Random Pics

                     We met this young lady here. She is Guatemalan. She went to school in the US  around DC and speaks very good English with a Virginia accent.

Sun Drying Fish for Market Day

                                                                       Sunset behind the mountain ,wrong date on photo. Made Sept19,2013

This Week in Guatemala

We are still in Guatemala but last week we thought we were going to have to leave. It’s politics you can’t get away from it. It’s everywhere. They are making changes here on how long you can stay and where you can stay. When we came here we wanted to stay 6 months or that was our plan. Remember they don’t give you months they give you days here “We hope we have 90 more days to stay here.” Most of the time politics is about who has the power to tell you “what you can do” are its about money. This time its more about money and a little about what you can do. First you can stay here for a long time if you leave the country every 90 days, stay away for a day pay to cross the boarder not a lot of money to cross and come back. I don’t know how much but it maybe about 20 bucks but hear is where its get sticky. Its your boat if you stay more than 90 days you have to import your boat.250 US dollars. This is for 1 year but you have to be in and approved marina not anchored out or in one of the little marina like we are in here at this restaurant. Now the talk is the big marinas here that are approved are going to have you sign a contract to stay there and charge more money to stay and there is nothing you can do but pay or leave. What ever happens I believe its going to cost you a lot more to stay here soon. In Mexico there is no cheap docks. We stayed there on a dock I had to repair so I felt Pam was safe to walk on and it cost almost as much as the marina we left in Alabama with floating docks and all that you would expect in the US from a marina. The Mexican dock had no bath room at all, water you could not drink and power so low it would not run our air conditioner. If you are reading this and are dreaming about finding a place where you can get away from politics “Good Luck.” The bigger story is what happens after you pay and if you want to stay longer than a year. The talk is you just can’t. You have to take the boat way for 3 months before you can come back. Why I don’t really know but it may have something to do with some of these less say tired boats that have been here a long time and may never go to sea again. For all of you that read our blog to find out what it really like not what you hear from the bar stool crowd come on down it’s great here but you will have to deal with this. Again for the ones coming this way if any thing changes we will blog it but for now we are still here and loving it. We may have to go back and live in and big marina someday some where but not here and not now. Big marinas have there on politics where ever you go. Someone is always trying to change something but they have a few things that are good. Like we were in a maybe a 30 slip marina in Alabama one time a sailboat came up by our boat a man said greeting to the Pamela Ann I thought he knew us. I went to help him with his lines along with some other people as he came to the dock he said he was traveling with a single hander. The man that was with him only had one arm and they were fall in the water drunk. Before the boat could get to the dock the one arm man did. Have you ever tried to get a one arm drunk man out of the water before? At the same time try to keep the sail boat that he just left from running over him. Things that go on at a big marinas can be interesting. Big marina I mean “big” usually have week end events like the early morning big power boat people that won’t speak to us sailboat people but they are the ones that drive off with their huge power cords still hooked up to the boat and the dock. I know you think I am joking but it happens more than “a lot.” In the afternoon it’s the sailboats time to entertain as they come in and try to back in a slip. The ones that are the most fun are the ones that sail with great clothes, vented shirts, polished dock shoes, little pressed shorts and fingerless gloves. If it’s hot I sail in cut -offs, blue jeans a tee shirt and bare footed. As bad as Pam is about packing back stuff I don’t think there is a pare of gloves on board with out fingers but we sail and old home built schooner without winches so I guess you don’t need them. If you wonder how the Pamela Ann backs up. She can do some entertaining too but in a small marina you don’t have as many people telling you how to back up a boat you built yourself and have traveled on for the last 15 years. If there is a lot of people trying to tell me how to dock or how to handle our boat Pam has a little quote she came up with she likes to say. Goes like this “Why are you listening to them when I am telling you what to do?” If you want to know where we like to docks best its commercial docks with the fishermen that fish for a living. They are a little ruff around the edges but they won’t never talk behind your back they will tell you what they are thinking up front. We were at a marina one time where people went to the owner and tried to have us removed behind our backs because the Pamela Ann is steel. They had heard steel hull boats cause electrolysis. Electrolysis is stray electrical current in the water that will eat away soft metals on boats like propellers its not true but he dove down to check our zincs anyway to see how they looked. Zincs will be eaten away first if you have trouble with electrolysis..We don’t. He didn’t find anything wrong. We stayed. The next best place to stay is a boat yard dock but if you are looking for a social events a boat yard dock can be a lonely place. If the weather is bad or on a day like Christmas Day.
We plan to leave here just after Christmas and go on. We will explaining why in a later blog. We won’t be back so we are seeing as much as we can, not because we are mad. Its because we have a plan to go on not back. When we leave here we hope the politics of the next place is not going after people that anchor out. With the money we are having to spend and the fact we have very little we need to anchor out a lot. If we knew how much money it was going to cost us to come here would we have come here? Maybe not. Now that we are here as I have said this is the most fun we have had with our boat. A lot here is cheap like food and dock space at this time at little places like where we are at. What if we had missed this? It has cost us about 500 US dollars paid to the government just to stay here a little less than 6 month. Is that a lot. If you are a poor Guatemala it would be more than you can make in 2 months.

We built the steering wheel long before we finished the boat while we were still just dreaming

Little Dumpling still following us

A great Caribbean supper

Entering the Rio Dulce

Maybe I talk to much about our boat and that we built it but remember it took 10 years to build. That’s a lot of days of dreaming. We dreamed every day as we built her about dug out canoes, palm trees, people cooking over open wood fires, monkeys in trees, parrots and strange thing growing on land all around us when we came ashore. It’s all here. When we see something cool looking across the decks of our boat it makes it even better knowing that we did build her we did dream every day we worked on her and now we are here. Now we are dreaming again of what is in front of her if we go on and not turn back. Where is the money going to come from? You can’t make much money in a third world country. What will we do about politics? We don’t know but maybe that’s just part of the adventure too.

Working in a third world country is an Adventure

Alex, our reformed Wetback

Five years in the US before he slipped back across the boarder.

 

Our little Guatemalan helper

He runs on tortillas like the Energized Bunny.

 

Papaya Tree

 

 

 

 

Rio Dulce

Local Street Food

 

You never know what you might find

 

Busy Street

 

I Want Pam to learn to do this

 

 

Sorry we are late with the blog. We have been so busy. We thought we were going to have to leave this week and go on to Honduras. We may have it straighten out. We will see.

 

some More work

Our Chez friend working up the mast

Our little Guatemalan helper

All parties for kids always have a peahata

 

Work in Guatemala

This week we haven’t done much that anyone would have enjoyed but it has been interesting. Last week I said that we needed to work on our boat and I said maybe we were playing around maybe a little to much. That maybe why we haven’t got much done. So I have tried to change “a little“ To do that I hired some help. At least I hoped this would make me stay at the boat and watch them work. Well it didn’t work out as I planned. I found out that you can get people to work and work hard here but they don’t know how to do much. So to help them learn I worked along side them all week. That right I hired 2 of them. One of them speaks fair English. He is a reformed wetback. Stayed in the states 5 years. Came back here said he likes it better here. This is his home. The other one speaks none. So I have to get one to tell the other what I need done. Remember they don’t know how to do much. That’s someone that don’t know much telling someone that don’t know nothing how to do something after its has been translated from me. Its been and interesting week. To make things more interesting we have made friends with a couple and there 2 kids from the Czech Republic here on a small boat they bought cheap in Fl.. Back in his homeland he climbs trees for a living. He collects seeds from trees to plant more trees. Speaks a little English. He came along and said he would sand and varnish the mast. Pam said she would repair and re-sew their canvas to help them out. It was so bad. Now my part in all of this as I said was to work along side my helpers. I guess you could call this and international crew.

One of our Guatemalan workers

Now remember this “it hot down here“. They all wanted to work Saturday. I said you have got to be kidding Saturday is my shopping day in Fronteras. We will work next week. It’s not to big of a lie I do like shopping in Fronteras on Saturday morning but I am giving out. I am to old to work that hard and to make things more difficult the culture down here is getting in the way. One of my worker the one that don’t speak any English was working for the women that owns the docks where we are . When she was through with him I offered him a job working for us. He said he was working for her for Q 75 an 8 hour day. That’s how they like to work down here. He said he needed a job so he would work for us for Q70 a day. My other worker said he needed a little more. So I said you work hard come on time I will give you Q100.to the little guy that dose not speak English the other Q125 a day. They were very happy with that. Now workers here don’t take breaks they work all day only stopping for lunch and don’t get paid for there lunch break,. I bought a lot of soft drinks for everyone including the carpenter that works here for the owner.

Carpenter for owner

She runs a restaurant here with a lot of girls working for her. She sent me a message that I was paying to much giving brakes that are not necessary and giving her help soft drinks was not the way it done here and she was not happy about it. If you convert Qs to dollars I am paying one helper $65 a week the other $80 for a 40 hour week. I am still giving her help a soft drink now and then but they take it away from us to drink it. Maybe she won’t run us off for the terrible way we treat our help giving them breaks, soft drinks and a few more dollars a week “but she may.” This is a different culture. We have sanded and given all the bright work on the boat 4 coats of varnish now we are getting her ready for 2 coats of paint. She may be just and old home built boat but she is looking better.

There is another reason for trying to get her in shape. Pam and I have been writing a book and we want to give it a lot more time. Maybe for a little while we can work on the book not on the Pamela Ann. Why are we telling this now. Well this may turn out to be another adventure or it could be. Even if we fail there is more than likely a lot of twist and turns coming up when we try to get it published. And we look at it this way getting the Pamela Ann in good shape is like dressing her for success. The book is a lot about her and how we came to build her. But it more about living this life. Its written “like” and old western with a lot of characters and there stories and how they fit in to our life but its written about boats and living around boats the people that live around boat. People that the biggest thing in there lives are boats and what they do with them. How we got here and I don’t mean here in Guatemala but here in our life. From living on a little farm in South Carolina, running off and getting marred when Pam was 15. Never finishing high school. This is not a story about success we have never been very successful. It’s what we have learned about life. One thing is every body has a story to tell and most think their story would make a great book. We will see if it will work for us. All good books need a good name so all of you that know us know we have never had much money and we built the Pamela Ann with very little money. Her main mast are wood but her top-mast are aluminum and when we built them they looked plain so to top them off we welded a baseball bat on to the top of her top mast. We liked it so much there is 9 in the rigging. Though out time gaff rigs have chafed the mast so we put stainless steel bans around the mast and sewed buffing pads on the forks now they polish the bans and don’t chafe. Buffing pads are what you put on a polisher to polish cars with so we named the book “Around The World With Baseball Bats and Buffing Pads” Maybe not having much money has made us go slow and gave us time to meet all these characters. The people we meet that have the least to tell are the ones that have taken a year off from work and sailed around the world. They just talk about there repairs and how hard it was to get the repairs done so they could get back to sea. We still travel slow its always the money and watching the weather.

Weather has a lot to do with our travels
“Waterspout”

You don’t want to break something when you don’t have much money. We don’t have the money to stay in marinas we call gated communities. That’s what they are. We are at a dock at a restaurant owned by a tuff old Guatemala woman. All the way down through Central America we have not had the money to stay at a marinas. Maybe its best. We have stories to tell.
Maybe I should add this now. The blog has not a thing to do with the book. The blog is what is happening now the book is what happened that lead to us living this life.
A good book needs a good villain. We didn’t have one single villain to over come but we did have people that were totally against us. A lot in Southport NC where we built the Pamela Ann. Remember I drew the plans for the Pamela Ann. I only finished the 8th grade in school. I am not very smart and the Pamela Ann is a fully rigged top mast schooner. They have pretty much been gone now for over a century. It’s a old design, not really suitable for the modern world. Some back there in the yacht club wanted to see her roll over and sink when we lunched her just to prove we were building the wrong boat and I didn’t know what I was doing. You can not buy most of the parts you need to rig a old schooner at West Marine. You have to make them. Guess why I built and old schooner. If you have been keeping up with our blog you know we broke our main boom on the way down just off of Cuba and I built a new one in Mexico. Another adventure a lot more fun than setting in a marina waiting on a new one to arrive and paying a fortune for it. Another thing we have learned is politics “you cant get a way from it.” There is a new ruling here to make people leave here once a year in their boat and stay gone for 3 months and you cant stay here more than 3 month unless you go to a marina. We are at a restaurant dock not a marina. So in the middle of the week we have to go down to Livingston to get it straighten out. We want to stay here till the first of the year. We may have to leave. Either way I get a brake from working all week and going to Livingston is another adventure.

Mud and Hot water

Tim in Hot Water

Caretaker/guide helping Pam get into the Mud

 

 

“This feels good”

Our Friends:

Yellow Mud Man ” Allen”

Yellow mud woman
“Sandy”

 

 

 

Hot Water

When Pam and I came in the river here I had it all planned out. First we would find a good dock then we would take a few days to settle in. After settling in we would work on the Pamela Ann have her looking good and ready to go. “A’nt happened.” If I was smart I would blame it on Pam. Now all of you that know us know Pam is the smart one and she would not have much trouble blaming me but we are both surprised how little we have done. It’s just so much fun being here even working is fun but its takes forever to get things done here. If you are working and need a screw. That’s a trip to town. Now the best way to go to town is in Dumpling our dink. Most of the Gringos here have go fast dinks. Dumpling is not a go fast dink. If she goes at all with out rowing she makes us happy. We have two motors a 5 horse and a 2. The 5 has a vale problem needs to be open up and I need to look inside her and I have learned to say “Manana” all to well. The 2 had a bad problem with spit and quit. Water in the fuel. To solve the problem I put a large fuel filter out side the motor cover. Now people say you have something hanging down under your motor looks like it about to fall off. I know I would get more done if we had a go fast dink but taking a go slow dink is fun too. It’s always hot here so when you go you need to go by Reed’s that a store on the river with a dock that sells Pepsi in deposit bottles just like when we were kids back home and he has ice cream too. When we finely get to the other side we most of the time go up the little canal to where the gringos call the concrete mall. Its just a wide street lined with small stores it’s a wide street here it would be just a street back home but you can park your dink at the end of the street. Its takes a little time to park because you need to lock your dink with a big cable to something. Down here things change ownership quick if it’s not locked up. There is a store there that has nuts, bolts and screws. Now if you’re there you probably need to eat something before you go back so we go up on the street and eat like a local. It’s so cheap. Eat and be entertained. Back in the states we know people that pay for entertainment. If you’re on the streets of Fronteras it’s all around you. On the way back if your going slow. That as fast as a 2 horse can go. You can just enjoy where you are.

Slow dink ride

Looking at the mountains talking to the locals in there dug -out canoes as you pass buy seeing what they are catching or selling. If it’s fish just caught and you buy some it may take a little longer to get home and when you do the fish you bought need too be cleaned. By now it probably way past my nap time so Pam will have to worry about the fish. She says it mess up her day. Well a nap after a find boat ride and a good street lunch makes mine. When you get up it’s too late to go to work so you can just worry about it tomorrow.
After a life time of not getting what Pam thinks I should have done. I have learned that most of the time your better off just taking a day off and that’s what we just did. We went to see the falls at Rio Agua Caliente and I can tell you it was a lot off firsts. We got up before day light ate breakfast and caught a tuk-tuk across the bridge to Fronteras. If you are ever having a bad day and need to take your mind to a good place. Imagine crossing the bridge a cross the river to Fronteras a little after day light in a tuk- tuk and looking at the sun coming up through the hole where a door would be if a tuk-tuk had one.

“Tuk Tuk”

If that don’t make your day I bet it would if you ever did it. Life goes on here at a slow and simple pace. Life here is so real. It’s like if you are petting a biting dog and it bit you no one thinks much about it but if it bits you again they will talk about what’s wrong with you. Letting the same biting dog bit you twice. Every thing is just that simple here. If you fall of the top of a moving bus here. It means you needed to have something better to hold on to are less to drink if you are going to ride up on top.
We met some friends in town and went to the street where you can catch a van called a “cla tiv a” They run them around the river and lake here from town to town. You see one headed the way you want to go, just flag it down and away you go. The only thing different from a chicken bus is the sizes you can’t haul as many people with their chickens and stuff. We found a clativa going the way we wanted. When you ride a clativa there no schedule you just wait till it’s full then you go. We didn’t have to wait long and we were off. It was not bad crowed but as we moved along more people got on finely they were 5 standing out side in the door way holding on and 2 on top. The ride through the country was amazing to see little houses with thatch ruffs and land with corn feels on the side off steep heals low lying feels of banana are sugar cane. Cattle everywhere. As we moved along some got off more got on. When we finely got to where we were going the van people said we were there so we got off. I had to crawl over and around people so I could not stand up when I got off. I am old and I don’t straighten out easy but I did give them the thumbs-up sign as they left. I am sure they thought I was a cripple. They all smiled and waved as they went on. I finely straighten up and we walked on to the falls. It’s not a big falls as falls go but the water coming over the falls is hot water about like the hottest shower you ever had.

 

Rio Agua Caliente
The water fall is Hot Water

The water falls into a pool in the river that passes by. The river is cold. We climbed the hill at the falls and went to the hot springs with a caretaker. He dud out mud for the women to take a mud baths. It was and awful thing to see. We came back and swam in the pool below the falls. I wanted to see the cave where the cold water comes out of the mountain. The caretaker said there is a hill and rocks to climb down. I said I was stronger than I look. We went. Our friends that were with us speak Spanish so I think they told the caretaker I was a lot older than I am and about to die because the caretaker stayed with me more than the women and there was a hill. I had to take one break before we made the top and the rocks we did have to climb down. It was a hard trip and to make it worse I didn’t wear any shoes. Maybe the climb down the rocks is over a 150 feet into a gorge and there was the cave. The water coming out is cold and swift The only way in is to swim. I said I would go in and see if we could all get in side. The caretaker said he would go with me. He stripped down to his underwear.
Pam is not a strong swimmer so she stayed on the out side A friend’s wife Sandy was with us she said she would go in so we went. It’s totally dark inside the cave we carried lights with us Sandy had a head lamp Pam gave her I had a flash light. Swimming with the flash light the light would go under water and with Sandy looking a round there was a play of lights on the walls and ceiling of the cave. I don’t speak Spanish but I know words as we went around deeper in to the cave I would say “oso“. The care taker would say “No senor no oso.” But every time we went around another turn in the cave I would say “oso” he would say “no no oso.“ Finely Sandy said “Leave him along there is no bears in here.” Maybe they didn’t appreciate it but I thought it add to the fun of where we were. We came to the falls in side the cave maybe 150 feet in. The care taker said no when we wounded to go further. When we headed back Sandy slid of a rock and stared floating. I could see her little head with her light going away. The care taker stayed with me. I still don’t know what they toll him was wrong with me but he stayed to help me. As we floated back out we had stirred up bugs and the bats were having a feast you could feel the wind off their wings. Pam was very disappointed when we cam out so we are headed back with her before we leave with a life vest. The ride back was as I expected an adventure no one on top of the caltiva but one woman did have a big pan with her maybe 2 feet wide and 1 foot deep full of fresh fish. A lot of gringos talk about change that’s needed here. I feel like a kid again I can’t stop grinning I hope it stays like this forever. Pam says we need to work on the boat for at least a week then we can plan another trip somewhere. You know how hard it is for some people to wait a whole week and work too.

Guatemala Pics

Sorry the blog has been so hit and miss lately. We having lots of problems with the internet connections. We have brought a Claro stick and hope to solve the problems.

Notice the man walking by the bus with his chickens

 

Bird Island