Dave did an extensive presentation on Cruising the Western Caribbean at the Seven Seas Cruising Association 2008 Gam.Both presentations (and some useful cruising links) can now be found on our SSCA 2008 page.
Labels: Belize, Belize Inland, Colombia, Colombia Inland, CostaRica, Dry Tortugas, Guatemala, Guatemala Inland, Honduras, OffshoreHondurastoPanama, PanamaCarib
OK, all you armchair travelers, I have spent most of the last 3 days uploading all our photos from January to now to our Picasa photo album, including all of the San Blas. We have taken at least a few photos in every place we stopped.
Enjoy! Our Photo Album
Labels: Belize, Belize Inland, Colombia, Colombia Inland, Dry Tortugas, Guatemala, Guatemala Inland, Honduras, OffshoreHondurastoPanama, PanamaCarib
We crossed the bar at Livingston at about 2pm Local Time and were anchor down at Cabo Tres Puntas about 4pm. Dave and I jumped in and scrubbed the river slime off the bottom and enjoyed a nice candlelit dinner in the cockpit (the first in months... no bugs here!)
Our plans are to leave here at 5am for Punta Sal, Honduras for a long (12 hour) motor up wind along the coast.
Labels: Guatemala
Catamaran Marina is a real nice place for cruisers, and we've really enjoyed it here.
The owners of the Catamaran complex, Kevin and Louisa, invited all the cruisers over to their house last night for a farewell 'cocktail party'. We've really enjoyed hanging out with Kevin in the Tiki bar for football games, the pool bar for Happy Hour, and playing round-robin tennis on his tennis court. Kevin is also ex-Navy, so Dave and Kevin spent a few hours reminiscing about 'Navy days'. So when he heard that several of us were leaving for good, he organized a cocktail party to say goodbye.
Tonight, we repaid the hospitality and had Kevin and Louisa over for drinks and a 'boat tour'. And then we all went over to our friends on s/v Infini for more drinks and (better) hors d'ouvres. After Kevin left to attend to arriving hotel guests, we really enjoyed talking with Louisa about life in Guatemala in the 60's. She grew up here--her father was associated with United Fruit in Guatemala for many years.
We have all our chores done, there's no more room in the fridge, the freezer, or any of the lockers. We pull out of here at 8am tomorrow morning. (YAHOO, we're cruising again!)
Our plan is to check out of Guatemala at Livingston tomorrow afternoon, go out over the 'bar' about 3pm, and anchor overnight at Cabo Tres Puntas. We are still looking at the weather and trying to decide if it will be calm enough to head east on Saturday morning.
The offshore weather looks 'boisterous', but the near-shore weather looks reasonable. If we think it's going to be OK, we'll leave Tres Puntas about 5am Saturday and head for Punta Sal in Honduras, about 60 miles east. There is a good all-weather anchorage at Punta Sal where we can weather a few days of nasty weather, if we need to. The next stop after that should be Utilla, in the Bay Islands of Honduras.
Labels: Guatemala
On Soggy Paws, there are 6 small porthole up forward, 9 large portholes aft, and one strange one in the cockpit. All have 10 year old gaskets, and about half of them were leaking a little, even when dogged tight.
My job was to remove the porthole cover (the bronze and glass part that swings down to latch the porthole shut), pry out the old gasket, and glue in a new gasket with contact cement. It's pretty simple.
We 'water tested' the first few that I did... sprayed the porthole with the hose to see if we could force a leak. All the new ones seem watertight.
We expect a few miles 'slogging to windward' in the next few months, so this was an important job to get checked off before we set out.
Labels: Guatemala, Maintenance
Fortunately (for me), Dave is the only one with arms long enough to reach down to the really nasty part of the bilge.
Note Dave's 'cruiser shorts'. These are 'favorite shorts' that should have been tossed a year ago. At least they are properly repaired with sail repair tape!
Labels: Guatemala, Maintenance
Labels: Guatemala, Maintenance
Yesterday we unloaded all 300' of chain from the primary anchor, into the dinghy, and end-for-ended it. Dave filled the dinghy with fresh water so the anchor chain also got a nice freshwater bath. When we loaded it all back in, Dave re-attached the shackles and anchor so we're ready to go.
We also got to see how Dave's 'distributed chain' scheme worked. We have fed the last 100' of the chain through a PVC pipe underneath the V-berth and the cabin sole, down to a spot in the bilge, just forward of the mast. This is to distribute heavy weight low and in the center of the boat. It fed up through the tube just fine... needed a little hand tugging occasionally, but we didn't have any rock solid jams.
We had to hand-feed it back in, to get it to flake into the bilge area properly, so it will come out easily again. But it only took a few minutes to do that. We will rarely use that 100' of chain, but it's nice to have if we need it.
Everything's in good condition, this also verified that the Tigress Windlass is working great, too.
Another thing off our departure list!
Labels: Guatemala, Maintenance
All the small stuff in bags have been grouped and bagged in ziplocks. This makes it less likely for packages to get rubbed through as the boat moves, and make a big mess. And, hopefully (but not always), keeps the bugs out.
I've also gotten all the meat bought, packaged, and frozen in meal-sized packages (sans all the styrofoam packaging, etc). Here in the Rio, we get most of our meat from 'Casa Guatemala', which is a combination orphanage and working farm. They have some of the nicest 'Lomo de Cerdo' (pork loin) that we've found even in the States. Completely boneless and wrapped in small packages and pre-frozen, it's perfect for us. They even sell chicken filets (boneless chicken breasts), sometimes a tough commodity to find down here.
We also bought some beef 'lomito' (loin) from our favorite restaurant Brunos (who buys Argentinian beef in Guatemala City). We expected this to come as steaks in 1-pound slices, but we got 2 whole lomitos frozen together. I had to thaw the whole 5 lbs partially to get the two hunks of meat apart, and chop them up into something like meal-sized portions.
Also note the Pressure Cooker on the stove. I bought a bunch of chicken quarters and cooked them down in the pressure cooker, and de-boned them. A meal's worth of chicken quarters cook down into a small ziplock bag. We then package 4-6 of the meal-sized ziplocks of a similar type into a big ziplock bag, and then layer the big bags into the freezer (so there's always a beef, chicken, ground beef, etc bag laying on top). It also means that everything is double-bagged, so keeps better in the long run, and less of a chance of a stinky mess if your freezer stops freezing.
Labels: Guatemala, Provisioning
Dave brought with us from States 4 sets of mast tangs that he had Rick Heim from Gulf Coast Industrial Repair of St. Pete, fabricate to his specifications (316L stainless). (Dave highly recommends Rick for any metal fab work). A set consists of 4 pieces of stainless and a very large stainless bolt. (see pic below, of 2 sets).
These are to replace the 30 year old tangs that is the last piece of original standing rigging (besides the mast itself) left on the boat. The originals were 304 stainless. They appear OK, but you never know until the worst possible time, when something like that might break on you. So before we did any major ocean passages, he wanted to get these replaced. When he gets a chance, he'll document the whole thing in his Workshop section of the website.
Labels: Guatemala, Maintenance
To do it right, you need to make a plan, understand how much space you have, how long you are going to be 'out', and plan how much food to buy.
As you buy it and store it, you have to keep track of what's where. When you buy 2 months worth of food at a time, it's pretty important to do proper planning, as well as have a 'stowage plan'.
At that time, I was really rusty, and not very familiar with Soggy Paws. And we were kind of pinched for time. So I just sorta winged it... I went to the Commissary at Patrick every day for about 5 days, and bought a piled-high cart load. And I just crammed it in the lockers that Dave pointed out to me, pretty much 'willy nilly'. I just kept buying, seat of the pants, until there wasn't any more room aboard. (I did have a little experience, from cruising before).
Dave also had a bunch of stuff in boxes from his storage area that either came his way from his Boy Scout Charter days or bought in 2005 when he last thought he was leaving soon for parts unknown. So that added to the 'mystery mix' aboard. (I'm still finding stuff I didn't buy, and probably won't use, in fairly large quantities).
So, bottom line, there WAS no storage plan on Soggy Paws when we left in May.
This time, I wanted to do it properly. No excuses now, time-wise. I'm retired, right?
So I started by pulling every last thing out of every deep dark locker, inventorying it, and starting from scratch. Soggy Paws has a lot more, deeper, storage space than I had on Island Time.
I put my inventory directly in an Excel spreadsheet. It took me about 4 days to get thru all the food lockers, write everything down, and make a list of what more to buy.
I was nearly done...buying and stowing... and keeping track of it all... until last night... when I was trying to clean junk off Dave's computer... to install something new.
I guess I accidentally deleted my 'What's Where' spreadsheet.
When I couldn't find it this morning, I tried in vain to recover it. I tried 2 different 'undelete' programs, but since I'd installed a bunch of stuff after deleting it, it is apparently gone forever.
*(&^%$!!
I hadn't gotten around to backing it up to another commputer or a thumb drive. :p
*Sigh*
So I have to go back thru the lockers and re-inventory everything AGAIN.
I COULD just go back to 'willy nilly' mode, but I found so much stuff that I didn't remember I had, when I was inventorying lockers, that I really want some kind of record of what's where.
I probably won't keep it up over time, but when I'm trying to figure out where that package of Brownie Mix is, at least I'll have some idea of where to start looking.
Labels: Guatemala, Provisioning
Dave has compiled a short list of projects we NEED to get done before we leave.
In the last week he has (almost) finished the propane system rework. We only lack a few connection fittings that our friends on Infini are bringing back from the States. We hauled our Force 10 stove out onto the dock, and while I thoroughly cleaned the stove, Dave replaced all the 30 year old propane hose on the boat.
He also 'plumbed in' connections for our new propane instant hot water heater and a connection to the grill. The entire system can now be fed from either of 2 tanks by just changing valve settings, and we can shut on/off supply to the 2 new connections when they are not in regular use. It's a pretty slick setup.
We've also been doing some maintenance on the rigging. I spent 3 hours up there a couple of days ago--remounting hardware at the top of the mast that we had taken down (or lost overboard) due to tall mast/short bridges. We now have a new Windex and a new 'lightning spike'. I also installed new lime-green 'spreader covers'... the foam tubies from Walmart make great chafe gear, but need to be replaced about every 18 months.
Dave spent another 3 hours at the top of the mast yesterday, trying to get a new tricolor light mounted. Unfortunately the old holes and wire leads don't match up with the new light, so he's got to make an adaptor.
We spent some time yesterday playing with Dave's Mast Ascender. Since our friend Jim Yates raves about how easy it is to go up using his Top Climber (similar, but different brand), Dave thought he'd try it out. It has the advantage of being able to get you higher than the mast top, which is difficult in a conventional bosun's chair.
The instructions with our 'Sea Connections Mast Ascender' are 3 pages of printed instructions and no diagrams, and refer to 'the ascender directions' which are not enclosed! Apparently this company is no longer in business. But we did find some helpful diagrams on the Petzl website (the maker of the ascender devices).
It is not that hard to ascend, but for me at least, descending was very difficult. The ascenders (common mountain climbing devices) are made for ASCENDING, not descending. I saw a post on a mountain climbing website, where a rigger was asking about descending techniques and the mountain climbers' response was: you dummy, those are ASCENDERS, not DESCENDERS. Maybe the Top Climber has a better system--it's definitely using different devices (but their video doesn't show a descent!)
That's why we couldn't get over to photograph the tarantula yesterday, I had been playing with the ascender and was stuck about 15' in the air and was having trouble going down! (I did eventually get myself down without having to be rescued)
When Dave finally climbed all the way to the top of the mast, it did work as advertised going up, and for standing up at the mast. Coming down, Dave managed to get himself halfway down the mast, but we eventually just lowered him in the chair on the second safety line, just because it was faster/easier.
Labels: Guatemala
The ruckus went on for quite some time because she lost sight of it and wasn't sure where it had gone. Then she washed it overboard, only to have the dang thing climb right back aboard. Someone who was watching said it actually swam under the boat and climbed up the other side, but I didn't see that myself.
She finally took her hose and washed it toward the shore and it disappeared into the jungle (not that far from our boat!)
Unfortunately we were not fast enough to get a picture of it. :(
Labels: Guatemala
After a few minutes of discussion, we decided that it could be an earthquake. It turns out that the Rio Dulce is right on a fairly significant fault line between the Caribbean plate and the North American plate. See the little yellow 'we are here' on the map below.
This morning on the VHF net, one of the Guatemalans came on and said there had been an earthquake last night just before midnight. I did a little poking around on the seismic sites and it looks like it was measured as a 5.1 or 5.2 somewhere in Guatemala.
Anyway, we are fine. There were no immediate reports of any damage in our area. All the boats are fine here at Catamaran Marina.
Labels: Guatemala
We had an uneventful New Year's Eve. We missed partying with our old crowd at MYC, but had a nice time hanging out with our new gang at Catamaran Marina.
We sat on the dock and watched the fireworks upriver off the Castillo.
The hotel here was very busy between Christmas and New Years with Guatemalans on vacation. The bar was set up with a DJ for a big loud dancy party, so we opted to watch a movie on Soggy Paws. We did stay up til midnight and marveled at the beautiful starry night.
I've been poking around with Blogger trying to get a 3-column template. The old layout wasted so much white space. Since I publish the Blogger blog on my own website via FTP, the layout tools available with 'New Blogger' don't work for me.
I finally found a site that had an interactive template designer. It was really cool and I finally got the new template posted tonight. Here's the designer link for you geeks that want to play with it. PsycHo
Labels: Guatemala
We were sad to see our new friend Doug leave in Serendipity today.
It is definitely one of the bad things about cruising... when new found friends go in other directions.
Labels: Guatemala
We arrived in Guate about 2pm, at the Litegua bus station downtown, and negotiated for a taxi to take us to our hotel near the airport. We weren't sure what the far should be, but the taxi driver started at 90Q and we got him down to 60Q, so we probably got a reasonably fair fare.
Our hotel, a small family run hotel called Patricia's was recommended to us by a friend. http://patriciashotel.com/
It turned out to be a family home, in the traditional Guatemalan style with a courtyard in the middle. The family rents out 6 rooms with shared bath, 3 in each leg of the "U". It was a very clean and fairly cheery place, and Patricia and her family were very nice. The beds were firm, the pillows NOT lumpy, the sheets good. There is free wifi. TV is shared, in the courtyard.
We'd recommend this as a budget hotel close to the airport. The cost was $12 U.S. pp, which includes one airport transfer and a continental breakfast. They also gave us a ride into town (Zone 10) for 25Q (about $3). They do NOT do dinner, but there is a small diner within walking distance featuring typical El Salvadoran food.
After we got settled in the hotel, Dave and I spent the afternoon poking around the Zona Viva (Zone 10) in Guatemala City. This is the area where most of the foreign embassies are located, and has several US-style shopping malls, plus numerous bars, restaurants, and hotels, all within a few blocks of each other. This is where most non-backpacker tourists stay in Guatemala, either coming or going. There is a nice-looking Holiday Inn and a few other upscale US hotels. But the low end of these hotels start at $75/nite, a price we'd never consider paying in Guatemala.
We strolled the malls and were amazed at the "stuff". You can truly get just about any U.S. goods here, at a price. Not outrageous, just what you'd expect to pay when adding shipping costs and government import taxes (12%). The largest store in the Rio Dulce is about the size of a typical 3BR home in the U.S., so everything is limited in selection and quantity. So we just gawked at all the stuff in these stores. And the malls they were in were typical huge malls... 3 levels with a large food court in each one.
We also walked a few blocks to check out the budget hotel that many of the cruisers use when coming to the city. Hotel Las Torres
It is located in Zone 10 and within walking distance of all the malls, restaurants and bars. We had received conflicting recommendations from our friends. One friend said it was great, and other said they wouldn't stay there again. Though we didn't get to see a room, because they were all full, it looked "entirely adequate".
The Las Torres is right across from the Holiday Inn and costs half the price. They advertise a room rate of $38.50, but tell them you're a boater on the Rio Dulce and give them a boat card to put on their wall, and you get a room rate of $25. The front desk guy says their wifi works "most of the time". I think we'll stay here on our way back through Guate just to experience it for ourselves.
Our plan was to eat while downtown and then catch a cab back to the hotel for an early night. We needed to get up at 4:30am to catch our 7am flight out to Ft. Lauderdale.
I have to confess that we ate in the mall food court, and then had an ice cream at McDonalds. The mall meal was good--at a New Orleans themed restaurant though with a Guatemalan flair.
We flagged down a taxi back to the U.S. Again he asked for almost double what it should have been and when Dave started pressing for a lower price, he whined about rush hour, etc. We settled on 30Q, but Dave gave him 35Q, because the traffic was bad and he turned out to be a nice guy.
It appeared that we were the only guests at Patricia's. We never saw another guest, and it was a nice quiet hotel, EXCEPT for the engine noises coming from the airport. The traffic dies down after dark and the only one that disturbed us was about 4am, some turbo prop revving up his engines.
Labels: Guatemala, Guatemala Inland
Brian is a non-denominational, non-governmental social worker in the Dominican Republic. Brian is originally from South Africa, but now is a US citizen. He and his wife have been working together in Haiti and the DR for about 5 years. Though a big strong guy, he has a very gentle heart and a clear mission in life. Brian is in Guatemala studying Spanish so he can better interact with the people he is working with. Website 
Adam is a newly commissioned lieutenant in the US Army Reserves. He was an Army sergeant, but just completed 6 months of officer training school, and is taking a break for a few months in Guatemala. He's studying Spanish and working as a bartender at the local sports bar. 
William is a young man from Belgium, but is of Guatemalan origin. William was adopted from Guatemala as a baby, and has returned to get to know his country of birth. He's one of the most outgoing (and nice) people we met. Being Belgian, he grew up knowing French and Dutch. His English is pretty good, and he's learning Spanish. 
Laurel and Darrin, a mid-life couple from California who are 9 months into a 15 month trip around the world. They've been backpacking for 9 months, and have been all over... Australia, Nepal, India, etc. From here they are headed to South America. Their $3,000 round-the-world airline ticket runs out in March... Website
Steve and Jacky are a mid-life couple from New Zealand, traveling in Mexico and Guatemala on a 6 week vacation. Jacky's stories of traveling in her younger days (3 days across Africa in the back of a fish truck) were incredible. 
Kim, who is a 50-ish Korean man. His brother has lived in Guatemala for a number of years and Kim has come here to visit him. He studies Spanish in the school in Antigua during the week, and then goes to his brother's house in Guatemala City for the weekend. 
John and Celine, a French Canadian couple. John is here for his 4th time. His Spanish is pretty good, but he's still expanding his vocabulary and increasing his fluency. He brought his wife Celine down here so she could learn and travel with him. 
Hanneka, a Dutch woman. Here by herself, just hanging out in Guatemala, and learning Spanish and seeing the sights. - Suresh, who is a Canadian from Ontario. He has just completed his medical school entrance exams, and has a couple of months to wait before the results come back. So he's here studying Spanish and hanging out. He already knows Spanish much better than I do (from only 2 weeks and Spain, he said).
- Lucy, a young girl about 21 who wasn't really interested in college. Her parents suggested she try a different tack and encouraged her to go to Guatemala to volunteer to do some social work up in the highlands of Guatemala. The prerequisite was 2 months of language school, which she finished last week. Lucy got on a bus for Xela last weekend to go up into the mountains until Christmas.
And of course the 'yachties'. To our amigos at the school, our life and plans are very exotic, too. They are interested in exactly how we are living (and how we can afford it.
The common questions when you meet another student (in a bar, in the square, on a bus to somewhere, at the mid-morning break at the school).
- Where are you from?
- How long are you here for?
- Where have you been in Guatemala?
- Where are you going next?
- How can you afford to do this?
It is fun sharing life stories and tips about how to see more of Guatemala for less. And it is inspiring to meet other adventurous people like ourselves.
Labels: Guatemala, Guatemala Inland
We left the school at 1pm on Friday. There were 9 of us and luggage, plus we were picking up 3 more at the crossroads. Hmmm... could be a little tight in that van!
They had promised us an itinerary, but we never got one (and forgot to ask until we were underway). Maybe it was a plot to make us have to talk Spanish with our driver!
The driver, Carlos, seemed to only speak Spanish (but later I found out that he speaks English pretty well). I was worried that the fact that we were supposed to be picking Dave, Ron, and Dorothy up at El Rancho hadn't been properly communicated. So I worried the whole way until we actually had them in the bus that something wouldn't work out right. But it was no problem.
We didn't pick them up in El Rancho until about 4:30pm, and we still had about 2 hours to go to get to Coban. To fit all 12 people in, with luggage, we had to put Sue on the jump seat next to the driver, and Dorothy on the back jump seat next to the luggage. They swapped places on the way back and both ended up with sore bums.
It was a dark and rainy night and we were all glad that someone else was driving us. Carlos turned out to be a very good and careful driver. Most of the roads in Guatemala are still only 2 lanes. And they have no trains and no ports to speak of, so ALL the goods in the country move via truck. AND the roads are very mountainous, so one heavily laden truck going up a hill will essentially stall traffic to a crawl. So the other drivers just pass them anywhere, any way they can... on hills, on blind curves, etc. It is not uncommon to have 3 abreast on a 2 lane road. They are all crazy. It's nervewracking to just be in the passenger seat. But Carlos refused to pass unless he could do so safely.
The sleeping arrangements for our 2 nights in the hotel had been a little fuzzy. The normal student population (the backpackers) are used to dormitory style accommodations. But I wanted to spend at least the first night alone with Dave, so I asked for a private room for us and another for Ron and Dorothy. There were 2 other couples in the group and 4 single people. Once all the keys had been given out, it turned out that my friend Sue (who is married) ended up being paired with Kim, an older gentleman from Korea. He wasn't too keen about that and neither was Sue.
There were no more rooms to be had. So they shuffled things a little bit and they ended up putting her in with 2 other students (in a 3-bed room). I think the name of the hotel was Pasado Don Antonio, but it was somewhat unremarkable. We got there late, it was pouring rain and it continued to rain until we left in the morning.
The next morning we had breakfast in a Pollo Campero, which is a McDonalds-style fast food restaurant that specializes in chicken. 
They are all over Guatemala, but so far we had refused to eat in one. But our driver, Carlos, picked this place because it was easy and relatively fast. It was not bad. Dave and I both got 'Plato Super Tipico' which included refried beans and fried plantains (and eggs, bacon, etc).
Once we left Coban for Lanquin, the paved road ended and we went the rest of the way on dirt roads. However, we saw regular mile markers (in kilometers, actually). We wondered whether someone would really go 265 Km on this road!!! I think it was only about 40 Km to our final destination, but it took us 2 hrs of driving to cover that distance. It had rained the night before and the roads were muddy and slippery, and we were going up and down hills on very rutted roads.
With the van so heavily loaded, Carlos had to get a running start before going up a hill. Once, we met another car coming our way, and we had to stop to let him pass, and then Carlos had to back down the road a quarter of a mile to get our running start again. We also had to shift a few people to the back, to put some more weight on the back wheels. We eventually made it.
The first stop on Saturday morning were the caves of Lanquin (lan-keen)... Las Cuevitas de Lanquin. This was a big series of caves with lights, etc. Our guide spoke only Spanish and took us through the cave pointing out formations that look like something else. (ie one rock looked like a monkey face, El Mono).
It was kind of uninspiring after our cave trip in Belize. Everyone was excited when Dave pointed out the bats hanging from the ceiling. The cave was lit, but they had told us to bring flashlights in case the lights go out. They say there are miles of caves that have not been explored.
After the caves, we piled back in the van for another 10 Km to get to our final destination, Semuc Champey and Hotel Las Marias. It was more bumpy slithery road, though small villages and at least one coffee plantation.
Las Marias is situated on the Rio Lanquin, right near Semuc Champey.
Semuc Champey is a series of waterfalls and pools, where the river goes (mostly) for awhile. The sight of the river falling into this big hole was an amazing site.
We got a chance to swim and climb around on the rocks in the pools.
Then Dave and I and Sue opted to walk back via the 'mirador' (overlook). It was a half hour climb up steep steps (both rock and wooden) to get there. But the view was worth it and we saw 3 toucans in the tree nearby. The picture at the beginning was taken from the mirador.
We met some of our friends from the La Union school who had also gone to Semuc Champey on a trip they organized themselves. They got to do the tubing trip in addition to the waterfalls trip.
At dinner the owner of the hotel and his buddies hauled out their Marimba and played some authentic Guatemalan music for us.
The trip back on Sunday was long. The only fun thing was our stop at Biotopo Quetzal, where we did an hour nature walk through the 'cloud forest'. There are supposed to be Quetzals (the Gaute national bird) there, but we didn't see any.
More pics here:
Coban, Lanquin, and Semuc Champey
Labels: Guatemala, Guatemala Inland
My teacher and I in school
It's about a 10 minute walk from our casa to the school. Each student/teacher pair gets a desk, and there are about 30 desks scattered around the school. We get a break from 10:00 to 10:30am. There is an old woman selling meat pies on the street at break. Or you can go next door to the internet cafe.During the morning, one of the people from school comes by and describes the day's afternoon activity and asks if you want to participate (all in Spanish). Yesterday, it was a free Salsa/Merengua class. Today it was a visit to Mayan family house for a demonstration on weaving, a mock wedding, and some 'plata typica' (typical Mayan food), with, of course, an opportunity to buy some Mayan handicrafts (yep, bought another one).
Tomorrow the activity is a bicycle tour of Antigua. These are generally free or inexpensive. And they are all in Spanish.
School ends at 12 noon. Lunch (back at the casa) isn't til 1pm, so we have time to either check some email or lounge a bit before lunch. Most of the afternoon activities start at 2pm, so it's back to the school for that. We are usually back at the casa by 5pm, where Estela has dinner ready.
Then we study... an hour or two, perhaps interspersed with a little bit of TV. (CNN in English, sometimes a Spanish channel).
Every weekend the school also organizes a group tour for the weekend, to some place in Guatemala. This weekend the tour is to Coban, Lanquin, and Semuc Champey. This is an area of caves and rivers, where the attractions are rain forest, caves, tubing, and waterfalls. The cost for the trip, including transportation and hotel, is $85 pp. This is an area that Dave has been dying to visit. So when I heard that was where the trip was, I called him and asked if he wants to try to meet me. He researched the logistics of getting from the Rio Dulce, and said it was do-able. He also enlisted our friends Ron and Dorothy. So the three of them are going to catch the Litegua bus to El Rancho, where the road from Antigua/Guatemala City turns left to Coban.
Note: Coban is not Copan, which is a place of ruins in Honduras.
Our humble abode.
Labels: Guatemala, Guatemala Inland
Sue had done all the research and had picked the school already. I checked out the La Union website and agreed it looked like a good school. La Union website. The cost for 4 hours a day with a private tutor is $90 a week, and room and board in the 'student house' is another $83/week. Sue and I both signed up via a form on their website. Some schools require as much as a $75 registration fee, but La Union does not.
We left the Rio on the Litegua bus on Thursday and started school on Friday. We opted to take classes on Saturday (at least THIS Saturday), but we are taking today off. After 2 days of intense study, I have 'verbos irregularos' spilling out of my brain. I am learning, I just hope it sticks.
I would probably be learning more if I had opted to do a 'home stay' (stay with a family who won't speak any English to you). However, we both wanted the freedom of a less intimate setting. The student house has turned out to be kinda fun. It is typical of the low end hotels in Antigua, but kind of family style with communal meals. The accommodations are bare bones, but clean enough. (Sue bought a roll of paper towels today so she could clean up her bathroom a little better).
Our 'house mother', Estela, lives elsewhere, but comes in at 7am to make breakfast, and stays til 5pm. She does the cooking and the cleaning. Lunch is ready for us at 1pm, when we get out of school, and she makes dinner and leaves it for us when she leaves at 5pm. We are free to eat when we want by warming it in the microwave.
There are 6 rooms here. Most of the students are young Americans--just out of college. They seem to drink and party more than they study. One is actually working as a bartender in a local student hangout. Sue and I are the oldest. There's another older student who's an American, but who is originally from South Africa. Brian is currently living in the Dominican Republic and an aid worker with a non-governmental organization based in the DR. He desperately wants to learn Spanish, and studies
every night. We have had an interesting time talking around the dinner table. He has family in South Africa and New Zealand, some of whom are sailors. So he is curious about what we are doing and why (and how much it costs).
We plan to stay here in Antigua studying for 2 weeks, and then Sue will fly back to the States for awhile (while her husband Mike finishes the messy project), and I will go back to the Rio Dulce. If Dave and Mike can take a few days off from their 'projects' next weekend, we hope they'll meet us in Guatemala City for a day or so.
Labels: Guatemala, Guatemala Inland
On our jaunt around the highlands, we got to looking at a map, and realized that there is a Mayan ruins site that is within an hour of the Rio Dulce. So once we'd recovered from our highlands trip, Sherry organized a day trip to Quirigua (kee-ree-gwa).
The first step was to announce on the morning net that I was putting together a trip for next week. We got an unexpected boost in interest when one of the 'old hands' on the river came on and said that Quirigua had the best stellae (carved stones) that he'd ever seen. Within an hour I had about 15 people on my list. The last few I had to tell that I wasn't sure I could fit them in. I wasn't sure if I could get more than a 12 person van.
We screwed around for a few days with Steve from Bruno's, trying to get a price for a trip to Quirigua. For whatever reason, he wasn't very interested in the business. Finally I gave up and asked our friend Russell from s/v Cookie's Cutter to call the van driver they'd used before. With Russ's help, we hired Edgar for Q600 ($80) for the day. He said it would be Q40 ($5.25) a head if we had 15 people. We asked him the max he could take and he said 17. (NOT!!)
I finally got 15 people confirmed and told them to meet at Bruno's at 8:30am on the appointed day. Everyone kept asking me questions that I couldn't answer (since I hadn't been there). I did a little research on the internet to better plan the trip. There wasn't much about Quirigua... it seems to be a short stop on the way from Copan to Tikal or Guat City for most tours. So I told everyone what I thought and that we'd be winging it.
A bunch of us at Tortugal were going, so we took the Tortugal launch over to town in the morning and had an early breakfast at Bruno's. While at breakfast, Ron got to talking with some backpackers who were looking for something to do for the day. We told them we were going to Quirgua and we could probably squeeze in 2 more. Fortunately they decided to go elsewhere, as there turned out NOT to be room for 17 in the van.
Edgar showed up on time. It was a decent van--not one of the top of the line Tourismo vans, but not bad. Pretty much what I'd expected for the price. With 15 of us, and almost no luggage, we were pretty crammed. If we did another trip in that van we would limit it to 12 or 13.
One guy brought a cooler, and it had to go on top. There wasn't enough room behind the back seat to even put backpacks. Edgar originally said we could have A/C for Q5 more per head, but I guess he was hot and turned the A/C on anyway.
Since I hadn't done the trip before, I had to guess at the plan... my guess was an hour's drive, about 2-3 hours there, lunch, and a drive back, and we'd be back by about 3pm. I ended up spot-on. I suggested everyone bring a bottle of water and a snack. Dorothy's idea of a snack turned out to be lunch for everyone (a bottle of wine, pate, cheese, crackers, etc, complete with a table cloth, wine glasses, and wooden bowls). I had NO IDEA she was lugging all that stuff around until she started unloading it.
Quirigua is a small place with big stones. There might be more unexcavated stuff in the jungle, but the part that's open to the public was pretty small. The interpretive center was all in Spanish, so a few of us who could read it, interpreted for the rest. There are no plaques around the stones, and no brochure. One part of the site was actively being excavated and was fenced off. 
We managed to pick up an English speaking guide (who didn't know the place well) and his buddy, who did know the history, but spoke no english. Between the two of them, they did a pretty good job of guiding us thru the place. We all pitched in a couple of bucks a head to have them tag along with us.
It had rained hard the night before, and the grounds were kind of swampy. The mosquitos were brutal. The place was set in heavy jungle, so there wasn't a breath of air stirring. Fortunately there was a paved path with some shade over it. But most of the people who came with us didn't venture close to more than one or two of the stones. ("Seen one rock, seen them all").
We were finished looking at everything in about an hour and a half. Dorothy decided it was time for 'snacks' and sat down next to a ruin, in the shade, and started pulling stuff out of her backpack. Those of us that had perservered through the mosquitos, heat, humidity, and the climb up over the ruins, had a nice picnic lunch there.
The others had apparently had enough of old rocks and had headed back to the van--a cell phone call revealed that they were back at the van waiting for us. We promised them we'd finish off our wine and cheese and go to lunch with them.
Back in the parking lot, we did a little shopping... I bought a glasses case with Guatemalan weaving for $1.25.
Then it was off to Mariscos, a small town on the far side of Lake Izabel. Edgar wanted another Q10 a head to take us to Mariscos. After the drive there, I understand why--it was quite a ways off the main road (it was only 1/4" on the map!). You know how high gas is in the States? Well, it's higher here.
Anyway, it was a good fun day trip. Total cost, including lunch: $15 per person. (If you were booking the same trip through a gringo hotel, it would be $50-$75)
See all our Quirigua (and Mariscos) photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/SoggyPaws/QuiriguaGuatemala
Labels: Guatemala, Guatemala Inland
The Lake Atitlan fishing boats are a funny shape
It was a sleepy afternoon and we were apparently the only tourists in town. I was pretty much shopped out by then, but Ron and Dorothy wanted to stop in every shop, and Dave was on a mission for a specific gift for his cousin Bryan.
The main road in town leads up the hill to a large church and square. So we walked up the road to the church, looked around some, and came back down past all the shops again to the docks. 
The church was a little run down, but still beautiful. Ron took a bunch of pics inside but I feel funny about snapping pictures in churches. But you can see some of his pics in my photo album. 
Ron and Dorothy hadn't been buying anything on the way up (but Ron was having fun negotiating anyway). After our experience in Chichi, where we discovered the price comes WAY down when you start to walk away, Ron knew that you don't buy on the first look.
One of the interesting things we saw was a man working on an old loom. We learned later that the huilepuil's that the women wear are woven in 18" wide strips by the women on a 'backstrap loom'. The other weavings, for general cloth around the house and some of the men's clothes, are woven by men on a big loom. 
On the way back down, Ron and Dorothy started buying a few things. The closer to the dock they got, the lower the prices got. Once they started buying, word got around among the women on the street that someone was buying, and everyone in town headed for Ron. By the time Ron arrived back at the dock, he was surrounded by a swarm of Mayan women all thrusting their goods on him. All were amazing pieces of workmanship, taking literally months to make. Being offered, at that time, for about $10-$20.
I still wasn't buying--I really don't like to be pressured to buy something. (Especially something I don't have a need for or room for on the boat). But I got some great pics of Ron. 
I did end up buying one off Dorothy later, who bought her last one on the dock from a young girl, just because she felt sorry for her. Though we felt Dorothy had 'stolen' it at only $10, the girl was really happy about her end of the transaction. I saw her look of triumph as she got the money from Ron.
Our Santiago Pictures are here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/SoggyPaws/SantiagoAtitlanGuatemala
Labels: Guatemala, Guatemala Inland
Friends on the Rio Dulce had highly recommended that we get out of Panajachel and visit Casa del Mundo, out on the lakeside.We only booked one night ahead of time, but ended up staying 2 nights once we got there, because it was such a nice place. Booking ahead was interesting, because they want you to pay ahead of time. They don't accept Paypal, and there's a 6% surcharge if you pay by credit card (this is common in Guatemala). So, while we were in Antigua, we pulled cash out of an ATM machine, and went to their bank and deposited the money directly in their bank account.
To get to the Casa del Mundo, you have to take a water taxi. We had been warned that the price should only be Q10 (about $1.50) but many times they will charge the gringos 2 or 3 times that. Dave did the negotiating and we got the Q10 price.
We had so much luggage by this time (what we originally bought, plus all the trinkets we'd picked up at Chichi) that when a Tuk Tuk drove by as we came out of the hotel, we got the brilliant idea to hire it for about $2, load it up with all our luggage, and send Dave off to the dock with the luggage. Since we'd been to the water's edge the night before, and seen boats, we thought we knew where the dock was. The PROPER dock turned out to be a lot further away than we'd thought. We were double glad we weren't lugging all our luggage that way. Dave talked us in to the proper dock by cell phone.
Even though we were prepared for a really amazing place by our friends, we were still amazed by the Casa del Mundo.
Built by an American who married a Guatemalan woman, one bungalo at a time, it's a beautiful place. Each room is hanging on the cliffside with fantastic views. Even our budget room with shared bath (about $25 US) was nice (no lumpy pillows). And it is truly a world traveller's place. At the 'family style' dinner every night, we met travelers from all over the world. We sampled
their wood-fired jacuzzi, took kayaks out on the lake, and took a lancha across the river to Santiago Atitlan. The grounds were immaculate and bursting with all kinds of tropical vegetation.
Ron and Dorothy's room (about $55/nite) seemed to be the 'honeymoon suite'. It was way up on the hillside (about 3 flights of stairs up), a huge room with huge bed, and one whole wall was windows. It was really gorgeous (but with our old knees, quite a climb to get there).
Make sure you visit the photo album to see the rest of the pictures of the lake and grounds.
On the way out of Atitlan, we got a chance to stop at a beautiful overlook. There was a Mayan woman and her 2 daughters at the overlook. The woman was weaving (and selling cloth). Ron got them to pose for pictures (and I got to take a picture of he and Dave showing them the pictures).
Unfortunately Ron's camera was stolen in Guatemala city, so I don't have a copy of the great shot of the woman weaving.
Our Lake Atitilan Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/SoggyPaws/LakeAtitlan
Labels: Guatemala, Guatemala Inland
Pana, as it's called by everyone who's been in Guatemala for more than a day, is one of the most touristy towns in Guatemala. It is the gateway to beautiful Lake Atitlan, and everyone goes there.
Because the Lonely Planet wasn't real high on Pana, we only planned to stay there overnight. After of our experience in Antigua--where we got to the hotel we'd chosen out of the book, late in the afternoon, and it was full--this time we eeny meeny'd from the choices in the Budget category in the Lonely Planet, and picked a hotel ahead of time, and booked it.
The LP guidebook says this about Hospedaje Tzutujil "Down a little alley set among the cornfields, this is one of the best budget deals in town, with clean modern rooms, balconies, and firm beds. Upstairs rooms have fantastic mountain views."
Well, they were right about the cornfields. The rooms weren't bad for $20 a night with a private bath and hot water. The view was so-so. There were no blankets in our room (Ron and Dorothy found theirs in the morning in the bedside table, but we didn't have any). The sheets were very low quality and the pillows were lumpy.
LP also didn't mention that there was a public basketball court next door (see last photo in the album). They played a lively game of basketball, with the whole town in attendance, until about midnight.
The next day, we visited a couple of other places in about the same price range, that had also been on our list. The one we'd come back to next time ended up being moved in the 2007 guide from LP's Budget category to the Moderate category (the price went up to $25/night), was the Hotel Utz Jay. It has very nice rooms, a jacuzzi, a small restaurant on site, a travel agency, and internet access. We didn't check the sheets and pillows, but I would assume they were better.
Note: If you don't like cheap sheets and lumpy pillows (they are endemic to the budget hotels), bring your own.
Lonely Planet says the Sunset Cafe was a 'don't miss'. However, we didn't see much sunset as the afternoon clouds were rolling across the river. But it was a nice view and a nice meal, and there was live music after dinner. (Dave and I were so tired after Chichi and a long day, we opted to head back to our room vs. staying for the music).
We actually did a little more shopping in the morning... I bought a really nice pair of sandals with Guatemalan cloth in the straps.
Next stop: 2 nights at the Hotel Casa del Mundo, on the side of Lake Atitlan.
Pictures of Panajachel http://picasaweb.google.com/SoggyPaws/Panajachel
Labels: Guatemala, Guatemala Inland
Every tourist that comes to Guatemala is told that the Chichi Market is a 'must see'.
Chichicastenango is a small town in the highlands area that has the largest 'indigenous' market in all of Guatemala. Held twice a week, it attracts native Mayan traders from highland villages for miles around. Stalls and blankets are set up on the plaza and the streets around it.
This is supposedly "the place" to buy local handicrafts like as textiles, masks and carvings, and jade jewelry.
We spent the night before Market Day in Antigua, and had booked spots on a 'shuttle van' that was going to Chichi early Saturday morning. Dave had done a great job of negotiating for the shuttle van ride. We wanted to essentially move from Antigua to Panajachel with a stop at Chichi for a few hours. That wouldn't be too tricky, because on Market Day, all the tour operators go TO Chichi in the morning and AWAY in the afternoon... except for all our luggage... what to do with it while we're in the market. He talked with several tour companies and finally booked us 4 slots on a van that was going from Antigua to Chichi and then on to Pana, with all our luggage.
Pickup time at the hotel was 7am. As the crow flies, Chichi's not that far from Antigua, but... you know our old drunken crow. It was close to a 2 hour drive, with a short stop for breakfast in between. All the van drivers line up on this one street, a block from the market. On the corner was a really nice hotel, with a beautiful courtyard and grounds. Dorothy and I made a potty stop while the guys took pictures of the parrots and an old guy playing an instrument made of gourds.
As we walked out of the hotel, we were immediately surrounded by people selling handicrafts... beautiful woven cloth, wooden carvings, jade and stone carvings, old coins. We ultimately had to wade past them to get to the market (which was the same thing 100 times over). Alleys and alleys of people selling beautiful things... none of which we had space for on the boat (or at home, for that matter). We quickly learned that if you walk away, the price drops immediatly by at least 25%. And as a rule of thumb, if you do some negotiating, you can get everything for 25-30% of the original asking price. It was fun negotiating and we did eventually buy a few things--"Christmas gifts".
Dave was intrigued by the old coins and some of the old stone carvings. After seeing the same thing in several stalls, we realized the coins are replicas and the 'old stone carvings' were probably new last week and rubbed with dirt to make it look old. But it was fun looking and dreaming about possessing valuable antiquities.
We had lunch in a nice restaurant that had a balcony over the main street, and showed each other the stuff that we'd bought. Even though we had had no intention of buying anything, we'd all bought a few things. 
The restaurant was a nice break from the closeness of the market and being bugged by young and old to buy their stuff.
However, INSIDE the restaurant was a nice lady selling her stuff (probably someone's mother).
Ron took this great picture of her.
We met back at the shuttle bus at 2pm and were on our way to Panajachel and the lake Atitlan area.
See the rest of our Chichicastenango Photos
Labels: Guatemala, Guatemala Inland
See all of our Pacaya Hike pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com/SoggyPaws
There are many volcanos in Guatemala. Almost every town in the Highlands has one or two within sight. Dave and I originally had plans to hike several of them.
However, we have a friend here who's business is to take wealthy clients on guided 'adventure hikes'. He is an experienced mountaineer and has done treks all over the world, including some serious high-altitude treks to places in the Andes and the Himalayas. He had just finished exploring Guatemala in preparation for guiding a group of clients. We sat down with him with a map and our Lonely Planet and got lots of good info. But the best piece of advice was... for your first hike, go hike Pacaya.
The main reason was twofold: (a) Pacaya is the shortest hike (the road gets closer to the top than any other) and (b) Pacaya is still oozing lava so it's more than just pretty scenery when you get to the top.
So, when we got to Antigua, and every tour company (there are 3 or 4 on nearly every street it seems) was hawking 'Pacaya Volcano Hikes', we signed up immediately. The price for a guided hike seems to run between $5 to $35 US per person. We chose a $8pp hike. The $5 version was a school bus sized bus where the $8 version was a mini-bus. The $35 hike was mainly for custom groups and an English-speaking guide. Our $8 hike was a good choice. We had a small group, a good van driver, and a very good guide, though neither guide nor driver spoke much English. Unfortunately we don't know exactly what tour company it was. It was booked through the Yellow House hotel (right next to Posada Don Quixote on the north side of town).
The mini-van picked us up at our hotel at 6am. The normal tours went at 6am or 2pm. We'd been advised to take the morning tour because the afternoon tour in the rainy season is subject to sometimes violent thunderstorms. We were in such a hurry to make use of our short time in Antigua that we neglected to check the weather forecast when we booked the trip. When we walked out the door of the hotel, we could see signs of rain and there was a pretty heavy fog. "It will burn off." we said optimistically.
Pacaya is actually closer to Guat City. You can't see Pacaya from Antigua because it's behind another mountain. But as the crow flies, it is not that far... maybe 20 miles. However, the winding roads and traffic turned the 20 mile drive into an hour and a half.
When we finally got up the mountain, we were dropped at a little store where the road ended, so we could go to the bathroom, and buy snacks and coffee. Also, this was where we met the guide and where the small boys of the town sold hiking sticks. Dorothy and I bought one for 5Q each (about 75 center), and blessed our good judgement the whole trip. There were a couple of guys with horses standing around too, offering to take anyone up on the horse. (we never asked them the price, I was determined to make it on my own 2 feet...)
We finally started up the mountain about 10 am. Our group included about 10 people and a guide. It was a mixed group... some college kids and a few of us retirees. The guide had a hard time keeping the group together because a few of the kids kept going ahead and a few of us wanted a more leisurely pace. The guide's job was to get us up and down safely in a limited time, so he was hustling us along, as well as yelling at the young guys to quit going too far ahead. Left, the slower folks.The trail was not bad at first...it had been terraced a little and there was at least one rest stop with a hut, a 'you are here' sign, and an overlook.
One or two of the horse guys followed us out of the village. Every time one of us looked tired (almost all the time) the boy would say "Taxi?"We soon left the nice trail and started up what can only be termed a goat track. This was where Ron decided that it would be very risky for him to take his knees up the mountain. He's had several knee surgeries and felt it would be stupid to blow out a knee while he's on a boat in Guatemala. And he wouldn't consider getting up on a horse. So he went back to the village to wait for us.
Weatherwise, the trip up wasn't too bad. It wasn't raining (yet), just misting a little. But physically it was pretty grueling for us yachties. We all vowed to make time to get out walking when we got back to the boats. It was mostly scrambling up a dirt path at at 30-45 degree incline. (Think about a fast walk up a set of stairs for an hour).
When we got to the top it was pretty neat. We had been all hot and sweaty and shedding clothes, but the wind was blowing here, so we started putting our jackets back on. Though it was misty and cloudy we could see some of the valley below. We took a bunch of group shots, rested a little, and I thought that we'd probably be heading back down from there. But after a short rest, we headed further and started going down again at a fairly steep incline (but not back down the trail we came).As we were going down, I says to myself "Self, I hope we don't have to walk back up this path." (We did)
Down a bit and around a corner, and there was the lava field (an expanse of grey rock). We were actually in the crater of the volcano! Cool! We could see some people through the mist across the lava field and then, "OH!, look, there's lava over there!" So we followed the guide, scrambling across the hardened lava. The guide told us (in Spanish) that it had been flowing where we walked in the last 7 months.
We ended up walking right up to the slowly flowing lava. The guides carried walkie talkies and seemed to have been scouting where the lava was oozing today. You could actualy see it flowing, but it was oozing, not rolling along. I was taking too many pictures to notice, but Dorothy said it had flowed forward about a foot during the half hour we were there. Our guide had a bag of marshmellows and a stick and roasted them over the lava. The hardened rock we were standing on was still warm and steaming from the heat of the volcano. I'm sure it was somewhat dangerous being out there, but the only reports I'd heard about tourist deaths were due to lightning strikes and falling off a cliff, and not due to lava flow.While we were up in the crater, it started raining in earnest. It was still windy and pretty cold, but there was heat coming from the lava. My camera steamed up on the INSIDE, and eventually quit working. Fortunately the camera Dave had was the waterproof one that "the girls" gave me, and it was fine. (Dorothy's camera had gone back down with Ron).
After 15 minutes of playing around near the lava, the guide rounded us up and marched us back up the side of the crater (argh!) and back down the mountain the way we had come. Only this time, it rained all the way down.
Going down wasn't as physically exerting as going up, but it's really hard on the knees, and on some leg muscles that apparently rarely get used on a boat. And the dirt track had turned really muddy. Our guide was great, stopping to help us over the really gooey spots. Until one... when
the group was too strung out and us slower folks were lagging behind (Dorothy and I because we were tired, Dave because he was trying to keep his white sneakers clean).
Bottom line, on one muddy incline I grabbed a tree branch to help me down, it broke, and I slipped on my backside, covering my pants with mud. Everyone thought it was pretty amusing, especially Jose the guide, who frankly laughed his ass off when we saw me. I didn't mind. I was only worried that the van driver wouldn't let me back inside his nice van!We did finally make it to the bottom. I was standing in the downspout trying to rinse the mud off, when some nice Guatemalan lady showed me to a sink behind the store where I could rinse off. With Dave's help I was able to get enough off to get into the van without covering everything with mud.
We made it back into Antigua by about 1:30. It took us several days for our legs to recover from the hike. It wasn't until 3 days later when we did the hot tub at Casa Del Mundo that my legs finally felt better.
We all joked about the plans to do several more volcanos on this trip... but no one seriously considered doing another one.See all our Pacaya Hike pics here: http://picasaweb.google.com/SoggyPaws
Labels: Guatemala, Guatemala Inland
First, getting there...We purchased 50Q ($7) tickets on the Litegua Express bus from the Rio Dulce. This is not a 'chicken bus'... we had reserved seats and (theoretically) air conditioning. It is basically a Greyhound-level bus, clean and well maintained.The trip to Guatemala City is supposed to take about 4 hours, but ours lasted more like 5 1/2... We made reasonably good time until just outside Guatemala City, where there was a horrendous traffic jam (I am told this is a normal situation).
The 'crow flies' distance between the Rio and Guat City is only about 120 miles. But it is a 2-lane road going through mountainous region, so the crow flies like a drunken sailor, and the top driving speed is more like 45mph instead of 60.
Most of Guatemala's goods come and go by sea, and the road to Guatemala City is also the main road from the sea port of Puerto Barrios. So there is lots of very heavily laden truck traffic on this winding hilly 2-lane road. Bottom line, it was a long but interesting trip through the countryside. Left, a "chicken bus".The second leg of our trip to Antigua was via chartered shuttle (minivan) from Guat City to Antigua. The van was waiting for us when the bus arrived, so we hopped right on and continued on to Antigua. This trip also cost 50Q per person. It only took us an hour to get to Antigua. The van driver dropped us right at our hotel. (This was pretty important because I totally overpacked, and we had to lug my big heavy dufflebag everywhere (not on rollers, unfortunately)).
We had scoped out hotels in Antigua from the Lonely Planet guide and had 4-5 picked out that were in the upper end of the 'budget' category. We had the van drop us at the one that sounded the best (Posada Juma Ocag). Unfortunately they only had 1 room available (we were looking for 2). So Dave and Ron left Dorothy and I in their tiny lobby with the luggage and went out looking at the other places. They finally found a hotel (one not on our list) that had 2 rooms available (Posada Don Quixote). Ron and Dorothy insisted on a room with a private bath. Dave wanted to do the 'shared bath' option (it's cheaper).
The Don Quixote was a typical Antigua budget hotel... an old house that had been turned into a small hotel with 6 or 7 rooms. It was OK. Our room faced the street, which was a little noisy during the day but quieted down at night. We had a big room and our bathroom was not far down the hall and was clean and had hot water. The sheets were clean but low-end, and the pillows were lumpy. Dave liked the bed. But, the cost was only $16 per night.
The next 2 nights we were able to get rooms in the Juma Ocag--we really liked this place. The Juma Ocag rooms were all double with a private bath, but otherwise similar to the Don Quixote. However, the grounds of the Juma Ocag were more charming, and it was closer to the center of town. Our rooms there cost only $15/night. Dave and I came back for one more night a few days later, when Ron and Dorothy had to fly back to the states. We'd highly recommend this place for budget travelers, but get there relatively early in the day, as they seemed to stay full every night.We booked a Volcano hike for the next day. (more about the hike in another post).
We really liked Antigua and in fact spent several more days there than we originally planned. A short history: Antigua was the capital of Guatemala from the mid 1500's to 1773. It is in a valley in the 'Highlands' of Guatemala, surrounded by mountains, several of which are still active volcanos. The volcanos are pretty well-behaved, but earthquakes are fairly common. A big earthquake in the 1773 caused so much damage that the King of Spain decreed that the seat of government move off the fault line to the current site of Guatemala City. He made the church move and forbade any commerce to continue there, so apparently everyone packed up everything that was movable and moved to the new city, leaving behind the ruins of the old city. Henceforth the old city was known as Antigua (old) Guatemala. But not quite everyone left. Squatters moved in and occupied the ruins for a long time. It gradually became fashionable for the upper class Guatemalans to weekend in Antigua. It has long been known as a tourist destination, and "the" place to go do Spanish language study. With the tourist money has come an unusual interest (for Guatemala) in keeping the city clean and organized. They banned the market that normally exists in the square, to a new place on the edge of the town... thereby making the square beautiful and clean, and diverting commerical traffic away from the square area.
Anyway, we loved Antigua and would go back in a heartbeat. If you want to do some serious "immersion" Spanish language study, this is one good place to do it. You can get here from Ft. Lauderdale (Spirit Airlines and several others) for a few hundred dollars, and then study Spanish 4-6 hours per day and stay with a local family for about $150/week. And from Antigua you can get all over Guatemala for very little money.
See more Antigua photos on our Picasa site:
http://picasaweb.google.com/SoggyPaws
Labels: Guatemala, Guatemala Inland
Well thank goodness for us that Felix spent his fury on the coast of Nicaragua.We awoke this morning to very dark skies, but still not much wind. We were ready to do lots of hurricane prep but had thankfully waited to see what the final track would be. Once it hit the coast of Nicaragua, we figured we'd be OK.
Again, that's why we're here in the Rio Dulce during hurricane season.
Labels: Guatemala
We are back on the boat as of last night and watching Hurricane Felix very closely.
We have a lot to catch up on, but I promise some posts and pictures on our Guatemalan inland adventures soon, as well as periodic status reports on how we're doing with respect to the hurricane.
Thanks to everyone who has emailed me warnings about the storm!
Labels: Guatemala
For the most part, the weather here is same-o same-o... some rain overnight and hardly any wind. It was a little cooler than normal out early this morning.
You guys with TV's probably know more about what's happening in Mexico and Belize than we do. We don't get the Weather Channel on the marina's satellite TV and the only CNN channel we get is CNN Asia, which frankly doesn't give a rats ass about a hurricane in Mexico. It finally made a little news last night... coverage was about 5 minutes at the top of the hour.
Our friends on Memory Rose are back from the States finally, so we have planned an inland expedition with them to the Guatemalan Highlands. We leave on Thursday.
I have to confess that we've opted NOT to take the 'chicken bus'. I don't mind the chickens, but the Guatemalan practice of cramming twice as many people on the bus as will fit, and stopping for anyone who waves the bus down, and driving like maniacs, makes the normally 5 hour trip into a 7 hour nightmare. We bought reserved seats on the 'gringo bus'... an air conditioned express bus. Dave booked us early so we have the front row seats, so we can see something as we travel the route. The gringo
bus from here to Guat City only cost $6.50, and then another $5.25 to go on to Antigua on a smaller bus.
We don't have our trip fully planned yet, but we'll go to Antigua and do a volcano hike, and then on to the Lake Atitlan area, making sure to see the Sunday market at Chichicastenango. Then we'll move on to Quetzaltenango and do some more hiking and/or horseback riding. We've downloaded the latest Lonely Planet guide to Guatemala (available chapter-by-chapter in PDF form for about $3 a chapter, so we have all the latest G2 on where to go and where to stay.
I have convinced Dave that we HAVE to take a computer along. So stay tuned. We'll try to do some updates on our travels while we're out and about.
Labels: Guatemala
We expect to see some boats from the Honduras and Belize coastal waters in the Rio today, as the people holding out until a storm comes, finally run for cover.
We are continuing working on our 'projects'. Dave is still working on the watermaker, and our friends should arrive to day with a suitcase full of extra bits and pieces for us. Ron and Dorothy were even kind enough to make a special trip to Publix to pick up a couple of packages of Grits for Dave.
My canvas work is going slowly. Partly because rebuilding is harder than starting fresh, and partly because there are so many other distractions here... social events and other things. But I've put the pedal to the metal, because it would be really nice to have our cockpit enclosed if we get days of rain out of Hurricane Dean.
One of the 'distractions' is that things that would take a half an hour in the States take half a day here.
For example, Dave needed a couple of simple plumbing fittings. In the States we would jump in the car and run down to Lowes or Home Depot and be back in 30 minutes. Here, we have to dinghy to town, trudge around to the 3 small hardware stores in town, only to find that they don't have what we need. Then we hopped on a 'collectivo', a mini bus, to Morales (a hairy 30 minute drive east), and there trudge around on foot to several slightly bigger hardware stores. It's always an adventure trying
to explain what you are looking for (in Spanish), especially if you don't have one to show them.
Sherry
Labels: Guatemala
The internet is still out at the marina, so we haven't been on the internet much... it takes a dinghy ride to town to get our internet fix. I HAVE been gradually uploading the photos from our time in Belize. I'm still not quite done yet, but I added several albums several days ago.
Dave is working on constructing a new watermaker. He brought (almost) all the pieces parts from Florida. There have been a few items he needed and so far has been able to find in the local hardware stores. We will have pics and a discussion on the project posted on the website once he has it working. He chose to fabricate the system from scratch so he understood the inner workings of it and could maintain it himself no matter where in the world we are.
I am working on learning Spanish and on canvas projects. I spend 3-4 hours a day working in workbooks and listening to my 'Mastering Spanish' tapes. There is a Spanish Class for cruisers offered twice a week but I am already beyond the beginner Spanish--I thought it better use of my time to work on my own in a cram course. We are going walkabout in a few weeks and I want to be up on my Spanish. But this brain only accepts so much new info at a time. Fortunately Dave also has passable Spanish,
so between the two of us (and a dictionary/phrase book) we can usually make ourselves understood.
This morning we were trying to explain to the marina worker how to use Snobol to clean the waterline of our boat. The guy who does the boat cleaning as a job thought the Snobol was a miracle product. Hope we can find more here! It is often comical (and frustrating) to try to communicate well with someone who doesn't understand any English.
My first canvas project is to adapt the enclosing windows from the previous dodger for the new dodger. The zippers are different and the size is not the same. So I have to change out zippers and add a little fabric here and there. I am trying hard not to make the end result look too patchworky, since Canvas Connections did such a great job on the dodger.
Well, I'd better get back to work... Hasta luego mis amigas y amigos.
Labels: Guatemala
What I did for provisioning was to make a '4 week menu', listing the foods we liked to eat in a rough rotation. You can get very detailed with this, or not so detailed. Mine was in between. Spaghetti, Chicken Parmesan, Shrimp Scampi, Beef Stew, etc. Some things you eat every week, some are a once every couple of weeks. You need to consider breakfast and lunch, too, and the side-dishes. And figure what you're going to do about things like bread. (more on bread later).
Once I had a menu laid out (and approved by Dave), then next to each day, I listed the general ingredients/quantities for that day. For Chicken Parmesan, it is "Chicken Thighs, 1 Jar Spaghetti Sauce, 1 can mushrooms". The Parmesan Cheese went on the Spices list, and the green peppers, onions, and garlic went on the veggies list.
The next pass through the menu I counted up all the stuff by food type, and ended up with a grocery shopping list. 4 Pkgs Chicken Thighs, 4 Jars Spagetti Sauce, etc. There are some recipe programs that will do all this for you, but I had it all done from cruising before on a couple of Excel spreadsheets. By the time I got finished cruising in '97, I could put in the number of weeks I was trying to provision for and it would make the buy list for me. I just had to adjust my list for Dave's tastes instead of Lenny's and Nicki's.
On making up the menu, I made sure that I mixed things up... type of food, complexity of fixing, type of dish (traditional vs one-pot meals). I also left one day a week for either eating out or 'caught from the reef'.
Once we got underway, we didn't follow the menu exactly, but I knew that we had plenty of food aboard in the right quantities. We ended up just posting the list of the meat we had next to the freezer, and when we took something out, we marked it off. The list of what's left in the freezer is our 'what can we have for dinner list'. I made sure to save the 'easy to fix' meals for nights when we were on passage or had just finished a long day. And I always keep a can of Chicken Chow Mein (includes meat and veggies) for an instant dinner if we're REALLY tired and hungry.
Bread: Store bought white bread in the tropics gets green very fast. Putting bread in the fridge or freezer extends the life considerably, though if you're provisioning for an extended trip, there's usually not much space in the fridge for bread. Whole wheat and rye bread lasts longer without refrigeration.
If you're planning on baking bread, you need to know approximately how often you need to bake, and make sure you have enough flour and yeast to cover it. At home, without baking bread, a small bag of flour lasts a year. On the boat, baking bread, we went through something like 2 bags a week. How much you need to bake depends a lot on the eating habits of your crew. I'm not big on sandwiches, but Dave really feels he needs a sandwich for lunch every day. That means a small loaf of bread every few days. Don't forget to check the expiration date when buying yeast. It does make a difference. Nothing's worse than bread that doesn't rise.
Many cruisers have breadmaking machines that you pour in ingredients and out pops a loaf of bread awhile later. In the States you can buy pre-mixed pre-measured bread machine ingredients in box, that you just dump in and add water. Dave originally had a breadmaker aboard, but I chose not to take it along. They are usually large, and I couldn't justify that much space for something I wouldn't use that often. They require lots of 110v power to run. When we are far enough from civilization that I need to bake bread, we usually don't have an abundance of power, and we do have the time to make it the old fashioned way. The biggest challenge is just remembering to schedule your breadmaking day around the other activities. It did take me a few tries on our last cruise before I made an edible loaf that approximated store-bought loaf bread so practice a few times before you go.
On fresh veggies... My best advice is to buy "The Cruising Chef Cookbook". He covers the prep and shelf life of fresh veggies very well. A few additional tips... we really like celery and green peppers, and they don't have a very long shelf life. If you have the freezer space, consider chopping and freezing some in small boxes for use as flavorings in cooking. They don't last forever but will extend your ability to cook with them as flavorings from about 2 weeks to 6 weeks. Make sure you take along at least one head of cabbage and some carrots. These last forever if kept cool, and when you are dying for a bit of green crunchy stuff, will taste delicious, when everything else is long gone.
In the Caribbean, unless you are going somewhere pretty remote (like the Aves in Venezuela, or the San Blas islands in Panama), fresh fruit and veggies are readily available. In prep for our Pacific crossings, I bought some sprout seeds at health food store. I experimented with them while out at the Belize atolls. Mung beans were the most successful. I had nearly 100% of them sprout, they took the least tending to grow, they lasted a long time, and would actually be a good sub for lettuce in salads and celery in cooked foods. We also enjoyed just snacking on them as we walked past the sprout tray. The alfalfa I sprouted was less successful. Only about 50% of the sprouts made it to maturity... some didn't sprout and some got fungus and had to be pitched overboard. And the broccoli seeds failed miserably. I didn't get one usable sprout. It is very difficult to sprout beans in the tropics because the heat makes the fungus grow faster than the sprouts. The ambient air is too hot and the fridge is too cold. So I am still working on perfecting the sprouting technique that works on our boat. But for sure take along some mung beans for very forgiving sprouts.
Hard to find foods: Of course the list varies by where you are. On our previous cruise, we ran out of horseradish and couldn't find it for months in the Caribbean. We finally had friends bring us some. This time, it's peanut butter. We ran out and I've yet to find a store that stocks it (however, we haven't been to Guatemala City yet). One unexpected item is Cheerios. They have Granola and Choconuts here, but no Cheerios. If you have a favorite sauce, marinade, make sure you ring lots along. What most people do is eventually learn how to make what they like from scratch. Books like the Cruising Chef Cookbook and Corinne Kanter's Kiss cookbooks help a lot with tips on 'making do while cruising'. In the larger cities and cruising hubs, there is usually a grocery store that stocks imported items, but the selection is usually limited, and the price is high.
Labels: Guatemala, Provisioning
We went to the Castillo San Felipe on Sunday. We can see it from the marina, so it was just a short dinghy ride away. It is a small Spanish fort that was established in 1595 to guard the lake. They have recently restored it and opened it as a park. The brochure they gave us is in Spanish and we haven't fully translated it, but I think they were guarding some mines that are up on the lake shore, from pirates. Anyway, at the Castillo, there are a few concrete pads with nothing on them (ie not restored) and a monument nearby. When we asked about them our guide told us there was a big lightning strike on one of the dormitories, and a bunch of people got killed. The monument is in the shape of a lightning bolt, and is a memorial to the people that died.
Our trip yesterday was in a lancha with 13 other yachties. The lancha is a long open boat with a big outboard, and the tourist version has covered benches. Someone has a son visiting and so are trying to show him all the signts. We paid 100Q per person (about $13) for the lancha and the guide to operate it for the day. He took us downriver on some of the back waterways. We stopped for a hike at the Manatee Reserve. Some of our Pacific coast friends were really excited to see the one manatee we saw. We didn't get too excited because we see them all the time in the Melbourne area. We paid about $3 pp to get into the Manatee Reserve, and there was a fairly decent interpretive center and then a very nice 20 minute hike on a trail through the rainforest.
We didn't see much animal life on our hike because, with a group of 15 yachties, someone was always laughing and yakking. Dave and I and someone's son walked ahead to try to get away from the chatter, but by then everything in the forest for 5 square miles was gone. We did see a really cool Leaf Cutter Ant trail. This trail was a path through dense grass that was about 6" wide and wandered thru the jungle as far as we could see. In a square foot of trail there were probably 50 ants hurrying back and forth, about half of whom were carrying a big piece of a green leaf. It was good to get out and stretch our legs though.
One of the sights they pointed out to us was Ac Tenamit, a medical and dental clinic and school for the Mayan people living on the river. The clinic itself is housed in a houseboat... we could see a dentist chair through the sliding glass doors of the houseboat (and a bunch of people waiting). I imagine they make regular trips up and down the river system with the houseboat, as there are hundreds of families living on the river, with only a dugout canoe for transportation.
We had lunch in Livingston, the town at the mouth of the Rio Dulce. We had 2 hours while there to explore. Livingston is only a little bigger than Fronteras, the town near us upriver. We didn't find much in the way of groceries there... just the basics and some pretty old-looking fruits and vegetables. Dave bought a few bits of PVC pipe in a hardware store to complement what he'd brought along to put in the watermaker.
Livingston was an interesting mix of cultures. It is at the confluence of the Mayan people living in the interior/on the river, and the Caribbean blacks (called Garifunas here). So we had everyone in the street...Rastas selling trinkets, black ladies offering to braid our hair, touristas with backpacks, and Mayan men and women selling tortillas on the street. We got a table in a restaurant on the street and just watched the color go by.
On our trip back upriver, we stopped at Texan Bay Marina to say hi. Almost everyone in the lancha had stopped at Texan Bay on the way in, and several boats had become pretty good friends with them. I think one even had been towed upriver by them because of engine trouble. And the one boat who hadn't been there wanted to see it. The owners Mike and Sherry are unique characters and they are working hard to build a nice place for yachties to hang out. We had a beer at their Restaurante and then piled back into the lancha for the trip back to Fronteras.
We had intended to stop at Casa Guatemala, an orphanage just downriver from Fronteras. However, big rain clouds were flowing down from the mountain range to the east of us, and heavy rain looked imminent. we raced the rain all the way home, and only managed to avoid the heaviest parts. Dave and I and another guy were in the very front of the boat, pretty much exposed to the rain. Of course we hadn't thought to bring raincoats. Though it rains nearly every night, we have yet to have much rain during the day. Fortunately it didn't rain very hard, but the raindrops that did hit us stung like heck because the boat was going so fast.
I WAS catching up on my internet stuff, and getting ready to upload a bunch of photos. However, the internet being down at the marina will slow me down again. But I will start posting our Belize and Guatemala pics in the next day or so.
A bit later... I hauled my computer in to the internet cafe in town to do email and post some website updates, only to find "No Hay Internet". The internet at Bruno's is down too. Rats...
See more photos of these 2 trips on my Picasa Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/SoggyPaws
Labels: Guatemala
0730: The morning VHF net cranks up on Ch 69 at 0730. Dave is usually still snoozing, so I turn up the cockpit VHF real loud and open the hatch to the aft cabin. There are announcements about a Spanish Class, a CPR Class, and 'Information Offered or Needed'. This is where people ask about getting stuff done... varnishing, canvas work, galvanizing, engine repair, etc. After about a week of listening to the net, you know who does what.
0800: Breakfast. We are running out of Granola and haven't found any here. They have Choconuts in the local store, but in a word, "yuck". So we are switching to the local rolls and Dave likes Oatmeal, now that he can microwave it. Once or twice a week we'll do a "big breakfast".
0900: Daily projects. Mine has been laundry for the last few days. At this marina you have to give them your laundry to do, at a cost of about $7 per load. We are fortunate on Soggy Paws to have a washing machine aboard. It is a small plastic unit that lives under the V-Berth. It is designed for remote areas with not much water. You have to manually fill, and manually move the wet stuff into a spinner to finish. But it has a good agitator and a very good spinner. It ain't like home, but it
is also much easier than the bucket method I used on Island Time. The clothes then need to be hung out to dry. It is efficient enough on water and electricity that we can run it out on the hook.
Dave's daily projects are centered on the 6 large Rubbermaid tubs that we brought with us from the States. Unfinished projects. Things like installing a new higher capacity watermaker. We have all the pieces parts to do the job (we hope), just didn't have the time to actually do the installation before we left. One tub was full of 300' of 3/4" 3-strand nylon line. That needed to be stowed for future use, in an area underneath the cabin sole that we didn't have access to. We cut the holes in
the floor just before we left, but didn't take the time to finish them off, clean up the space, and stow the line.
Dave has made me a rather lengthy project list that includes some varnishing, some canvas work, some toerail painting, etc. He is patiently waiting for me to quit screwing around on the computer and get started on my projects!
1100: Take a dinghy trip to town. Mornings are preferred for dinghy trips because the wind is calm until about noon. By 3-4 pm it can be quite windy and rough on the river. Dinghying around then is still possible, just a little wetter. A 5-minute fast dinghy ride gets us from the boat to town. There is a pitifully small grocery store and an open air market that includes vegetables and fruit. Nearby is the fish market where you can buy several varieties of fish, shrimp, and crabs. And a meat
market where you can buy fresh chicken, pork, and beef.
1200: Lunch. About half the time we eat sandwiches on the boat, or dinner leftovers. Since restaurant fare here is fairly reasonable ($4-$7 for lunch), we eat out a few times a week. Some restaurants specialize in local food and other in 'gringo food'. We go where the wifi is good. :) If we stay on the boat for lunch, we quite often take a dip in the water to cool of.
1300: By early afternoon the wind is blowing and it's reasonably cool in the cockpit, so I have been alternating between laundry and computer work in the cockpit. Dave has been working down below with the fans on. We turn our A/C off during the day, both as an economy measure and to enjoy the outdoors.
1500: By about 3pm, the sun is low enough in the sky that we are getting shade from the trees off our bow, so it's cool enough on the dock and on the foredeck to move projects out there.
1730: As the sun starts to dip we finish up our current project and get ready for an evening swim. There is a float with a couple of lounge chairs on it, about 100 yards from our stern. So we usually swim out to the float, lounge in the cooling air for a few minutes, and swim back to the boat. Though there are nice showers here, they're kind of hot, so we are still showering on the stern.
1830: As we finish up our shower, the mosquitos start to come out, so we turn on the air, close all the hatches, and go below for dinner. Once dinner is finished, we read or watch a movie. We brought about 100 DVD's with us, about half of which we haven't seen yet, and there's an active loaner system among the boats, so there's always a movie we haven't seen.
A few nights of the week, one of the local marinas does something special. On Friday nights Mario's hosts a local music group for pick'n and grin'n. It's not quite the social swirl that we experienced in Trinidad, mainly because there's less to do ashore, and fewer boats.
Labels: Guatemala
out.
Fortunately we had planned ahead and secured reservations several months ago for us at Tortugal. (we did this by paying dockage ahead for 2 months without being here) Dave said the overflow marina (formerly called Suzannah's) was really hot (no breeze) and 'low rent'. Tortugal is right across from Suzannah's, is well run, has a nice restaurant, and gets the afternoon breeze. It is also one of the few marinas upriver from the town of Fronteras, and so the water here is clean enough to swim in.
The stern of our boat is about 50 yards from the marina's swimming area (complete with float, lounge chairs, and dive platform).
I was dismayed to find that the wifi at Tortugal is not working, and the only wifi I can pick up from here is locked. So that's going to be a pain in the butt. Tortugal's satellite dish got struck by lightning a couple of weeks ago, and the satellite system has been shipped to the US for repair. There is still no phone/DSL in the area, everyone does internet by satellite... and with the advent of cell phones, there is little pressure for the phone company to extend the wires.
I'll have to find a convenient internet cafe. There are several a short dinghy ride away, and one we passed on our walk into town charging Q10/hour ($1.30). A few people at the marina are talking about getting cellular data cards. I told them if they did that, to get me one too. It is a PCMCIA card that uses the cellular system to do internet. In the states a cell data internet card plan is only about $40/mo. One of the guys here said he thought it would only be $30/mo for 'all the data you
can use'. We seem to have good cell reception here (better than in Satellite Beach!)
Though most of the travel around here is done by dinghy, we hiked into town by foot yesterday afternoon, just forthe exercise. It is about a 30 minute walk on a mostly shaded path. (Safe enough in the day, but probably not good at night). We bought a Guatemalan Sim Card for my GSM (Cingular) cell phone, changed some more money, surveyed the grocery store, and bought a few veggies.
Cell Phones: I have a Cingular GSM tri-band phone. When you buy it from Cingular, it is locked to Cingular. You need to get it 'unlocked' before you can use it on any other cell phone system. We had already paid a guy in Belize $20 US to 'unlock' my phone. You can also get this done via eBay, by mailing your phone to someone. Or you can buy an already-unlocked phone on eBay. You need a tri- or quad-band GSM phone to be able to use the phone everywhere in the world. Dave's old dual band Nokia
is good in South/Central America except Costa Rica. So here we paid Q50 for a Guatelmalan sim card and bought Q100 worth of minutes (for a total of $20US), and they said it will cost us about 10-15 cents a minute to call Florida, and about half that for local calls. One of the challenges was dealing with the phone in Spanish. When you insert the Guatemalan sim card, all of the sudden the phone menus were all in Spanish. I finally located the manual for the phone to figure out how to switch it
back to English. Then when we tried to call out, I had trouble with MY phone... it will call and receive, but apparently the microphone is broken (probably a byproduct of the unlocking process).
But I had an unlocking program for Dave's Nokia (program purchased earlier off eBay) and unlocked his phone, popped the sim card in, and voila, phone service. (now if I only had internet!!!) Aparently pay-as-you-go phone cards are the norm now for cruisers, at least in the US and Caribbean. There is no monthly charge, and when you leave a country, you just sell the sim card and leftover minutes to the next boat coming in. (much cheaper than using my Cingular phone service 'roaming' which is about
$2-$3/minute).
Dave got a chance to go off to Puerto Barrios this morning. PB is the major coastal port, a few miles from Livingston. You can get anything in PB. I think Dave was after some R12 refrigerant, but who knows what else he'll come back with. I was left with the cell phone and the dead batteries of a friend's boat who's off in the States. Dave said "I got the battery charger going, the multi-meter's on the dinette, call Ron and he'll tell you what to do. When I checked his batts, they were up from
zero to 7.7 volts, and his freezer's at 45 degrees. Hope the batteries are not destroyed... We're not sure what happened, but at least we were here to handle it.
Gosh it is so nice being around other 'yachties'. It has been nearly 2 months since we've socialized. Being footloose and fancy free is fun for awhile... On this morning's VHF net, there were announcements about Spanish classes, CPR classes, free wifi with lunch (several of the local spots advertised their daily specials). Tomorrow is 'Swap Meet Friday' at Mario's Marina, about a mile downriver. Ah, civilization. (but I'll be darned tired of it in a few weeks).
Labels: Guatemala
It took us a couple of hours to get our paperwork done, but the officials were assisted by Raoul, a very pleasant English-speaking agent. They all came and visited the boat, but it was a nice relaxed social hour. An hour later we went ashore, got some Quetzales from the ATM machine on my Space Coast Credit Union ATM card, and picked up our paperwork. The fees were: Q200 for Immigration ($26.67) Q75 for 'le doctore' ($10) Q125 for the Port Captain ($16.67) Q196.88 for Boat Clearance/3 Months ($26.25) and Q153.12 for ?? (we think paper prep and/or lancha). We are good now for 3 months. In 3 months we can get a 3 month extension on our passports and a 9 month extension on the boat.
Livingston is an uncomfortable place to stay for the night (an open roadstead and lots of boat traffic), so we hurried up into the Golfete and stopped at a new place for the night. A friend had told us about Texan Bay Marina but we weren't exactly sure where it was. When we got close, we looked for boats and masts, and very slowly made our way toward them. As we get close, a small lagoon opened up and we could see 4-5 boats at the marina (and some more masts inside). Once next to the marina, there was another, even smaller lagoon with only 2 boats in it. We anchored next to a Westsail 32. Posn: 16-46.07N 88-49.60W.
What a beautiful place! Completely surrounded by rainforest, with locals in dugouts going by...fishing, on their way to work, etc... birds, etc etc. We are taking pictures of everything, but it will be hard to really portray the beauty in a static photo.We went ashore and had dinner in the marina restaurant (a little thatched hut). There we had a nice time talking with the first cruisers we've seen in a couple of weeks.
We decided to stay here a day and use the kayaks to explore up the little stream that empties into the lagoon we're in. Being finally in a good anchorage with no expected weather issues, I got a really sound sleep last night and we both slept in til nearly 9am.
Tomorrow we'll head further upriver to Fronteras, where all the boats and marinas are.
Labels: Guatemala
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