Santa in Guatemala

As Christmas has come and gone and the New Year is coming fast. We are still glad to see the holidays but at our age time is moving faster by the day. As we travel now and see how people live in other places. Christmas is always about the kids. Maybe people where we have been don’t have as much as we are use to seeing in the states but kids with very little will always find something to play with and you can always hear them laughing. In Mexico kids were playing in the street with a ball they were kicking but were using base ball rules and all the kids were playing, even the little ones were given a chance to kick and run the bases. You could hear them screaming and laughing blocks away. Home plate and second base were in the middle of the street and cars didn’t seem to mind the kids being in the street playing as they passed by and the kids seem to like dodging the cars. It’s all in where you are at I guess. As a child I was blessed to have been raised on a little farm where all the land around us belong to someone in our family. Times have changed now and to me its sad. I loved all that land and that little farm. Back then we didn’t have a lot of things but what we had was important . Like when I was 7 for Christmas. I got my first gun. It was a Red Rider BB gun. Every one said it was a real gun so I treated it like a real gun. I always had it with me as I explored the gullies, creeks and woods around the farm and never once was I attacked by a wild animal. Pam’s Granddaddy told me when he was little he got an orange for Christmas one year. That was mostly all he got but it was good and he had never seen one before. He thought maybe his Dad had bought it on the street of Simpsonville SC and the oranges had maybe come in on a train coming up from Florida. Remember when Pam’s Granddaddy was a little boy there were no trucks or cars. He lived to be 99 and was already retired when I met him when I was 17 and now I am retired. Things were a lot different back in his day. No power lines to there farm and most of there clothes were home made. Pam has her Grandmother’s sewing machine and in the day it would have been very important. Today its sets at her aunts house for safe keeping. How times have changed in the states and the world but here there is still a lot of family with out power or running water. The women still make their on clothes. The indigenous people come in to town sometimes packed in the back of a farm truck Not in the back of a wagon as in Pam’s Granddaddy would have in his early days. They seam to enjoy coming to the little town of Fronteruas. A town without a red light. On the streets here you can still buy hand grinder to grind your on corn and shelled raw corn to grind if you need it. It’s not like you are stepping back in time. It’s like they don’t want to change their way of life. Their happy the way they are. The kids here are like all kids that are fed well and have other kids to play with. They’re happy. I think most kids that don’t have a lot don’t know they don’t have a lot until they are told they need more. Being raised down on the farm I was told I was missing out on a lot not living in town but now I know what my Granddaddy meant when he would slowly say. Be careful of life’s illusions. Just because someone says you are better off one way are the other doesn’t make it true. Here in this picture is the little guy that has been working for me helping us get ready to go on south and his family.

He likes a ¼ of and inch being 5’ 3“. As you can see his wife is a lot smaller. He has 3 little girls all born at home with out a doctor. A bicycle and a cell phone. Cell phones are important in people lives here now. You will see someone fishing in a dug-out canoe with a cell phone. He is my window in to the world of the indigenous people here. I truly believe we have seen more that most people that come here because of him and know more about their ways. I ask the gringos here if they see all the iguanas and things that live here and they will have to think before they say. Yes I have seen an iguana. I know right then they are not seeing what we see with him showing us things all day but let me say this in there defiance. Four indigenous people tried one day to show me a wild parrot in a tree. I could hear it squawking and I have not seen it yet. When we left to go to the Bay Islands the last time I missed the people here and when we leave this time we don’t plan to come back as we plan to just go on as long and as far as we can. I know I will always remember the people here and the kids. They had a party here for Christmas at a marina for the local kids and we were ask to helped. Remember Santa Clause is to all kids what they see in the media. So the kids here wanted to really check this Santa out when he came to the party.

Santa is at the top of the steps

They would slowly look him over, make up there mind that he was real and then grab him. If you were 6 years old. would you hug this Santa?

Maybe a lot of life is as my Granddaddy would say, An illusion. Maybe we are happier than we think. I know Pam and I are richer than we are told we are not. Maybe happiness is in not knowing we are poor. Living on and old boat we built ourselves. Without a car, No washing machine, wringing out our clothes with a hand wringer to help them dry in the sun. No TV. So why are we so happy. Maybe its not worrying about what we don’t have and enjoying what we do have. I know its was cooler Christmas day down from 96 degree Christmas eve. We had more food that we could eat and I am not a hugger but I just gave up with all the people here coming by and hugging me so I just went with it. Maybe it’s not as good being here as we think it is but I sure like thinking it is. I hope all that read this are as happy as we think we are and hope all you have is Happiness in the coming New Year “2015”

 

Christmas ? “A Tug Got Us!”

As we have gotten older in life, we all have learned by now that all people are not the same. There are people out there in the world and in the boating community that will come after you like a pirate if they find you in trouble. They are companies along the US coast that have made so much money taking advantage of people in trouble that they have franchises out now all along the US coast. If they find you in serious trouble and manage to get you out of “that” trouble. You may find that your trouble is not over and you will be in court with lawyers fighting a savage claim against your boat and it’s all legal. With that said there are a few good people left in this world. It was early summer and Pam and I were in Louisiana working at a boat yard. I work on boats as a boat carpenter. Hatches, cabinets, wooden mast, teak and holly hand laid floors stuff like that. Pam does sails and canvas. Our phone rang and it was some friends of ours in trouble. They were passing through and their transmission had quit. They had manage to make it to a dock. Some one there knew some one and they had taken it out and were waiting on him to bring it back. They weren’t that far away so we went to see them. Later they called and said they were on there way again but they could not believe how much the man charged them to come out, get the transmission and bring it back rebuilt. They were in trouble setting there tied to a transit dock so they just had to pay and go on. They are traveling nurses. A man and his wife contracting to work where they are needed the most. This time it was Texas and they were on their way. A couple of days before Christmas that same year. We got a call saying they were on there way back and that there transmission had quit again. They had no outboard motor for there folding dink and they were up against a train trestle in the ICW ‘In trouble this time for sure.” The people at the train trestle were screaming for them to get of their trestle. They said they were some where below Morgan City. They didn’t know how far. Then their phone went dead. I got Dumpling our dink out of the water and found a 5 gallon extra gas tank. My plan was to find out where they were and try and go to them with little Dumpling and her little 5hp Honda out board motor. Maybe it would be strong enough to get them off of the train trestle if the current wasn’t too strong. One of our friend came in for the week end with his truck. I told him we could put Dumpling in the back of his truck and maybe drive to some where near where they were but he was reluctant to go off hunting them in the wilds of south Louisiana not knowing where they were and just hoping they would call and tell us where to come to. We were discussing what to do when the phone rang and they said “A tug got us” and the phone went dead again. Now more people were coming in to the boat yard because it was getting late in the day. They were coming in to check on there boats and a couple of people came by to just see us. Now we all had a different opinions of what had just happen. Where they hit by a tug ? What did it mean? They had to be alive to have made the last call. Where could they be? We all agreed that what we needed to do was just wait. Finally the phone rang and the person on the other end was calm “now “saying that they were on the dock in Morgan City. That a tug had come and got them. That they would tell us later the details but now they need to get there transmission fixed. They were afraid of having someone work on it and getting charged and unreal price again. I told them to rent a car. Take it out and bring it to the boat yard. Between all of us there, we would find out what was wrong with it. The next day they came with the transmission and we took it apart. It wasn’t in that bad of shape. I wanted to take it apart and just check everything as we put it back together but they wanted new parts so we ordered a rebuild kit and a shop manual. I believe in shop manuals. I am not very smart but you don’t have to be if you can read and you do just what they say to do. Step by step. I once rebuild and automatic transmission when Pam and I were young for a 61 Chevy with a shop manual checked out of the library and it worked for years. The next day they were back with the parts. It was Christmas Eve. Now if you have never been to south Louisiana, Let’s just say “They do things a little different there. We told some friends to call some of their friends and tell them to come on over. We had a 100lb bag of oysters “Bring something. We will cook out in the back side of the boat yard. By lunch time they were coming . By dark there was a lot of people there. We had fried fish, fried chicken wings and about anything they could catch or buy along with lots of red beans and rice. All kinds of food and we had eat all them oysters. The way I like them is to wash the sand off them, put them on a grill and when they pop open and start steaming in there on juice, open them up with a flat screw driver. Wipe any grit off the screw driver blade then cut the mussel in the back. Cover them with Louisiana Gold Hot Sauce and slurp them down. All this time our friend was rebuilding his transmission. Finally he came to the end and said he had done something wrong. That he had parts left over. I was keeping close check along with the boat yard owner on what he was doing. That’s when we saw what was wrong with the transmission. The man that had rebuilt it had put all the parts end. The parts left were shims to adjust the clearances of the clutches. You were to measure and only use the right shims. Leave the other ones out but now he was not sure we were right. We manage to convince him and he joined the party already well under way. Everyone there was wanting to here how a tug came to help them. He said They were up against the trestle and calling on the radio for anyone to help but no one came so they didn’t know what to do when a tug came up with out a barge. He said, they backed up near them smiling and said “I believe you sure is in need of help. Take this line. We get you off.” When they were off and away from the trestle the people there on the trestle were saying. Don’t come back!” Like they thought they wanted to. The captain of the tug said “How fast you go, Maybe 8?” They said “No 6.” The captain said “Well 6 it is,“ as they tied their sail boat to the tug. When they came up to the dock in the city they laid the boat gently up to the dock. Our friend said., they had been trying to come up with a way to pay the tug and could only guess what this was going to cost them. The men on the tug were untying the lines when our friend ask how they were going to pay the bill. The captain threw off the last line and said “You know you sure would need some serious money to pay for a tug like this don’t you. My boss said to tell you folks , Merry Christmas” and they left . They put there transmission in on Christmas Day and when they could turn in the car they left going back to south Florida. When ever we have seen them they have said the transmission is fine. About 2 years later we were working in Alabama in a yard when we met a friend of a friend there driving a “new “Chevy truck with longhorn cow horns mounted on the hood. He said he owned a fleet of tugs in Louisiana and I ask him if he knew any thing about the tug and our friends being up against that trestle. He said “I should have fired that captains’ ass for cutting lose his tow, tying it along the side of the ICW and going to help that couple. I said “I guess I heard it wrong because may friend said The boss sent them to help.” He looked at me for sometime and then said. “I knew he was going to anyway when he called me so I may have said go ahead. Beside it was Christmas.” I had not said it was a couple or that it happened so close to Christmas. I didn’t charge them anything for helping with there transmission and no one at the yard did. There is still some good people in this world and south Louisiana has its’ share. Remember that people like us out here traveling when we have a little money never having much. We are only rich in memories. I can only guess what that felt like seeing that big tug coming to help. We can only hope there is always a big tugs there in your life if you are ever in trouble. We truly hope all of you are having a great holiday and “Merry Christmas” from our humble little home built schooner “Pamela Ann” in the Rio Dulce Guatemala. Heading on south soon.

“Again, MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY NEW YEAR”

Relleno town Christmas tree

 

Christmas shoppers in Fronteras

Christmas in Guatemala

 

 

Coffee?

On our last trip to the big city of Guatemala city, it’s a long ride even in a modern bus from the Rio Dulce at Fonteras where our boats is to the city. We passed the time by looking out the window and a lot of what we have seen has been in our blog before. This time we were looking out the window and we saw trucks loaded heavily with bags of something and I thought it could be corn. The indigenous people here are called the people of corn and they really like anything made with corn. You can buy raw shelled corn on the streets and stores in any town here to take home and make what ever they make from raw corn like tortillas and things that have names but even if I hear the names I don’t know what they are. What ever they make? The corn is ground in some way at their homes and baked or toasted on open wood fire. They really like that wood taste. I don’t care for it much but I don’t like hold wheat bread from the states either. Give me good old white bread dripping with butter any time. I will have to say Pam makes good corn bread and down here they don’t eat corn bread. You can not get corn meal so Pam buys ground corn for a cereal they make and corn flour and mixes them together. It’s not as good as Martha White but it good enough to eat with pork. Maybe with beans (if we can find any thing beside black beans) and a fresh onions. I have never seen any one here eating corn bread and they have never heard of grits. I do miss my grits. On the bus we went by a place where men were unloading these bag and pouring what was in the bags out on what looked like a cement parking lot. We found out later it was coffee beans. They were spreading them out to dry in the sun. I don’t know much about how they grow coffee but it looks like hard work, working with these coffee beans. What I have been told is that they make very little money harvesting and drying the beans. Maybe 1000 to 1200 US dollars “a year” I read in a little paper here that the men that work picking coffee beans high up on the side of the volcano here and drying coffee bean down in the valleys making so little spend up to 25 percent of what they make on there wife and girls traditional cloths. Some how the Mayan men want this tradition to survive of how they dress and live. I hope it doses. I have put in a lot of our blogs how I like to go to town and watch the indigenous people come in to town packed in the back of a truck all dressed up in these tradition close and as I have said so often these women are so little. They never cut there hair and its hangs down there back to there waist. I wonder when I see them what there lives are really like living up in the hills or on farms with no electricity are running water in their houses they build out of what they can find trying to keep there tradition alive. Remember this and I can’t say this to often enough. These people are always clean, Always. That is a thing the Indians Mayan and the Latinos have in common. They take pride in is being clean. In the US the politicians call the poor. The poor and unwashed. Not in Central America. They look so happy being there in town and they stay there all day when they come to town. We have a little Indian that has been helping me for sometime working on the boat and through him I can see in to there lives a little. I do believe he is happy. He lives in a little house he built that just keeps out the rain. Has a pipe running from a little stream on the side of a hill above his house for water. No power line to his village. Three little girls born at home. As always chickens. A dog a pet rabbit. A pig that does not know how much trouble it is in come the day before Christmas. I really like the little guy. I pay him Q100 a day. That 13 dollars US a day to help me all day and we laugh all day as we work on getting the Pamela Ann ready to leave in the spring and go on south. That the most he has ever made. I truly hope the indigenous people here can survive change that will come with the population growing every where in the world the way it is. Here the women are taking charge of there life and most women only have 3 kids but the men make so little they can’t buy land here and they sure can’t buy land with enough natural resoures to live the way they have for centuries. We will buy toys for Christmas for the little guy, that works for us, kids this year like we did last year but if they’re to nice he just might sell them for money. Remember it all about surviving here with the indigenous people. We are not planning on ever coming back this way if we make it and go on south but we believe it will be hard to match this place where ever we go. So why are we leaving this wonderful place? It’s hard to explain to someone that is not a cruising sailor how strong the urge is to just go on and see what’s just over the horizon. We only came back here this time to make sure we didn’t have to do battle with a hurricanes and the boat needed work. It’s safe here. We will winter over here and when the winds are right in the spring we maybe will let people know what just over the horizon as the Pamela Ann plows on south trough the worm seas of the Caribbean but being here now is not all that bad.

We did not know at the time what we were looking at and the bus was going too fast to make pictures so we got these pictures out of a local paper.

Spreading Coffee Beans

Picking Coffee Beans

Holidays

I read some where that the suicide rate goes up this time of year and that cops are on higher alert. The holidays are here and not the best time of the year for some but Pam and I still like the holidays. All though being up the river here in Guatemala is different. The Western Caribbean is still hot this time of year and only cool enough to sleep at night so dressing up to go some where is out. Not having a lot of money doesn’t help during the holidays but as I have put in a lot of our blogs, if you don’t have money down here it is easy to just do without. We are still at the old run down marina here in the river that belongs to a Guatemalan women but as life can turn and twist, they are shutting it down and we have to leave before Christmas. We love it here. Living with the Guatemalan people that were here just barely keeping the place alive. We only saw the owner maybe once a month and the rest of the time we could do almost any thing we wanted. We have been invited to go to two other mariners down here that want us but there are “very nice marinas.” They’re more expensive and “ if we go we will be living in a gated community.” We are not gated community people. We lived one time at a dock at a house in a very nice gated community working on a rich mans’ boat in the US. Didn’t like it. Too many rules. Too many people with there nose turned up to the rest of us. Maybe if we had lots of money we would like it better. We have ask the owner to just let us stay here till she can decided what she is going to do with the place. She said “Maybe or maybe not.” That is and answer you get a lot down here. So we are going to stay till she says leave. We are already missing the Guatemala workers here but having the place to ourselves, working on our boat if we can stay would be nice. We have spent Christmas day in a lot of boat yards and they are a very lonely place with no one a round. With boats every where with no one on them it’s like you are deep in a forest of boats but in some way its very peaceful. We did Thanksgiving at one of the nice marinas here that is just opening. We knew some of the boat owners and they wanted us there and they wanted us to help cook a turkey in a turkey fryer. They had never done it so we did. It turned out the pot had a hole in it and we had to use just a big pot. The big pot didn’t have enough rim so we had to get an even bigger pot and pore up the hot oil but it all went well I guess. We had some people say that they liked turkey that is more moist and that they didn’t really like the crunchy tastes of the outside of a fried turkey so I suggested that if we ever were together again we could maybe cook a turkey in our pressure cooker we have on board our boat for canning. It’s fast, fits on our little stove and we do it all the time to feed people that go sailing with us for the day. You can feed a lot of people with a 12 lb turkey and it’s easy to cook. It doesn’t come out brown but its is very moist. But as most cruisers know the chances are we will never all be back together again. This is the sad part of cruising and it doesn’t mater how much we like the new friends we make a long the way. Its not like being home with old friends and family for the holidays. One of the things we do like about pot-lucks with new friends is how diverse they are out here. We had a women from Russia and her boy friend is from Argentina. The owner of the marina there is from Italy but lives most of the time in Panama. The marina is just an investment to him. The workers there are from here in Guatemala and they were invited to eat with us too. With us being from the deep south in the southern part of the states, we had some of the people there were making fun of the way we talk like we were from some far away place and having difficulty with English. We run in to this a lot if were are somewhere with a lot of Yankee sailors. If they hear you say. “Yes Mam” It drives them crazy. They will say it means a women is old. “Don’t say mam to me.” they will say. “I am not that old.” You can’t make them understand it’s just a cultural thing and has nothing to do with age. It’s just showing respect. No different than saying. Yes sir to a man. I will say it to a 2 year old little girl if she ask for candy. “Yes mam.” I will say. You sure can as I give her the candy. It’s just showing respect for her asking for the candy and not just taking it. How is that making her sound old? With that in mind I wonder how much of this cultural we are missing here by not being able to speak the language well or knowing there customs for what part of this country we are in. We are getting better with our Spanish and just because a word is in the dictionary doesn’t mean that how they use it. We keep trying to be part of this community and try to go and be part of what the local people are doing here so we went to the lighting of the town Christmas tree Friday night. There was not but one or two gringos there but we loved it. Even if you can’t speak the language kids are kids. All waiting on the tree to light up. The streets were full of local people. Lots of food for sale.

A very old cotton candy machine

Lots of music and there was fireworks. They shot the fireworks off of a building really close to the tree and the people watching. This put the fireworks right over our heads. We have never had that happen before. Even with all that going on it’s hard to get in the Christmas sprit with it being so hot but it is something we will always remember.

 

 

Nice tree, it changes colors

Being here watching fireworks and them being so close. Feeling the warm Caribbean breeze coming through the palm trees on a night with an almost full moon. Happy kids every where. To tell the true I guess we are really happy to be here ourselves. The people here don’t have much money but some how they manage to make it look like it’s just one big family We have had contact with a lot of the local people here and they came up to us letting us know they were glad we were there. Maybe that’s what we think the holidays should be like. I don’t think we are going to one of the fancy gated marina with their pool and happy hour. We may just have to anchor out. We have been anchored out on the Pamela Ann before on Christmas day with her decks covered with snow and a fire in her wood heater. Not happing down here. I guess most of life is just making memories and we have made some good ones. Maybe we will get up on Christmas day early and lessen for howler monkeys. That is a good way to get the day stared. We will see.

We love Fireworks

 

Simple Gautemala

When we write in our blog about what we find on our travels. We write mostly about what we like to see. Remember that in most of the big cities here in Central America there is a modern part of the city where the rich and well-to-do live and shop. It’s still not like the US but they do live well. They just don’t have what we have to buy. It’s a lot different from the US in what you can find to buy in the stores but this is a different culture too. If you go in a big modern grocery store you still won’t be able to buy a good steak. It will be beef from here, tuff tasteless and cut thin in slices. It’s what they eat and what sells. Most people down here don’t like peanut butter and they don’t even know what grits are. When we were at the fort the other day and were walking around the little town of San Felipe. It’s not a place for the rich and well to do. It’s a sleepy little town like so many down here. A truck pulled up with a load of shoes. People came out to see and shop. This is how a lot of what is bought here is bought. Out of the back of a old pick up truck.

Shoes

 

The bags beside the truck are full of shoes too. We almost never try to buy shoes or clothes off a truck because of my size. I am 6 foot tall and weigh 190. A normal size in the US but most people here are small and they never have any thing big enough to fit a man my size. Most of the markets here are from the US and if you look close you can find why they sent them down here. Some of the stuff for sell down here is so odd. I don’t know how they sell it. It’s like we saw a truck loaded as high as you could get with steering wheel covers. There are cars here but most people ride motor bikes, chickens buses or walk. Where could you ever sell that many steering wheel covers. A lot of the time when clothes come in to what they call stores down here, they’re more like a booth at a flea market. They come in folded and packed in bags so big one man will have trouble carrying it. They will take the close out and look at them then hang them up. I don’t think they know just what they bought to sell the way they look at what they pull out of the bags. The young people here buy shirts with writing on them even though they can’t read what’s on the shirt. It’s always in English. This makes the market better because if it’s misspelled, Its doesn’t mater it looks good with writing on them. One of the workers here wears a shirt from Roswell and loves the space alien on the front but has no idea where or what Roswell is. The women like high heel shoes even little girls. By 12 they’re wearing high heels. I have put in a lot of our blogs young women in there 20s and 30s riding motor bikes in high heels. Remember when I say they bring thing in bags to sell not packed in boxes like the US that the average man with a family makes about Q100 a day or 13 US dollars. Working here is different than the US. Workers like someone building something stop for lunch maybe 30 minutes. They eat and only then go to the bath room. There is no breaks and no one gets paid for lunch. Most workers work by the day not the hour here and some days are long. The people with money here seam to waste money making there lives look more grand. The people that have very little work very hard to make any little money they can. I like being with the people with less because they seem so happy. They are quick to help and share what their doing or show me something. Take time to help me with my bad Spanish and then wave at me in town to let me know they see me like they’re my friends. I like seeing the old stuff the well-to-do down here have left behind as time has passed. This buggy would have been grand sometime ago.

Nice buggy

This is and old hotel now in bad shape but in the past it was grand. The chandelier on the porch are maybe 4 foot long. Really well made by some one with talent and tools If it was made in this country by hand who ever made it was famous I would bet

. The doors were grand too as they are so often here but now some families seem to live down stairs with lots of kids, chickens and dogs Like I have said They are always smiling. Maybe the reason I get along so well with most of the people here is I genuinely like these people. Maybe it’s because the people here are not pretending to be any thing but who they are. Maybe it’s because I like to see how well they live with what they can get ,grow make or sadly sometime steal to get by. Remember they always seem happy. Maybe I will never learn to be that way but the longer we stay here the better I am at it. If we could only just find a good steak down here with out paying to have it shipped from the US? I am sure I would smile more.

Smiling people