more. Another good bit of news I wanted to share is that my right eye’s vision seems to have improved again. The scars left by the bouts of Herpes infections seem to have cleared up somewhat. It has possibly something to do with the staring in the far distances from my favorite position in the cockpit. My distant vision gradually improved in 2005 from the time I started the long crossings. I ended up no longer needing glasses for the distant vision. I left my 1.5 reading glasses in the church pew last Sunday and I miss them dearly.On the way back Beatriceand I stopped at the “Peit Marche”, near San Carlos”, much of the same  international group, I had a picture of in a previous blog,was there.  Many of them have stuck to their habits from the sixties when this was the hippy stop on the caravan route to Katmandu, the Bagwan disciples, the grass is still passed around. I talked to Joakim on the phone yesterday and I am planning to move to Palma on or around December 15^th and then leave there around the 8^th of January for Amsterdam. I hope that I can finish the Dutch version of my sailing adventure between then and early March.

Here is a challenge for you : The title of the book. It has to be short. Right now I am playing with: “Sailing Solo in Company”. “Zeilen zonder Zorgen., This subject is perfect reading in Kindle/Electronic format because it becomes very costly to add color photos to a print version. I am considering  sticking a CD with a photo album, of my best shots, in the book.

Beginning of another gorgeous day in Paradise