Everyday Things

Pam and I have lived in a lot of places. With out knowing it is happing, we get to know the people there and bond with them. Maybe were not great friends but we feel for them when things happen. There is even a dog here I look for when I go to town. The dog is a thief and good at it. So good I love watching him work. Remember only in the human world is fairness practiced. This dog will watch and if you set any thing down, he will come up from behind and slowly get it. Ever so slow and quick. Walk off very slowly down the street then tear in to it only when he’s far away. All the time watching you as he eats your lunch. There and old bum here I look for and worry about when I don’t see him at the places he hangs out. It’s like these people are our world now. It’s not that you like them or don’t like them. It’s they are just in your world now and you want your world predicable. There is a restaurant here we eat at sometimes with a young girl there working as hard as she can, maybe 14. Very cute but very little. Remember a lot of women here never make it to 5 feet. Being that young and working you would think she is just doing what she is told but she is watching and doing all she can. This girl is working. If we go by and I don’t see her I think something is wrong. Then when I see her busing a table and taking peoples money when they start to leave making change almost like she run the place. I feel better. There was a man here selling nuts and was a pest. Always trying to sell you something. I always told him. “ No. Doctor say I can’t eat nuts.” Not true but close. If I eat a lot of nuts it messes up my stomach. One day I bought some nuts at the grocery store and walked out on the street eating them and ran in to the nut man. He was having a little fit saying something about you say doctor, say no. Later if I said. “No doctor say no nuts.” Remember I am saying this in bad Spanish. He would just shake his head frown and say something in Spanish I didn’t understand. He was sick and working selling nuts. Pam and I would tell him he needed to see doctor. He would say “No dinero.” We were going on a bus trip to Guatemala City one morning and there was the Nut-man getting on the bus. Said he needed to see doctor in city. We watched him for a minute or two. Setting there sick and we new he didn’t have any money. Maybe not enough to eat well while he was there. We talked about it and I went over and gave him a Q100. That’s about 13 US dollars but its a good day pay down here for most people. He looked surprised but he took it. Later he got better but this week he died. Throat Cancer. The guy was a pest but I didn’t want him to die. We also heard this week about some people we only vaguely knew that lost there boat in the Gulf Stream. Rescued by the US Coast Guard. Trying to go home to the states. Don’t know the whole or the real story . Just know it is real out here. We don’t have a TV. Don’t try and get the news on our computer but you can’t get away from life’s realities. At our age I am glad we are here with so much around us to make us happy. It’s spring here and the birds are mating. They’re 3 young birds Woodpeckers that like to make noises on our mast. We been told there just picking on our wooden mast to let the girls birds see them but Pam after them every morning now. They are making the wrong girl hot. I have told her they will stop soon but she is talking “Gun.” Maybe the woodpeckers will leave soon The boat is starting to look really good. We are planning a couple more land trips before we leave here for good We want to see a live volcano and Pam wants to fly back to the states and ride our old motor bike we left back in New Orleans to see our sons little farm in Kansas. A few weeks of riding a motor bike cross country does sound good. There’s something about riding a bike long distances that makes you just feel free. Maybe this will be our last land trips before we leave for the Panama Canal. We make the canal and the boat is still in good shape what on the other side may be just what we need to see. But then what? On around the world or head south and make a easterly passage around the horn going with the wind and current. I guess we will just have to see but for now we just need to find some cheap tickets to New Orleans and hope we can get our old bike started.

One of our bike trips

One of our sailing trips

Lights

As I have said in all our blog. We are not out here to change the world. It has been our hope that we could just see the world and leave a clean wake. Don’t try to change it. Do our best to not make it any worse and move on. It’s been that way since we were just dreaming about building a boat. Now that we are here, we may have crossed that line just a little and didn’t know we were doing it at the time. I know you have heard it said. “That the poorest people in the US are rich compared to a lot of people in the world.” I have seen it for my self now and it’s true. Have you ever wondered how people live on just a few dollars a day and raise a family. It’s simple, they just don’t have anything. Are they happy? I know how this may sound but they act very happy. There is always kids playing and laughing. Food not far away. There always chickens and pigs in the yard. There always a dog. A garden spot near by and in all of Central America there is football. Football down here is soccer. They play a lot of back yard soccer here. We have a little guy that has been working for us helping us get the boat ready to go on cruising. The Pamela Ann is getting a new paint job and is looking really good. We pay him Q100 per day about 13 dollars. That’s more than he has ever made steady in his life. Remember we are always saying he is ¼ inch shy of 5foot 3. Works hard all day every day and more fun than a monkey. All of that is true and he is helping us with our Spanish. A few weeks back he ask me if I could help him find a used solar panel big enough to charge his cell phone. Just a little 6 inch one maybe. A local we have made friends with down here that went to the US and worked for a while then came back Said. He liked it better here at home than the US. I know people say they never come back but they do. A lot of them do. He speaks good English. I ask him if he had ever been to the village our worker lives in and he said He had. I ask how far away is it. He said it’s better to explain in time how far it is from where we are in the river to his house. On a Bicycle, a one hour hard ride. To the first house with power from his house 30 min fast walk. So why does he want his cell phone charged? How important is a cell phone? “Very!” To them it is the modern world and it bringing them in to the modern world as they master text messages and all that you can do with a cell phone. Why do I think text massage is important? Let me say this, if you are in a restaurant or on a bus anywhere and having trouble speaking and you take out your little traveling dictionary and look up a word and try to show them the word in Spanish and they look and smile but don’t say any thing ask someone else because they can’t read. You’re just embarrassing them. And let me give you this. Never loose your smile. Someone will help you. The younger they are the more of a chance they can read. Things are getting better. I put out the word and my friends came through. I found a 15watt used solar panel and 3 year old battery still showing 13.2, a small one plug end inverter. Wired it all up and color coded it so he could put it back together. I had only one LED light. Wired that up with a switch and sent him on his way. The first house in the “whole village” to ever have a light. Tell me how that compares to poor people in the states when he has the only “light” in the hold village. Looking back. Did I do wrong? Can he fix it if its breaks? If its something simple maybe. Will he find a way to get a bigger one? Remember we are all the same, he will want more now than a simple light. He will be more likely to than anyone else there. He is spending a lot of time with gringos. Maybe they will help him. Will this change the village for better? I sure hope so for I didn’t think about it before I helped him get stared in a whole new world. A few stores in the villages around here have panels and charge Q1 for a phone charge. Maybe our little guy will be the richest guy in the village with his own power company. If you wonder if you are rich or not, cut your power of for a week. Cut your water off and let your wife cook all your meals out side over a wood fire where she gathers the wood. Then send her to gather water. You may have a better understanding of what rich is. So why do these people seem so happy? Maybe it’s what we tell people all the time when they say. Don’t you have a home somewhere? You’re so old and all you own is that boat. Maybe it’s that the poor have a lot more control of there daily lives than we think they do. I think maybe Pam and I have all we need and to tell the truth, I don’t know why I’m so happy most of the time.

outside kitchen

You would have an attuide too if your big sister was going to school and you’re “Not”

 

Characters?

When we talk to people back home they say they think we are having the time of our lives but really we have been happy for a long time. We have been living on boats for a long time. Boats make us happy. The people that live on boats make us happy. Being here is what we have always wanted to do so I guess maybe we are having the time of our lives. When we were in Southport NC building our boat, people there said We were characters. Maybe because we were there trying to build a fully rigged top sail schooner with out any real money to go sailing and come to places like this. All we had was just what little money we could make. Living in so many places as we have now. We have met a lot of people we call characters. Like in New Orleans or Key West. There you can find some characters. This place is no different. People here are coming and going all the time. People that are out exploring the world for them self are a bit more free to express them selves than people that are fixed in there world. I wonder sometimes when I see backpackers how free they must feel with their wild hair does and the clothes they wear. They must set up at night and think up more ways to feel free and express themselves. I could describe some of them but I will just say it won’t take long if you travel as we do to recognize them. I stay away from people that think they are here on earth to save the world or legalize marijuana. I generally don’t last long around people that are in to political or saving my sole. If you think that will shrink the pool of people to be around down here. It want. There is all kinds of people here and most are at least free spirited. Remember I have said A lot. I don’t speak Spanish. I don’t speak Russian, German, French or a lot of other languages. When we met people here from England I have realized I don’t speak English either but that don’t seem to be a problem. Sometimes trying to solve a problem and not understanding what the people are saying can be just another adventure. There is always someone looking for a way to go a little farther on around the world down here. We have been ask by backpackers getting of the bus where they can volunteer. We tell them that most volunteers have to pay there on way here and they say well Okay volunteering is out. If you are coming down here to be a volunteer call first. If I were looking for crew and saw this sign with green in the address my first question would be. “What are you trying to save and what do you think about smoking pot “every day?” There is very few boats looking for crew members off the street any where we have ever been. It’s hard to describe a bad crew member on a boat out to sea. It like a crying baby , a fat slob that won’t work and your worst relative all in one. Remember if you want to be someone’s crew, you have to work at least some shut up sometimes and do what your told a lot. And do this for days. There is a girl here that was going as crew and I am not a betting man but if I had bet I would have said “First port.” She was back the second day on the bus. “First port like.” I said. They pulled in out of the ocean just to put her off. What is it like living around so many free sprits. There a little store in town near the bridge, some of my friends hang out there sometimes and drink beer. I don’t drink but I do like listening to them when a lot of them get together. Remember when there is lots of free sprits together, add beer and its almost always fun in the making. I am a man shopper. I see if they have it and buy it. Pam is a women shopper. She will have to see how many people have it and develop a relationship with it before she buys it. I go up to the store and hang out sometimes when Pam is shopping. One of my friends there has a pet chicken. It lives on the boat with him and he is training it to be a parrot. To ride on his shoulder and jump up on his finger. Parrot stuff. He rides on his motor cycle with it. It sleep in the boat with him at night and my other friends look for the chicken when he shows up to drink beer. It’s wonderful here where your dog can go with you to a restaurant and eat scraps off the floor and you can take your chicken with you to drink beer. Ever hear any one say. They need to find there place in life. Tell them to come to the Western Caribbean. Down here it real hard to be out of place.

 

Pet rooster

Full moon over Rio Dulce

Working on Boat

If you are in the US and have heard it cheaper to work on your boat in the Caribbean, it’s not. Labor is cheaper. Skilled labor is very hard to find and every thing cost a lot more to buy. “If you can find it” but here we are. We don’t want to go back to the states just to work on our boat. And have I said enough about it raining here in our blog. Most people just say. Today was not a total wash out when they talk about the weather. It rains a lot down here. What is a lot. A lot is, Don’t leave you hatches open and go to town with clear skies unless you like sleeping wet. We are painting our boat from top to bottom and it’s making me happy to see her looking shinny and new again but you do have to use stratagem to paint down here. You cant paint early or late. If its clouding up any and you see it. Don’t open a can of paint. I have said it before and I will say it again You need a sense of humor to live down here. We were working yesterday and the weather forecast was, you guessed it, “Rain.” About lunch it came and I sent my little helper home and paid him for the whole day. He has a family. Rides his bike an hour our way to get here. If he comes to work I pay him for the day. About 13 US dollars. More than he has ever made, He left the sun came out and it was beautiful the rest of the day. It’s the Caribbean. You can see why I say, “You need a sense of humor to live here. If you are used to having things “your way” seeing that things stay on schedule, Being the one to make things happen. They sell Prozac down here with out a prescription. Life is simple here Pam and I have learned to just roll with it. In the morning I like to go over to the bath room at the marina. They have never heard anything about a pump-out down here so we are doing our part to keep the water clean. There’s a little house here that the care taker’s sister lives in . She has chickens. She is up early making tortillas in a little lean-to on the back of the house. She cooks on a table with a cement slab on top with a cope of cement blocks to get the fire up so she doesn’t have to bend over. It’s common down here. They love that wood taste. There is no chimney. The smoke just goes out the crack at the top of the lean-to. We were setting around eating with some of our friends the other night talking about how much tortilla bread they eat down here. This is what we came up with. My little helper, we have measured him He likes ¼ of and inch being 5 foot 3. Eats 5 pieces for lunch every day. That much for breakfast and who knows how much for supper. Remember they love it. They eat it every meal. Where ever you go down here you see and hear them making tortilla bread. They roll the dough up in little balls and slap it between their hands. They learn to do it early down here. Now think about him having 5 in his family. That’s a lot of tortilla bread. The women here has one chicken setting on her eggs on the porch of her house. I look every day to see if she has baby chicks. This week some of the boaters here helped me round up a used solar panel and a battery. I put it all together here at our boat then let my little helper take it apart and take it to his house. He has 3 kids one in school. If all goes well for the first time in any of there lives they will have a light in there house tonight and maybe a radio that the battery want go dead and he would have to ride all the way to town to get more if they had the money. Batteries cost more down here than in the states. We will let everyone know what he thinks about that next week. Remember, if you give them any thing too nice, if they need money. like their baby is sick They will sell it. “ So would I.” We will let you know what happens. Remember when you hear the people down here say they think all gringos on boats are rich. Maybe we are and don’t know it.

Nest on the pourch