Shoe shopping! 9th March 2018

Shoe shopping!

9^th March 2018

On Friday, we planned to get a bus north to the botanical gardens in Balata.  However, Mike’s laptop had been giving him some problems and these recurred after breakfast—some strange scrambling on the screen and then a shut down.  As it’s a phone day, we looked for a place that might be able to help.  So that was our first stop.  The store-front didn’t look very promising, in fact, I thought it wasn’t open.  However, once inside the door we were instantly in the long line of customers.  I waited in a chair enjoying the air conditioning.  After a considerable time, Mike reported that we were to leave the laptop at the shop for an hour, hoping that the fault would recur during that time, so the chap could observe the problem. So we set off to find a place for coffee and landed at the same over-priced cafe! There we got a tiny cup of luke-warm instant coffee for an outrageous price.  Back we went to the ‘Cyber Hardware’ to check on the computer.  No dice with the fault recurring—so no fix for the laptop.

Then we set off to walk to Sport 2000 in an attempt to get some water shoes for me.  I had a pair of water shoes that have been on the boat since the 2012 trip.  These seemed fine at first but on one walk in December the sole (at the toe) started to separate from the shoe.  We glued them multiple times—finding that 4200 was the best glue.  It did give the green and black shoes a certain “Joker-like” appearance.  We thought all was well until on a walk at Grand Anse D’Arlet the sole at the heel became separated on one shoe.  More 4200 came to the rescue.  However, having used up an entire tube of 4200, when the heel came off the right shoe, we admitted defeat. 

By the time we set off on the walk it was 11:30 am.  The uphill route seemed a bit daunting but we forged onward.  When the smart phone told us we had reached our destination, no sports shop was to be seen.  A kind chap gave us some directions in broken and we got there eventually.  Victory was ours!  It was a version of Sports Authority with more pairs of flip-flops than I’ve ever seen in one place.  Even better, the AC was running at full blast.  I was cooling off rapidly but Mike was getting hot under the collar at our lack of success in the water shoe department... Eventually we found a pair that fitted well enough.  Then we found a pair of flip-flops for me.  Whoopee, a two pair of shoes day!

Gloria

We visited the Fort de France cultural center where there was an exhibit of masks created by local people as part of  a course. Here are a selection ...

Sunset from the Fort de France anchorage - a busy bumpy harbor primarily because of all the ferry boat traffic which settles down at night