The boys enjoyed the last chance in the swimming pool at Aratu, before we set sail for Pier Salvador Marina. With no wind to help us, we could only rely on the tide to push us forward. We passed another marina and were confused as to where this Pier was. Just then our Skipper complained that he always had this vision of sailing into a marina and girls with flowers in their hair came to welcome us. Joe and I tried to make eye contact with the people on the jetties to help us in the right direction, but were only answered with expressionless stares. We slowly moved forward towards more yachts in front of us, and eventually I saw some flags from all over the world flying on a roof top ahead of us.
Scribbled on the side of the wall, I could just make out the letters spelling, Pier Salvador. We were at the right place. Approaching slowly we thought it is going to be just like our previous experiences, where you have to drop the anchor somewhere and hope it is in the right place, or pick up a mooring, and hope it doesn't belong to someone else, and then you have to find your English way in a Portuguese country, with all your documents to the "Secretarier" to let them know that you would like to stay for a while. But we were waved in, not by two girls with flowers in their hair, but by two very friendly faces and they helped us with all the lines. And on the jetty, the owner of Pier Salvador Marina, Sandoval Matos, welcomed our family with a hand shake and wonderful broken English! I was still in awe at how quickly the spoken word can have such a nice turn out, when a girl walked towards us with four tall glasses of "limao" (lime) juice! And then I could just see some angels smiling somewhere...
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