Ah, I think I just realized part of the problem. I neglected to resize those recent photos, so they were all super massive size and that's probably why they weren't showing up for me, because I wasn't waiting long enough for them to load. Certainly explains why they took forever to upload. The wifi here is far better than I usually have, but it's still pretty terrible compared to USA#1 quality.
I'm not going to reupload smaller ones because I can't edit the older posts and I'm lazy, so enjoy your super high res cheese photo. Hopefully they don't slow down the thread loading time too much.
Once back in Palma, I did another grocery run, and picked up some squid:
which were always super fresh. Frying them up in just a touch of oil with nothing else is off the charts. The white ones on the left have been skinned, the purple ones still have their skin on.
also made time for a casino run to the one real casino in Palma:
but there wasn't much going on. You have to pay an entry fee, and there were only two poker tables going. Maybe 4-6 table games. Donked around on one of the table games that I didn't understand, lost a bunch of euros, then said **** it and went over the to roulette table and slammed all my remaining euros on Wesley Snipes. insta ship it, up a few hundo on passenger 57 with a single spin. Thanks, Wes!
Finally, after a few weeks, our shipment of stuff arrived. Here was what I got:
that's only the best candy of all time. I'm not much of a sweets person, but I'm one of the few who like black licorice, and this is kind of like a black licorice flavored caramel/toffee thing. They are the closest thing I've ever found to the old school Callard & Bowser licorice toffees of the days of yore. They stopped making those years ago, and ever since, people have been trying to find a substitute or replicate the recipe. This is as close as it comes.
Yeah, that's a curry mango bottle in the background.
Lest you fear I had abandoned the gelato when we left Spain, fear not. There was a place literally across the street from the marina, and I contributed:
After the stuff came in that we had been waiting on, it was time to head to the Canaries. This is when I found out that we weren't going to be doing that anymore. The owners said they needed to talk, and when we sat down, they broke the news. They had decided to have the boat shipped across the Atlantic to the Caribbean instead of sailing it. Yes, there are enormous ships that you can sail your boat into and then the ship ships your ship. Yo dawg.
I was sad to hear this, as I had really been looking forward to checking out the Canaries and crossing the other direction. They explained that their hearts just weren't in it anymore for long passages, and they wanted to enjoy their time on the boat when on it. I completely get it, and I knew the lightning storm we had just sailed through had really unsettled them. They said I was welcome to stick around on the boat until it got loaded up into the big boat and that I'd always be welcome on the boat in the future.
So now I needed to decide what to do. I could either look for another boat doing the same crossing, or go do something else. At first, I wanted to just find another boat, and I spent a few days contacting people and talking with them. Had a couple of tentative offers that I declined, because my heart wasn't really in it.
A little thought had started working on my brain while considering my options, and it was getting more and more pervasive each day. I'd never spent any real time in SE Asia, and I was thinking of just heading over there instead and backpacking around Thailand / Laos / Cambodia / Vietnam instead of sailing. The more I considered this, the less heart I had for doing the Atlantic crossing on another boat. Eventually I just decided to pull the trigger on SE Asia, and it was time to get off the boat:
and go see what that part of the world was up to. I went ahead and bought a one way ticket to Singapore and decided I'd figure out the rest when I got there.