Shopping in Moralas, Gautemala

We have just been back a few weeks from a great trip to the Maya ruins here and we are slowly getting back to normal. Working on our boat. If you look around the marina near you, you’ll probable not see many boats with wooden mast or with a lot of bright work. Maybe won’t see a single steel hull sail boat. There is a reason for that. “Maintenance” It’s never ending. Our boat is home built We designed her ourselves. We built her ourselves. She has wooden mast. Lots of bright work. It’s steel and has 2 old car motors for auxiliary power. The maintenance is madding but she brought us here so we need to take care of her. We did take sometime of this week to ride a caltivo to the town of Morales. Went shopping. If you ever come this way and get board, remember riding a caltivo and shopping down here will be an adventure, Every time. Never a rerun day. What we wanted was some pork ribs. Simple, right? Not down here. In all of Central America if you get away from where there is not a lot of Gringos you may can buy meat but there is “no trained butchers here.” They just cut you off a chunk of meat and slice it very thin for you if you want it. There is a meat market. We will call it a meat place where they start out in the morning with a whole hog. They kill them here at about 100 pounds. In the US a market hog is about 200 pounds. They’re small here. By the way I was told by and old man that the word gringo came from “green no” in the last 100 years or so the US army has been here south of the boarder somewhere for something or another and they would try to say green go home for the clothes they wore and it became gringo for white people. There at this meat place we bought the back of a small pig and a few ribs with the belly fat still on them. I really wanted that belly fat. Most people don’t realize that the best sausage has about 30% fat in it and that white belly fat is the best. Our family recipe from down on the farm I was raised on is about what Jimmy Dean sausage taste like or close. You can’t buy it here so we make our own. We grind our on grits from raw corn here as well. We have put that in our blog before and self-rising flour for home made biscuits is very hard to find. Pam makes them from scratch now. Sorry I am a southern boy and I like what I like. We cooked the ribs for the few people here at the marina. For now there are only Americans from the US at this marina but we had some friends from Austria to come over. It’s that away out here. You run in to people from all over the world. Our blog is slowly spreading a round the world. In one way this makes me very happy but in another it seems odd to know there are people reading this in some beautiful place far away we my never get to see. Here is some of what it’s like to go shopping and what we see every day if we go to one of these little towns. We hope to leave here by summer and where we are going next? We have been told it gets worse but on the bright side if there nothing to buy its good for the budget. Like I said. Always an adventure.

These meat places will some times have and old freezer but the temperature will be set only on cool to keep the meat over night. These are open air markets open to the streets and the meat hangs there in the open all day.

Meat store

This is fish and there is no ice in these chest just fish. Most of the time they’re sold out before noon and gone.

Fresh Fish

You can still buy peddle type sewing machines down here, “New.”

Pam wants one

My favoriate time of day.

The sun going down in the Western Caribbean and I can just set in the cockpit of our old schooner in the cooler air and just relax.

 

Traveling in Central America

Last week Pam and I finally saved enough money to take a land trip. We went to Tikal to what maybe the biggest Maya ruin we will ever see. It’s big but we also went to Flores. An up scale little town on an island in the 2nd largest lake in Guatemala. From there we went to Belize to another large Maya ruin called Xunantunich. All and all it was and exciting 7 days away from the boat. Traveling in Central America is always exciting and fun even if where you are going is not. This time every place we went was something to remember. When we left our room and stared to tour the park at Tikal. What I wanted to see was temple IV. I had seen pictures of how there are other temple coming up right out of the jungle and I wanted to see it for myself. On our way through the park we came by ruin after ruin. All impressive if nothing else but just how big they are. When we came to temple IV it was taller than I though it would be. They have built wooden stairs up the side with rails so up we went. Twice I stopped to let people going down go by hoping that no one noticed I was just resting. At the top you come to a flat ledge maybe 7 foot wide and from there you can go up the temple step maybe 15 more step and that is as far as you can go. Remember this is a very old temple and there is not and never has been a rail on that ledge. I decided to not go any farther. Pam went to the top. So did our friends that went with us. I truly do have a bad leg now but that ledge was close enough to the top for me. I could see all I wanted from there. It is very impressive to be up there. If you fall over that ledge, the fall would almost for sure kill you but where they decided to build this temple it looks like you are a lot higher than you really are. You are looking out over the jungle far below with other temples sticking up out of the jungles. It’s really something to see. In pictures the other temples look closer than they really are. This place is big. We sat in one part of the ruins and watched wild monkeys playing in the trees over head. In the main plaza I sat and looked at just how big this place is or was. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering. Why would any one build a place like this? How did they get the rocks up here and where did they get that many rocks? I listened to a tour guides talking to other people that had hired him as a guide “we didn’t “ and was not impressed with what he said. He was saying that they were a very advanced people. If so why did they build this instead of something useful? What purpose did this have? Remember they did this without metal tools of any kind. Maybe that’s why he was saying they were advanced. Advanced in building high things with rocks maybe but why build something that does nothing and then build the thing that doses nothing really, really big. How did they cut all this rock and then carved them to tell who had this built? The tour guides were saying that they had a calendar and on certain days the sun would make the shadow of something point to something and this proved they had a great understanding of the universe. Maybe they did but why did they have to build them so big? Wouldn’t a little temple do the same thing in your back yard. The big question is why did they all stop building and living at these sites about the same time? Letting the jungle take these places back for many hundred of years. Was this a places of pleasure or a place of “great pain?” Did the people that was doing all this work finally over throw the people that were having these places built and then just went back to living in the jungle? Finding no use for these places at all for centuries. If so what power did the people building this have over working people to work them as hard as they would have had to. To build this. Remember these temple sites are all over Central America. I didn’t see any water near by so did that too have to be brought up along with the rocks for people to live here. All I could see is how much work went on there without any thing useful at all being built. We left Tikal and went on back to El Remate. There we went to a preserve to see the trees in this part of the jungle and see maybe what the trees that produce the wood I have been working with most of my life. Working on boats like teak, mahogany, maybe rose wood looks like growing but all the trees had signs on them in Spanish. I am sure now I have seen a rose wood trees growing but which one it was I don’t know? There too we made our way up to a look out. This became the way of this trip with us always climbing our way up to look out over this land from some high place. We wanted to see Flores so we went there. There I saw a site I really wanted to see. “Burger King”. I had been told there was one there. We went for it twice while we were there. When we say it’s rice and beans down here, I don’t think anyone realizes what that is really like so try this tomorrow for breakfast to start your day. Try cooked black beans whipped in to a paste that looks like “black pea nut butter” with tortilla bread and maybe and egg. Now if you like that, your day will just get better, if you don’t a Burger King sign is a great thing to see. They are just like it is in the US and you can order with just a number. Hold up your fingers and point. Mumble anything and get a whopper, fries with a Pepsi. No Spanish needed. Pam and I left our friends there in Floras and went on to Belize. Guatemala near the border is cowboy country but you really can’t eat the beef down here. Tough I can maybe handle but this beef is just not good. I don’t know what they do with all these cows. At the border we had to walk across the river bridge and drag our bags. We went through immigration and it was free on the Guatemala side. On the Belize side we were hit with people wanting to exchange money, taxi drivers and tour guides. We said. “No!” until one cab driver said 5 bucks US to carry us all the way to our hotel two towns away. They won’t let the cheap buses run all the way to the boarder so you have to take a taxi to the first town there in Belize of Benque. Our hotel was in the town of San Ignacio. Every thing is more expensive in Belize and most things are set up to “make” you spend more money like having to take a taxi the last part of your way to the border. This is a place of many cultures from black people with their dreadlocks to the Mennonites with there long dresses and men with beards A lot of businesses are run by Asian people like the Chinese or Koreans. Their currency is based on the American dollar and there is a lot of Americans there running businesses or buying property. If you are going there it will just cost you more than the rest of Central America. On the way back at the border from Belize we had to pay 38 US at immigrations before we could leave. We are back in the Rio now working hard on our boat and we hope we will be ready to leave here in the next few months. Maybe make Cartagena, Colombia before peak hurricane season. Head on to Panama in a round about way. I wish we had more money to do more road trips but we don’t. But maybe we can swing just one more. If we do? I want to go see a rodeo. It may not be that good but like I have always said. Any road trip in Central America if you travel cheap and we do. Traveling with the local people here is and adventure. Just let your mine wonder at what that will be like. Putting on my best tee shirt, wearing shoes and my favorite flop hat with Pam with me. Riding on a chicken bus to a real Guatemala rodeo. Like I have been saying “ Life just gets better.”

Belize

 

 

Someone of importance with Jade in their teeth.Found in one of the ruins

Typical house in Central America and always clean

Trip to Tikal

This week we did it. We have been saving our money to go on a road trip and this week we went to Tikal. They say it was the most important temples in the old Maya world. One thing for sure, they really piled up some rocks. There is no way to put it in words or in one blog what we saw. Maybe we can tell what we saw in the next few blogs but maybe for now we will just tell the way we did it and maybe it will help anyone coming here or going there. We went semi cheap with the help of our friends that went with us. She is good at finding rooms and stuff on line. We spent one night in the park. It was more money than we wanted to spend about 60 dollars. We could have stayed out side the park cheaper but we wanted to be there and to start our day fresh. It is almost more than you can see in one day. It’s big. If you are in the park you can go on a sunrise tour and yes you have to pay extra for a tour guide. That is the only way you can roam around the park before and after 6am. On the way back we stayed in a hostel in Flores. To get there you can call when you get to Flores and they will come and get you in a laucha and take you across the lake for free to there hostel. Chaltunha Hostel, San Miguel. You stay in little cabins built up on stilts on the hill across the lake. The view from there can only be described as what you see on a postcard. It’s worth what you pay for the night to stay there just to see Flores across the lake setting at the table in there little restaurant. We also stayed at a little road side hotel in El Remate and it was clean, Hotel Las Gardenias was very cheap for what you get at 20 dollars a night. We road cheap buses colectivoes (mini buses) and tuk-tuks to get around. Always and adventure riding them. Remember where there are a lot of tourist it’s harder to get a good deal. But if you look you can get a clean room for two for about 25 dollars with a bath and hot water. Cheaper if you take time to look but the cheaper you get the more it is just a rat hold to sleep in but you can go cheap if you want to go that away. To start our trip we took a real bus from the Rio Dulce. Remember there are real bus lines down here but there are a lot of buses that run down here on there on. Every thing from chickens buses where anything goes to the real bus lines where they search you before you get on and you can get an assigned seat. We road them all this trip. This is the way we ride most of the time. If it’s a bus line like you see in the states, you go in and buy a ticket. If it’s a bus just running between the towns down here, you get on and pay the conductor along the way. You know how and where the bus is going by just listening. They will be saying where they are going. Like coming back we caught a bus that looked like some old city bus from the states. They were saying Rio Dulce over and over, so we just got on after we ask how much. Q65 from Flores back to the Rio is cheap for a 5 maybe 6 hour ride. You just never know where they may stop or how often. If you are walking down the road just hold up your hand and they will stop. If it’s any where along the way you want to go just get on. Pay the conductor along the way and get off anywhere you want. Believe me they will stop. On a trip we made not long ago on a coletivo a little girl stared to cry and the mother talked to the conductor. They stopped and the little girl got off on the side of the road with her bigger sister and peed. Jumped back on the bus and we went on. No one said a word. The little girl stopped crying and was happy now. You never know what will happen next. We went up on a real bus from the bus stop here but when we went in to get our tickets, the bus was full and we had to wait on the next bus. We waited for one hour. The next bus was not crowded at all. You never know. In Flores we were told we would have to pay Q150 per person to go on to Tikal. That’s $20 each for a one hour ride where we paid Q65 about $8.60 to ride 5 hours to Flores on a real bus. I said. “No way.” We found a private cab for Q60. The bus driver came back and said “Q50.” and we went on, That was still too much but it was getting late in the day. We were told in Belize by a cab that a ride to the local Maya Ruin there would be 35 US dollars but we took a chicken bus trip for a dollar and a half. We had to wait for a few minutes to get on the bus but they run often. If you can ride the local buses here, they get cheaper the closer you get to a full blown chicken bus. Real chicken busses are old school buses from the US. Some you can’t believe how they decorate them. With chrome everywhere and wild paint jobs. Remember riding these buses can and most likely will be and adventure On our ride home the driver and the conductor, remember the conductor is the man that loads the buses and takes the money. Threw a drunk off the bus on the side of the road and kicked him in the back as they got him to the door sending him rolling into a ditch. No one, Not a one seemed to notice or cared what happen. Like it was just the way they handled some one causing a lot of trouble down here. As for security, we don’t worry much about it now. Bad things happen to people all over the world but we just don’t go down dark streets. We don’t drink and wonder around. I don’t own a Rolex and wouldn’t wear one down here if I did. One thing that still worries us is someone that want take “No” for and answer. If they are trying to sell me something, I am nice at first but if I can’t get them to go on and leave us along, I get progressively stronger with “No.” Finally I stop and just say “No” Then I walk on but this can back fire on you too. Like the other day we went shopping and Pam brought a cabbage, a small one. Most of them here are so big there not good. We went on to a store near by to look at some mosquito netting, they use down here for their beds, they’re really beautiful. When we came back by a man came at us with a cabbage and was persistent. I just shock my head and walked on. Back at the boat Pam had herself a little fit when she realized she had left her cabbage back there at that stand. Then it became my fault for not stopping and talking to the man trying to give us our cabbage we had already paid for as we came by. One thing I have learned in my married life is that most things are my fault and being here I love the adventure of doing anything. Even something as simple as going to see the biggest pile of rocks I have ever seen.       “The temples of Tikal.”

 

View from Temple IV. Where other temples rise above the very large and magnificent trees of the jungle

 

 

Xunantunich, another Maya Ruin in Belize

Bus, maybe old city bus from the US

GRITS

In our last blog. I wrote that we had bought a corn grinder to make our on grits. Our boat. The Schooner Pamela Ann, when we designed and built her was built to be simple and we do live a very simple life. The older we get the simpler we seem to live and the more I love it. We have a butcher saw to cut meat, a meat grinder to make hamburger meat or our on sausage. We make home made sausage every week down here. You can not buy good sausage here. We carry a pressure cooker for caning. Pam even has a hand crinked wringer to wring out our clothes if she washes our clothes by hand. We have a dehydrator to dry stuff and make jerky. To all of you back home that are reading this and remember Pam jerky, we can’t get good beef here so I haven’t had any either in a long time. We have round wicked oil lamps through out the boat we never use any more. LED lights work so good we just never light our lamps to save our batteries any more but we can if we have trouble with our power or maybe it snowing. There just something about being anchor out with it snowing. Lighting our old schooner with our little oil lamps just feels too good to miss on a cold snowy night. Pam and I have been married over 50 years now and I have had only 2 hair cuts in all that time she didn’t cut my hair so we carry all we need to cut hair. We have a little pot belly wood heater we use a lot if we are far enough north to need heat so making our on corn meal and grits seamed just what we needed to do. Remember corn meal down here is not like corm meal back home in the states. They don’t eat corn bread down here and there are “No grits” The corn meal is for tortilla bread. So how do you make grits? When I was back on the farm my family had there corn ground at a little mill in town and I had to think back what we did. I remembered it was just corn we took to the mill and I watch them grind it. So as we tried grinding corn here I remembered more about how we did it then. I remembered they changed some screens between corn meal and grits on the grinder at the mill. My first try was with some screen wire I had to strain paint as a screen. Pam had a little fit saying she could not believe I would use that. She hadn’t washed that screen and not to uses it any more. Next we tried a strainer she had on the boat to sift the grown corn with. It had a stainless steel screen in it and it worked. Every time we ran it through the mill we got more of what looked like grits. At the end we had just a little husk of corn kernels in the shifter so we threw that to the chickens here in the marina yard. They came a running. Now it was time to test the grits so Pam went to the boat to cook. We had company from another boat and she is from up north in the states. Not a good person to try grits on but she was a good sport as she always is and we all sat down to try home made grits Made right here in the Rio Dulce in Guatemala from shelled corn we bought on the street of Fronteras. They sell raw corn in most towns down here. Our friend said. Her grits were good but if you knew her you would know she would say that no mater what. I had tears in my eyes, I had just given up on having grits like we have given up on having beef. The beef here is just not good. Beef here is as tuff as the people and the country side they live on. There is no butcher shops here where you can get a T bone or maybe a rump roast. What you get is chunks of meat cut of the bone either thick or thin. They may keep the meat in old deep freezers turn up to just keep the meat cool at night but in the day they just hang it up and cut off chunks of meat big or small then slice it in thin slices for you if you want them to. You can’t cut it thin enough to make it tender but it dose help. These markets are always open to the street with no door windows or screens of any kind.

Meat Market

So we have just given up on beef the way people said we would but I would like you all to know as for grits. Home made grits are good Y’all and simple to make and we will,    “Never be with-out grits again!”

 

Sifting grits

 

It looks and taste like grits