Exploring San Carlos
Today has been a pretty big day for a couple of reasons. First is that we have completed the change over of staff and second is that I got to go explore around the town of San Carlos for a bit.
The rotation went pretty smoothly, we got into San Carlos at around 6 am this morning and I fed the guests just before they disembarked. After that the whole crew was in a whirl wind as they got ready to leave the boat and prepared everything for the next person to arrive. For the most part the general rule is that it’s best to go over everything with the person who will be taking your place so they know what is going on. Everything happens in such a smooth motion around here, it actually goes pretty smoothly. I actually came a week before my rotation so that I could train, but the people that I am here with now are “my rotation” so to speak. I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I am now the Sous Chef and I finally got to meet my boss for the first time today. His name is Jeff, and he is a pretty cool, mellow guy so I’m sure we will get along fine. It seems at this point that he has his act together fairly well, so I hope all things are smooth for the next eight weeks. It’s actually very nice to not be leading the charge for once, this is the first time in over 10 years I haven’t been the person in charge of the kitchen I was working in. It’s kind of nice.
Shortly after the guests took off this morning I had a chance to go for a walk around town here in San Carlos. It is a small town with only one paved road and not a whole lot going on. It is a fishing village that has gotten quite a bit of tourist dollars lately from people looking to see whales. There is also a fish processing plant at the dock, so there is a few jobs in the local economy anyways. Unfortunately, my walk was pretty early in the morning and there wasn’t much going on in town, pretty much every thing was closed up pretty tight. Some things that I noticed were many dogs just running around the streets doing what they pleased, and the fact that most people that had cars took absolutely no trouble to maintain them what so ever. I would go out on a limb and guess that probably half the cars I saw driving around had no mufflers due to rust, and most of them had serious amounts of bird crap and dirt on them like they hadn’t been washed in months. On side streets there were several places that either looked to be uninhabited or torn down all together. I’m not sure of why, but it seems like the town used to be quite a bit more populated at some other time than it is now. Other than that I noticed two small grocery stores, one liquor type store, three or four hotels and several restaurants and not much else. This will be my last time stopping here in San Carlos on this boat, so I’m glad I got to see the town at least a little bit.
Other than these couple of things there’s not too much to report. I haven’t had a chance to talk to my wife or kids in a couple of days, and it looks like it will be 3 more or so before I will be able to. I hope that they are doing ok, I miss them a bit today. I can’t wait to get down to Cabo so I can talk to them again, but I know the next couple of days are going to be amazing so it will be ok.
