Road Trip

What do you do when you find your self working too much? Take a day off of course. That’s what we did last Saturday It’s been raining here so much it’s hard to find things to work on that you can do when its raining and if you take the day off. What can you do with it raining. Pam said “I know, we can go shopping.” There is a town at the end of the lake called El Estor. It’s bigger than Fronteras. Built by a mining company for it’s workers. To get there you can go by boat but they are little buses called coltivos that go there so we decided to go there and take a caltivo. We write all the time about taking coltivoes and they never let you down if you are looking for adventure. How many people can ride a coltivo? At least one more. This time was no different. The adventure was on as soon as we left Fronteras. At one time there was 4 people riding on top hanging on. To make this more of a little adventure the road has been getting bad for months and with the almost continual rain and having big trucks traveling non stop from the mine up there. The road is getting almost impassable. At times the driver would stop and watch big trucks coming through a mud hole to see how deep the mud holes were. Now remember this is a main road with mud holes so big it would make a Guatemala coltivo driver stop to look. That’s a mud hole. I wish I could show you pictures but how do you take pictures when you a traveling in a little bus with only 4 seats and 28 people. 24 inside. Maybe that not exactly right. There were 19 in side 5 hanging out the side door and 4 hanging on riding on top. Now if you have been reading our blog you know that they don’t like cars busses are any thing with an automatic transmission down here so the driver was changing gears driving through these mud hold and talking on his cell phone and No. People down here don’t have 3 hands. They love their cell phones here even if they don’t have power to their house they will have a cell phone sometimes. We always set in the far back. This helps if you don’t want people setting in your lap but this doesn’t work all the time and it makes it harder to see. Maybe that a good thing not be able to see. It wasn’t raining when we got to town and people were out. Near El Estor there were a lot of young people letting there pigs graze on the vegetation along the road. They would have a rope around there neck walking them along letting them eat. I was raised on a little farm and pigs are easy to train so getting them to walk on a leash is easy. They will put up with a lot if you just let them eat. Some people say pigs are smart but I am not sure. Pigs never figure out why people don’t ever have old pigs are to run away from people that smell like bacon. This is one of the reasons why I like being here so. Seeing people that still know where bacon comes from and people here know where most all there food comes from. The town of El Estor its’ self is beautiful built on the side of the lake with wide streets It looks like it was built to be a place where the well healed traveler would like to come to stay and shop but we never found any thing like art galleries or chocolate factories. No big draw for tourist and no tourist. On one of the outer streets of town we found a place where they were making tortita bread big time. They call them factories. It was in a old building that looked like what you see in a lot of towns down here. Built out of old boards. Just a place to keep the rain out but in the back they were boiling corn in a pot. I don’t know why or how they could make tortita bread out of that or what they were going to do with it. It’s that way here for us. Sometime we just don’t know what we are looking at. We were looking at them drying coffee beans on our last trip to Guatemala City and didn’t know that it was coffee. Coffee beans don’t start out brown. On another street there was a store with old type writers setting in neat row like you could go in there rent a type writer and type up something. They still use old type writers in the customs office in some of the places we have been but what would you type up today. There was a lot of stores where you could find thing that were practical. Hand made brooms and thing made out of wood like wooden plates or thing made out of gourds. Life is still basic in most of the country side here . They had cinnamon bark cut from local trees and toys made from wood. Pam wanted to buy maybe one of the traditional shawls the indigenous women wear but decided it was not for her so we went to where the indigenous women go and buy there cloth to make there clothes. A lot of them still weave there on cloth. We found the place we were told to go and bought some cloth but instead of making a skirt. we just plan to cover a seat cushion with it. This way when we leave we will be taking some of Guatemala with us that every one that comes on the Pamela Ann can enjoy. For every one that is flowing our blog and our battle to get good grits down here. We bought a little corn grinder but have not mastered it yet. For any one that doesn’t know, There is very little that a Southern boy loves more than his grits. Maybe a good looking women that cooks good grits. Pam may just be stepping it up a notch soon and not only cooking good grits but. “Making grits? Life just keeps getting better.

 

Type Writers

Local products

Need a new broom?

Boiling Corn?

 

Centeral America

When Pam and I started the blog it was and still is to let people friends and family know where we are and what we are doing. I am so amazed at what we have seen I just want to share it with everyone and share everything we see but there a lot more to it than just what we see. There is a lot in the way it makes us feel. We talk to people from all over the world traveling around on there boats now. To the people here we are all rich and we are if you look at it in what we have and what they don’t have. I think all people that live in a developed country and it doesn’t mater which country have a lot more rules a lot more laws and have a different view on money than they do here. Here the law is just basic if there is any and money is necessary but they look at it differently. All people want to have a lot and live the good life but here in the Western Caribbean, I think people here can be satisfied with less than we could ever be satisfied with and be happy in the states. That’s how I think they look at money. Their satisfied with what little they can make with out working a lot. Their not looking for a job with a lot of what we call over time and their not looking for a job that last all week every week of the year. In writing this I was thinking back and I can not think of a job I ever had I only worked 40 hours a week in my life. There was always more to do that just a 40 hour work week. Down here life is more basic and the need for money is not so great. The older women that lives here at the marina cooks a lot in her front yard on a open fire with wood. It’s beans, rice and tortilla bread all cooked daily. They add to this maybe some chicken a little thin sliced pork and fish sometimes. They cook there tomato here and they cook other thing differently like they cook green beans and eggs together and like it. Do I think most of these people here are happy. I believe they are. Why does this make us feel different and happy ourselves. It’s seeing all of this and watching these people live there lives in a more simple way than we live in the states. Is this a better way to live? The answer is always the same with anyone you ask. We all can use a little more money. Does anyone “really” want to live with less. Maybe Pam and I always have because we haven’t had a lot and I think that’s why we love being here so much. Our boat is the simplest boat we could build. Simple in every way. Wooden mast and booms. Our chain windless is home made and mechanical. We can catch rain water from our decks. Pam has a hand wringer to help her with her laundry she does by hand and I think I am going to buy a little hand grinder to see if I can learn to grind corn on our boat and make our own grits. Pam has made us a living for many a year now sewing and here there are a lot of old paddle sewing machine. We power our sewing machines with a Sureflow water pump motor off a water pump. A step up from peddling maybe. Having 12 volts on our boat works for us and it is simple. Maybe if we keep writing about what it like to us to be out here cruising, seeing what we see. We can get closer to how we feel. Like waking up anchored out in some beautiful place where there is no other boats in site. That’s about any where here away from the town of Frontersa on Lake Izabal, Guatemala.. Having some women come buy in a dud-out canoe trying to sell you something like still hot tortilla bread she just cooked on a open fire or bananas she just cut out of her yard. Listing to the sounds of the jungle around you. Maybe howler monkeys. It doesn’t mater how many times you write about things like that it doesn’t let you know how it feels. Maybe there’s no way to tell how we feel. After all the years of dreaming and all the years building the boat knowing we are finally here and knowing we are going on. I get up each morning and set in the cockpit looking around and I make sure I think about where we are for a few minutes. It makes my 2ed cup of hot Earl Grey English tea so much better.

 

Banana leaves for Tamales

Lago De Izabal

Local work boat on the lake and river

 

 

Rainy Season?

The holidays are over and like most people Pam and I are trying to go back to work. We want to get every thing painted and varnished and head on south. There is only 2 seasons here Rainy and dry. There no summer or winter it’s just the rainy or the dry season. This year the rainy season has extended on past December and its still raining. Every thing is green. When I take a shower I am afraid to look under my arms. I think I my see something green. How do you work when it never quits raining? If the sun comes out you go do all you can before it clouds up and you guessed it, “ It rains again.” I have a table set up and have it covered with a tarp I lay it back to weld on something then I cover it up before I go inside the boat to measure what I am working on because when you come back out every thing maybe wet. You can’t sleep with your hatches open. You just have to learn to live in the rain. With all the rain and us not doing much to write about I thought we would just post some pictures of how people shop and live here. I hear people say they are worried about finding fresh meat here. No problem.

Fresh chickens For Sale

This is where the Guatemalan people here that live at the marina cook if it raining. When it not raining they cook a lot out in the yard.

Outdoor kitchen

Rain or not the wild life here is great. There a little owl that has taken up residence in a tree no more than 20 feet from our boat. He is there sometime every day.

This Owl is only about 4 inches tall

 

Bringing In The New Year

The holidays have passed and I am a little sad. I try and never put a value on the days that have passed but I think we all have days in our past that we wish we could live over and over if we could and we tend to compare the rest of our days with them. I think that most people don’t know how it is to almost never see family are old friend when you travel as we do. The people that you are cruising or traveling with are not like family or close friends but you do have a bond with the people you meet out here. When you here they made it to some where they were headed you feel relieved their safe. When you find out they have trouble in there lives, you feel for them. They are other little things that happen that connect you with people you meet out here like I fixed a little hand cranked Singer sewing machine for some boaters and they emailed us latter that they made a courtesy flag for Honduras out to sea and under way with it. It may have been a little thing but I felt good just knowing we helped them on there way. Pam is a sail maker so we get a lot of emails all the time thanking her and this connects us to the cruising world too. With that in mind we had a little pot lock supper for Thanksgiving. We have already put that in our blog and for Christmas we did it again Of course we invited the Guatemalan people here at the marina to join us. Pam and I like mingling with the local people but a lot of sailors isolate themselves with just other sailors. Live in gated community marinas with very little contact with the locals. When New Years came Pam and I decided to try and spend New Years Eve with the local people Bring in the new year more with where we are and less with the bar scene. We don’t drink and this too will isolate you out here. We decided to walk up on the bridge and watch from there what was going on all around us. As we have put in other blogs we are now in a new marina with only one other live aboard. We have a Guatemala family that lives here taking care of the place and not really even a guard. There are chickens here in the marina yard and a big iguana maybe 4 foot long that lives in a tree right beside our boat. We can sometimes see him through the hatch over our bed up in his tree We are very happy here now but this is a nicer place than we like and it will fill up soon. By then hopefully we will have moved on. The nicer the marina the more rules you have. I like living with out so many rules and with big fancy marinas there is always “drama.” Most marinas here don’t have a road to them but we have more of what we would call a trail to here from the highway. It’s hard to walk on when its been raining here for months When we left the boat to walk to town it was near 11:00 but not raining. We could hear very loud music some where far away. We made our way by walking up the bank of this road to try to be out of the mud and in the dark. When we reached the highway you could see the little town they call El Relleno on the south side of the Fronteras bridge and kids playing in the road shooting firecrackers. As we walked on to the bridge we walked by the little houses built right on the side of the road, never more than 8 feet off the road. It’s that way in most little towns down here. They don’t have screens on most of their doors and its always hot down here so if there up at night their doors are open and you can see in their houses. Their houses are more like just a few rooms not like the houses in the states. A house the size we are use to in the states would be the start of a village down here. Inside their houses they had food setting out and not a lot of beer. Mostly juices and things made up in pitchers to drink. The older people were still up setting with the younger people. Maybe waiting on the New Year. You don’t see that a lot. Down here older people just disappear about dark and you won’t see them again till daylight. They like dogs that will bite you here so we were careful looking out for dogs as we walked. The real mean ones will always be tided but if you step of the road they may can get to you. They can always scare the hell out of you when they charge to the end of there rope and in the dark. When I was young I loved fireworks and we had cherry bombs back then before they band them. “Too loud. Too Powerful.” Down here they have things so loud they will make your ears ring. One thing you will find down here is their is no noise to loud. And the more noise you can make the more fun you are believed to be having. As we walked we spoke to the locals in our best Spanish which is always bad but they really do appreciate the effort. We watched their kids and they knew we were watching them shot fireworks so they would put on a little show for us. That was nice. When we reached the top of the bridge we could hear the music we were hearing back at the boat. It was loud. We walked on and found that they were having a disco type party in Fronteras in a basket ball court under the bridge. They had the wire fences around the court covered with black plastic so you couldn’t see in and was charging to enter. As we got close it was so loud it made me think it would do damage to your ears to go inside. Along with that there were young people there out side with fireworks. Big ones under the bridge and it was raining a little now. There were a lot of nice scooters in town with young girls on them. Maybe these girls have jobs and credit and are buying these scooters but there were a lot more bigger bikes there that were trashed-out. No lights “at all” No mufflers and the boys were riding them hard around town in the dark and in the rain.. Remember there is no law to speak of here and no police will bother with little things like lights mufflers or riding around having a few beers and remember noise is important to your over all machismo here. To top all of this off the big pipe going across the bridge to El Relleno had a chunk out of it and water was gushing out and going everywhere. Maybe a 5 inch pipe. I can only guess this is the main water supply line to El Relleno on the other side of the bridge. We sat on the back side of a bridge column and watched what was happening so we were protected from some of the disco noise. Out of the rain , the broken water main and any stray firecrackers coming our way. I just sat there thinking. “Sometimes life is just good“. A little before 12:00 we went back up on the bridge and headed to the top. The rain had stopped but the guys on the motor bikes with no light had not. They were riding back and forth with girls on the back of their bikes across the bridge fast enough to make the girls hold on and squeal. A few cars came and stopped on top of the bridge so we went to stand beside one. Maybe if one of the bikes with no light lost control we would be safer behind a car. Just before 12 the fireworks stared ramping up. The music was the same as it had been. They couldn’t get it any louder and then we knew it was 12 because the fire works went intense. Any way you turned there were “Fireworks.” This went on for longer than I thought it would and then it went back to the way it was before 12. Loud music under the bridge fireworks here and there, motor bikes with out a single light riding across the bridge in the dark, with light rain so we headed back to our boat. There is only 3 lights on the whole bridge that work. You do get used to things not working down here or maybe you just learn to live with it. When we worked our way back to the boat. I couldn’t go right to sleep. I keep wondering where we may be next year. I finally went to sleep with Pam saying. Don’t plan too much. I like it best when life just happens. I wonder what they do in Cartagena, Columbia, The Sand Blas Islands or Panama for New Years. Maybe we can just go somewhere down that way this coming year and see.

 

Bridge over the Rio Dulce. El Relleno on left and Fronteras on the right.

View from bridge of Fronteras’ tree

Another wonderful sunset on the Rio