Guatemala, Independences Day

“What is it like to go to almost any event in Central America.?” First of all, it has been good so far but if you go to any thing, It will be different. They just had their Independence Day Celebration here in Guatemala. It was different. As an outsider that doesn’t speak Spanish. We have trouble seeing “ any” organization. We were in a marina last year where the owner ask Pam if she would help with a party. We did. It went well. At Christmas we went back to help him with his Christmas party. The Santa Claus arrived right on time. Every thing went like clock work. “This is not the way local people do any things down here.” This is how we see it. As for learning to speak Spanish. We have a dictionary with 6000 English words. It’s big. We have a dictionary for Spanish words, 6500 words. It’s bigger. I may after a year know 50 more words than I knew last year and I am trying to learn. As for how things are organized here, it’s like someone may say, “We need to do something for Independence Day so everyone thinks of something to do and come do it. There is never anything written down. No flyers on post or building, Nothing. But everyone will say that they are going to have a parade today. When is the parade? This afternoon. What time? I just told you sometime this afternoon. Will it be going this a way or that way? Doesn’t matter. It’s a parade.

One of the independence Day Parades

One thing you can count on is noise. We were at a tienda. That a store in Spanish. There at this store they have chairs for people to set out front and drink beer. We don’t drink but we stopped by and sat there for about and hour with a local man setting there drinking beer and blowing a horn loud as he could. We were trying to talk to some of our friends that were there also drinking beer. For the hold time we were there he blew that one note horn. It’s was toot toot, toot, toot, toot, toot, toot toot. The whole time we were there. The locals seem to like it and when he went for more beer his son sat down and carried on blowing toot,toot,toot,toot. There was no parade at the time just people milling around in the street. Some of them were doing the same thing just blowing a one note horn loud as they could and the people with out a horn had whistles. Whistles and horns and just walking around making noses is celebrating I guess. If you ever go to something that features music, Remember this, “There is no speaker in the world big enough to satisfy them. And all there music is based on 3 notes. Believe me. Just 3 notes. I carry ear plugs now when we go. Ear plugs if there are good will help. Along with all the turmoil of the street you may have preachers too with they’re on loud speakers doing there thing and of course they have their donation cup out. But we have seen this also in the US. We were in New Orleans on Bourbon Street for Mardi Gras watching people walking around with let’s say very little clothes on and preachers were walking along with them with their on portable loud speakers saying the people there were all going to hell. I guess some things are the same all over. When the parade finally stared 2 hours after most people said it would some of the kids were not happy but most seem to be and some had on great costumes or dresses I can just see MaMa and Grand MaMa setting up at night sewing on and old pedal machines making them something nice to wear. There is a lot of old machines down here. There seem to be great pride in these women being able to do for themselves. From what I can tell when independences came down here, runners went out to all the little towns and villages so young people run down here for Independence Day. This also seem to have no organization. They just run, with torches Some run though town one way and some run the other. Some runners run in front of a truck or bus. Sometimes the drivers will celebrate to by blowing the whistles or horn toot, toot, toot, toot, toot. When the runners get tired and get back in the drivers may just keep on celebrating toot, toot, toot and if this is making you tired, “They do this all day for 3 days.”

Moving runners to another place

Runners with torches

We have been invited to go to a local Catholic Church here where they are celebrating their Saints’ Day and we plan to go there and see that. We went last year and it was a lot of the same as any church group. Only thing, No one speaks English but all the food is true Guatemalan. This is as real as you can get and as close as you can to seeing real Guatemala. We are not religious but we do like good people. This gives us a chance to mingle with the local people. If I feel I am getting in trouble because we don’t speak Spanish and we are there. I just say. “Alex amigo.” He is the one that invited us to go. Some one will come and help us. He can speak English and he works for the gringos on their boats here. He knows we love this kind of thing. We won’t stay long but we will go. Make a small donation and buy something at less buy something to eat. Watch the people living out there lives that is normal to them and watch their kids play. We do love it when it’s this real.

I love this  Chicken Bus

Robbed at Sea

“Robo!” That a Spanish word you hope you never hear. It’s the base word in Spanish for robbery. We were out to sea. Our main sail would not come down. I have already had that in our blog. We got that down and went on . We had waited on the morning wind to come around from west to north. This means we started out late. Now we needed to make Puerto Cortes before dark and with out our main sail. When we got to the shipping channel the Port Captain came on the VHF radio. Have you ever heard someone talking fast in Spanish. If they can speak English they can sometimes talk that fast in English. The Port Captain ask me in English what my intentions were and told me he had a ship coming out. I told him I was coming in to anchor for the night and that we would stay out of the shipping channel. He told me to go to the other side of the channel. I didn’t say any thing but the ship did He said “No Port Captain.” No in broken English. He need to stay on the east side of channel. The port captain said. “Sail boat you need to go now to west side of channel immediately.” Again I didn’t say any thing but I was not going across that channel with a ship I could see coming up the middle maybe 2 minute away. I did not have time to say anything on the radio because the ship said “No Port Captain, sailboat needs to stay on east side. No time.” The Port Captain said slowly. As if he knew the ship and I were not obeying him. “Sailboat Pamela Ann What is your intentions? I said slowly in English. Remember I don’t speak Spanish. Just some words. “Port Captain I am moving slow and have my motor running. I have good control of my vessel and I need to stay here out of the shipping channel until that ship passes by, Please.” I think the port captain knew the wind was behind us now and if we had any thing to happen the wind could blow us in to the channel. This is why he was insisting we needed to be on the other side. To top all of this off our friends that were sailing with us were coming in behind us. I told them to stay with us. They were on another channel on the VHF radio. Until that ship passes. The ship and the Port Captain keep talking . As the ship was coming by us the Port Captain came back and told us where to go to anchor and said to call when we were leaving the next morning. Dealing with the ship was not making my heart beat faster but dealing with a Port Captain in Honduras was. We went on and anchored. All was good until Pam used her Claro stick and our computer to check emails and check our bank statement. I thought all the excitement for the day was over. Her first words were. “We have been robbed. There is no money in our account.” I am a older man. I have battled many a storm. Pam and I have been married 50 years so I have learned sometimes you need to give some things a little time. I did . Finely she stared to settle down and said “I need to email the bank. That is one thing I can do tonight.” I reminded her that we have a little cash on board. She came back with you know we are still in a country we have already checked out of and we don’t have enough in Qs to check in to Guatemala. And you know how hard it is to get Qs for US dollars from one of their banks. I gave her more time. Then I explained I thought we did if we used US money with the agent and we have been with that bank for 25 years. I am sure they can help. How did someone get our debit card numbers and use them with us out to sea? We don’t know. She said “We will have to stay here in the harbor where I can get a signal long enough to get this straightened out. We did. For all of you that are following our blog to see how we are handing things as we travel along. This is how we are handling this. First thing getting on line is not always as easy as I thought it would be. Towns always have internet serves somewhere. Beach towns will have internet cafes but the best way we have found is to buy a internet stick for your computer. If the people around you can get their cell phone to work you can get on line. Most of the time with these sticks. If you can get on line Skype works well. About 30 US a month. Claro works good in the river but Tigo works better in the Bay Islands. If you have a stick in one country most of the time it won’t work in another. Carrying cash money . This is how we see it. I wouldn’t carry a lot . People down here with a lots of any thing have armed guards with them. All the time. Day and night. There is a lot of laws on carrying money if you carry a lot. We only carry about 500 US well hidden with us most of the time. We carry some more in $20 we seem to get some how as we travel. Some one will give us a 20 for something and now we end up carrying it with us. The best I think to carry is 100 dollars bills and they need to be new. If you have to go to the trouble to get them changed in to there money get enough to make it worth while. Any money down here that is dirty or has a tear even if it a small tear. No one wants it. Its been that way in every country we have been in. Even if it’s their money. Remember they will take US money in Mexico in most big stores and the Belize dollars is based on the US dollars. One Us is 2 Belize. No problem spending US dollars in Belize any where any time. Bring all you want there. In the Bay Islands, they will take US money in big stores. In Guatemala it’s harder. The banks don’t want to change out any more than 100 dollars to Qs a day and you have to have your passport and you can not do the exchange again for two weeks. You have to sign for the money. ATMs work wonderful every where we have been and we see people using there credit cards every where. We have used ours and it worked well. Traveling in Central America the only problem we have with money is the same we have always had. We have so very little money to worry about. Now back to our problem. Someone used our debit card online charging to our account while we were out to sea. The bank turned it over to the fraud department. They canceled our debit cards and put our little moneys back. Now we have another problem it’s the paper work. It’s up there and we are down here. We are working that out now. In Guatemala there is no fax that we can find any where. If you are wanting to come to Central America and you worry about anything, We believe you can work out about any thing that may come up down here with a little persistence and its helps a lot if you have a good since of humor.
There is no way to show you any pictures of the people that tried to rob us and these pictures have nothing to do with this blog but we thought you might like to see where we are. Leechy nuts are in season and everyone has them for sale. This pig is going home with someone. There is no water in the truck for the pig so I guess he was just bought off the street. The street of Fronteras, Guatemala.

Piggy going home

Eating Out

We are back in the river and back in our old slip just like we had never left. The Rio Dulce. Our marina belongs to a Guatemala women and is the most run down in the river but we can work on our boat all we want with out any one saying a thing. Right now we are the only live aboards there. The other boats that are there are stored till there owners get back from where ever. All over the world. They will be coming back when its gets a little cooler. There is no bathrooms or showers here. No road running to the marina. The running water is right out of the river. There is no old movie night at the bar because there is no bar. No happy hour unless you are talking about one of the workers here. He can happy hour all day sometimes and no one speaks English. We are living in Central America with the Guatemalans the way we always dreamed we would someday when we were dreaming and building our boat. We always try where ever we go to live with the locals. We went to town in Dumpling our dink today and ate at a restaurant that is a local Guatemalan restaurant No one there specks any English. I don’t like most Guatemalan food.This was okay to good enough but it is fun to try something the locals eat every day and its so different to see how a lot of restaurants work down here. There is no inspection of any kind. You just fix food and sell it. Any where any way you can. I put in our blog all the time. You can not live cheaper down here than you can in the states if you live any thing like you do in the states but if you can eat in places like this you can eat cheap. It’s always beans and rice. It’s what people eat down here. It’s what they live on. Now remember Pam and I are not your picky eaters type people. If someone is eating it. I will try it. I have never eaten rattle snake. I want to but have never had the chance. I have tried most every thing else. Pig brains and eggs, cow tongue. Heart battered and fried. Most thing wild from bear to alligator. Blood sausage. You get the idea. This restaurant is clean to Guatemala standards and clean enough that we will go back when we are in town at lunch time and hungry enough to eat Guatemalan food. But there is always a but. If it’s your first time here it might take some getting use to. There stove is home built out of cement blocks. Blocked up high enough to store wood under a slab built on top of the block with one more row of block over the slab. The very top of the stove is part sheet metal and part open grill. They burn wood and the smoke comes out in the restaurant. No chimney, no vents. The wall near the stove and the ceiling is black with shoot. When we first came down I could not figure out how they could burn just the ends of a peace of wood. This is how they do it. They start a fire and when its going they place 3 or more pieces of wood laid down on its side close together. They push only one peace in as it burns and the rest just smolders When the longer piece burns back to the rest of the pieces they push another piece in and its burns back to the other pieces. This is how they burn wood from the end back. We love being here and living here. I feel free here. Free from living with so many rules. Free from other people being around me so up tight they are making so many rules. Like we were in a restaurant in the states one night where a women made a big deal over her spoon having some scratches she could see on it. She called them teeth marks. The waiter ran and got her a new one that had never been used. I feel free from people like that down here. No one here cares if there is a dog under your table or if there a chicken in the street doing what chickens do right beside your table. It’s hard to explain how just being here and living here makes me feel or why it makes me feel so free. I wish I could share that with everyone but I know every one wouldn’t see it the way I do.

Good Lunch

This is what you can expect to get here for a noon meal. Black beans and rice with sour cream in your beans Maybe a little cooked tomato Here I got a slice of potato about one inch thick fried in oil. Very good and a piece of chicken. Remember most meat is sliced very thin down here. This chicken is from and 1/8 to ¼ inch thick more like a peace of jerky fried. Tortita bread and salsa. About 3 bucks US. The salsa varies greatly down here. This was good. To me the salsa can help make a meal worth eating. The woman in the far right, only job is to make tortita bread. She makes it on the sheet metal part of the stove then she places it on the open grill part of the stove to give it a smoky taste.

Making Tortillas

They love that here in all of Central America. Kids run in and buy tortita bread from her and they all talk to her fast like they know her and like her. Looks like maybe 4 tortillas for one Q about 15 cents. They always run back to where ever they are going so I guess the bread is going back to there mothers to finish out there lunch. The people here are very clean and you can see they have painted the back wall recently but look at the stain the stove has made on the top of the wall and look at that light bulb.

Pam and I don’t eat out much not even in the states but when we do I like it when you just fill good being there. Setting out of the rain with a good breeze blowing and a good view of the street and all that is happing there. This is that kind of place.

Local Rio Dulce

Ever think about what it would be like to travel to places where there is no roads. To live with people that live there with out roads. Live a simple life. That live very close to mother nature and don’t even know it. We have not found a place where people live completely out of the modern world. Here they have dug-out canoes and cell phones. They may have a power lines to their little thatch roof houses if it’s in or near a village and no roads. Most of the power is to have lights and you can almost always here a radio playing at every house. They like music. There is no washing machines, microwaves no refrigerator, maybe a refrigerator in a store set to just keeping thing a little cool. Remember power cost a lot more down here,more than the states where people make very little so just having lights at night is a good thing for them. In what we would call out in the country there is no TV. That’s most every where down here. When Pam and I decided to come back to the Rio Dulce. We decided to see as much as we could of the indigenous people in the Rio and the way they live. Not go to a marina set up for gringos with their gated community. Where you can go out but the Guatemalan’s can’t come in. With the top of the day being “Happy hour.” We are in a marina now but it is a Guatemala marina not set up to entertain gringos. It’s just a safe place to tie the boat up so we can go on short trips and not worry about the boat. Taking some of these short trips is fun. We stopped on our way in at one of the places we wanted to see. This is some of what we have found. We went to a little village just past what the locals call Texan Bay in our dink. We anchored out in the east end of El Golfete. We wanted to go to a store and see what a store in a little village would be like and what they would have. They had a whole chicken. We bought that . Pam cut it up. No problem. They had Pepsi in glass returnable bottles like the good old days back in the states. We drank one there that was cool. They are “never” cold. They had box milk that you don’t need to refrigerate. Eggs setting out on a shelf. They had a good supply of rice. How big is a village store. This one maybe 8 feet by 10 feet inside the store. How much can you carry in a store that little. I think they carry enough to supply most of what people need there. I am sure the women there catch a ride in a launcha now and then to Fronteras or Livingston to stock up on what they need and the little village store supplies the rest. Stuff in the village store cost more but Fronteras is a long boat ride away. Remember no roads. Life is simple there. If you are anchored out. The locals will come by in there dug-outs and try and sell you something. Sometimes the teenager will paddle by stop and try to get you to give them “Coke Cola.” We have a shade cover to cover our deck. Its “hot” down here and all gringos have a cover over their boat so you can set on deck in the shade. Anything to try and fight the heat. I will be working on deck under our shade cloth when I will hear Spanish. I will look around and go back to work. I will hear it again. “Senor.” Then more Spanish. If I keep looking I will hear Senor. More Spanish and maybe “aqua. ” (a  key )The word for here. I will stop and look all around for sure now trying to find a little smiling face looking over the rail. “Senor aqua” is roughly “over here man.” We try to talk to them and we do buy a few thing from them but what you can buy is most of the time not as good as what you want. Like bananas they grow in their back yard are small the same for pineapple. The jewelry and things they make are interesting but crude. They don’t use ice down here so if you buy fish check then first because they may have been in the bottom of there boat all day. Covered up with leaves to keep the every lasting sun off them. The sun is hard for me to deal with. If you can get out of the sun and if you can get a breeze, you can do alright but if you think you can live and work in the sun down here. “ I can’t.” I have seen some gringo women and men that stay out and say they love it. I don’t understand why. It’s sure not what it makes them look like. Even the locals here wear big hat and work early or late to get out of the sun. In the states kids under 13 have to wear life jackets if they’re on a boat or some one will have to pay a big fine . Down hear only the tourist wear life jackets. Kids play in the water all day and every day. They don’t ever wear life jackets. You never see them in there boats. I don’t think they have any. They don’t ever wear swimming suits. They just go swimming in there clothes. What ever they have on and when they come out it want be long till they’re dry. That’s the way it’s has been where we have been so far. We were Chickies‘ a grocery store just past the bridge in Fronteras. Pam and I was setting there on a bench eating and ice cream. A real treat down here when I seen a pair of good looking legs beside me I knew belonged to a young women but there was water running down her legs. I looked up and there were three good looking young women there all dressed in shorts with nice blouses all soaking wet. They had come in from the park near by where a lot of young people go to hang out. I guess to get something to drink. Later I saw them all dried out in the park talking to some boys. Looking good. Same clothes. When we came to Central America I wanted to see wild monkeys in the wild. I wanted to see what real jungles looked like. I wanted to see how they build thatch roofs. I really wanted to see that. We have seen that now . Now I am trying to find someone building a dug-out. I want to see that before we leave. I was in a museum in the states one time where a person working there was telling every one how the Indians built dug-out and bark canoes. I didn’t say anything but I disagreed strongly with her. Now after seeing all of these. I know she was wrong. She said they bored holes all over the dug out to see how thick the walls were and they drove plugs back in them to make them watertight. There is no holes in any of these. I wonder how much we here every day that is just wrong. I know we can’t go back in time to see but the people here are still doing it. I know now with modern tools but they do a good job of it.
I hope I can tell you how that is done soon.

selling hand made jewelry

 

People always socialize at the local store.

Small village. store on the far left side of picture