Trip To Guatemala City

This week has been just another week in paradise. We are getting ready to leave. Hurricane season is coming fast. We were to pick up a friend in Guatemala City that’s coming down to help us take the Pamela Ann back to New Orleans. He has never been to a third world country so meeting him at the airport is what I would want some one to do for me. Some one that knows the ropes. We made the bus ride a day early. Riding buses down here is like a crap shoot. You just roll with it and see what happens. We made it there in about 6 hours. What is that like? We stared out in the Rio Dulce at Fronteras. They call it that because it is a frontier town. The bus had air conditioning but the people here freeze if it gets in the 70s so the low 80s was where the bus driver keeps the air set. The roads are curvy and they keep the curtains across the front of the bus closed. You can’t see where you are going. You know you’re passing slow trucks in curves and all little towns have speed bumps and no stop lights. You stop a lot in small towns. You hear people selling stuff like mangoes outside the bus, most of the time they won’t let them on but you can sometimes buy something at the door. You start out here along the river and some what near the coast with green stuff growing everywhere. You go on to where very little grows this time of year. It’s the dry season here. Did I mention it’s really hot here too. After maybe three hours you come to a bus stop. You can get off there for 15 minutes and get something to eat, go to a real bathroom. But what do you buy to eat? What ever you buy if you don’t stop them they will pour something over it that’s yellow or red and give you tortilla bread to go with your unknown food. Pam plays it safe and just eats ice cream. They have discovered ice cream here, not so much in Mexico. I usually go for pork reins. They’re a lot different here than what most people eat in the US. They’re just hog skin fried in hot grease with a lot of fat on them and they are hard to eat being fried so hard. I was raised in the deep south so I love to get the fat meat out of beans and eat it. After you leave there you start to climb. They pat you down each time you get on the bus. Looking for guns I think. You just get used to it. This I like that is the climbing thing not the being patted down thing, because the higher you go the cooler it is. Now if the bus doesn’t break down. (You think I’m kidding but I’m not. ) you hope for no rock slides or protesters. Down here it’s common to get stopped by protesters burning tires in the road stopping traffic for hours. The most we sat on a bus was 8 hours before they cleared the road. We now take water and food any time we go any where. Pam has learned to go to the bath room on the side of the road but she still makes me go with her. Remember you never leave with out your own toilet paper in Central America. You my can ruff it in the green part of the country using a leaf of something but you don’t want to try that with anything that grows in the dry hot part of the country. Most thing there you know not to touch. As you climb the road is very curvy and the harder the driver drives the harder it is to stay in your seat. Remember you can’t see forward but out the window it a long way down sometimes. To make this even more fun add two movies. One before the bus stop and another one after the bus stop. If you like “Dumb and Dumber” you’re set. It never gets better than that and to make it more special add the movie is in Spanish.

Something is always in bloom here.

In Guatemala City the next day with every thing set we found out our friend had a passport card not a passport book and they wouldn’t let him fly down with him at the air port still in Maine. We’re back in the Rio Dulce now waiting on that to clear up and a passport to be expedited and we will do it all again. We can’t wait to see our friend and watch him as he starts enjoying life here in Central America. We have been living our life for a long time now for the adventure in life and it’s really here. Our friend was worried about our schedule getting messed up. There a word down here that is my favorite word “Tranquilo” It’s quiet in the Spanish dictionary but here it means, “Take it easy and it will all work out.” If your reading this Gary. Come on down soon as you can and join the adventure.  It will all work out, “Tanquilo”

Guatemala City has nice Parks

Modern sculpture on one of the walk ways

“Iguana What?”

Have you ever dreamed about living on a sail boat and what it would be like to live in the Western Caribbean. Pam and I did for years. A lot of our dreams have come true. We did build us a boat and we have been sailing. We haven sailed that far and our boat being home built may not be the boat in most people dreams but maybe we have never been overachieves, so we are satisfied with our life I guess. We are going back to New Orleans in maybe two weeks, taking the boat back. We can live cheaper there than here in Guatemala. Cruiser say it’s cheaper here and it is cheaper to buy black beans and rice, go to a doctor or find very unskilled labor but any thing else you will really pay. Hopefully we will wonder back through Belize and Mexico then the Gulf. Go back and try to out fit our old boat to try to maybe sail to Europe where every one says it is expensive. I don’t know who to believe anymore but you can believe it’s hot here.

Hot & Hotter

Every thing here has been incredible, we love the wild life and I think most cruisers don’t. They say the birds and monkeys make to much racket. We were in a restaurant where cruisers were setting out eating and having a drink and a common squirrel was making a mess on their table eating something up really high in a tree over the dinning area at the restaurant. To here them complaining and what they were saying you would think all animals should be controlled are eliminated. We are in Central America where there is a little jungle left and that is part of why we came here. Let something live wild and just deal with it. Pam and I “have” been in the jungle. It’s unreal now loud the insects can be, most people would not believe it. Most of the restaurants here are open air restaurant. Bugs can and do fly in sometimes right into your food. We have a restaurant near here where if you call ahead, they some times have filet-men-ya. The beef is imported. That is as close as we can come down here to getting a real steak. The next time you go and buy a steak and you think it’s expensive you should try buying one here. Some of us cruiser were getting together one evening at this restaurant and bugs stared to come to our table. The waitress came to cut out the light over our table. Remember we are in Central America where the best light switch is to just unscrew the bub and she was having trouble. A male friend stepped up and something fell out of the light. The waitress was lighting candles. Candles bring “less” bugs. When our friend let out a yap, down here you learn to carry a light at night along with toilet paper at all times. Down here the toilets are some times free but they will sell you a little peace of toilet paper. Go prepared. As he was complaining that something had got him, pen light were coming on. Pam has one that will light up a room or guide you safely across the river back to the Pamela Ann in the dark. It was a scorpion and it was soon stomped and kick through the cracks in the floor. He said it really hurt but the waitress was like  “Sorry about that. We have scorpions here.” But they did bring him a little ice to put on it. Something you learn to appreciate and can’t get in a lot of places down here.

Another reason to carry a flashlight

Now with my love of wild things I have been thriving here but as they say sometimes a little rain must fall. I my case it wasn’t rain. When it stared falling I didn’t know what it was but, it didn’t take long living around animals as much as I have to know what was falling. I had a little work area set up and my tools all laid out. Now they were covered with what was coming out the other end of a 3 foot long iguana laying in a tree over my table. We had a friend over and was talking to her. She said. She didn’t see it until more stared falling. Then she could trace the in-coming to it source. My tools are all clean again now thanks to Pam. She said I should be used to it with all the years we worked. Come to think of it, a lot of days I did work where it was like being in a shower of iguana droppings.

One of the Iguanas we see sometimes

Plastic

This week were working hard but trying to enjoy our final days here. If your reading our blog to see how we do thing , remember all cruisers do it differently. What we like the most is every day life here. I think most cruisers here shelter themselves from the every day life of the locals that live here. They go to town shopping but that’s about it. Then they stay in there gated marina where no locals are allowed. They go from marina to marina doing cruising stuff with each others, like old movie night, dominoes, trivia or maybe if you were here you would enjoy “boos, books and breakfast” in stead off listening to roosters crowing and watching and old women here make tortilla bread all by hand over an open fire. We are in a small marina that is keep by locals. A man with and his older sister, they lives here. She raises chicken and turkeys here in the marina,  cooks on an open wood fire and next door we have a young local couple with two little girls. Their little dogs have adopted us. One sleeps under the table were we are working at a lot. If she (that is one of the little dogs)is there we know the little girls are not home. It feels good to me to see them leave on their motor bike. Man, wife and their two little girls, maybe 7 and 5. Some times they take the dog too. Sometimes they come back kids, dog and bags of groceries all on that little 125 motor bike. It seems so simple a life to me here. Where ever we have traveled, kids that play outside seem to be always laughing especially if they have company. When I was coming up I can’t remember going to my room to play. Maybe to get something are to sleep. It’s still that way down here. The locals seem to always need money and they start young trying to make money. Would you let your daughter have a knife like this at maybe 7 to sell coconut juice to tourist.

Be Careful

Shopping here in all of Central America can be a challenge.

Pam on a shopping trip. Remember this traffic is moving.

The simplest thing may be so different here. Get use to plastic bags because every thing comes in plastic bags. Mayonnaise, and it is all different with line in it, mustard, sugar, salt, ketchup, even peanut butter and dish detergent.

All kind of bags

More bags

Mustard

 

Ketchup

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Local margarine has butter flavoring in it. If you want a quick drink of water here bottled water is too expensive for the locals to buy so you can and they do buy water in a plastic bag.

You can buy one of most anything like maybe one cigarette or one nail. What you can’t buy is, well that list would be too long to write in a blog. What I will remember the most here is how the local people live and get by with so little and how happy they are. We will remember these day when were back where it’s cold. Did I say it’s always hot here?

Time in Guatemala

This week has been more of the same as last week trying to get ready to cross the bar in the mouth of the river and go back to sea. We are planning to make the high tide June the 5th. Maybe we can get across. It’s a heart stopper with the alarms going off saying you are running aground and the boat bumping bottom as you go out into the open Caribbean Sea. We have made it 3 times in the last 3 years but Pam is a wreck until we get across, telling me what to do. Of course it doesn’t take a bar at the month of a river for Pam to tell me what to do. All that stared over 52 years ago the first time we did any thing together, on top of a Ferris wheel with, if you don’t know what were going to do next, I will help you with that. Now we are here all these years later, who would have guessed that with work to do on the boat and Pam has some sail work to do on sails for some cruiser here. We always need the money. This is keeping me busier than I like and in all of this we are trying to enjoy the last of our time here. We are not planning to come back. We plan to sail to some where else. We gave up on sailing around the world along ago. I truly believe sailing to some where else is a better life. If you need bragging rites , around the world is really something to brag about but if you just love going and doing , some where else will do just fine. This time some where else is going back through Belize and Mexico to Florida and then make our way along the Gulf Coast back to New Orleans. There our long range plan is merry old England after a year or so out fitting the boat. Remember it’s not the destination, it’s the trip with us. If we don’t make it , some where else will do but dreaming of what it would be like to be in England on Christmas day. What a Christmas card that would make. Maybe it’s the cold and dreary weather that is calling us there. It’s always hot here. This is their hot and dry season here in Guatemala. The thunder storms will start soon. Some can be stronger than the ones in Florida if you can believe that but it cools thing off for a little while. Where else would any one look forward to the after noon thunder storm with heavy lighting and very strong winds. I have been thinking about what I will miss the most here when we leave. Maybe its Pepsi in glass returnable bottles just like when I was a boy cheap, and not so cold here. We put them in our fridge and drink them later really cold. Remember if you don’t have a returnable bottle they will pour your not so cold Pepsi in a plastic bag and give you a straw. That and experience you won’t forget soon.

Good cold Pepsi

We have chickens in the yard here at the marina. I will miss watching the old women here putting pasteboard box’s out and her chickens with baby’s getting in the open boxes for the night with there dibs getting in with her, the rest going on to roost.

Chickens in Boxes

We had little wooden coups for the mama chicken to sleep with her baby chicks on the ground back on the farm I grew up on. I will miss the morning roosters crowing. We have had people complain, I love it. All the wild life and flowers here. I will really miss the people here. The Mayans with the women in there traditional costumes and being so little. Five foot is a tall Mayan women. That is just a few thing here at the boat I will miss, all the trips we took inland. What I don’t like here is maybe, The street food is bad, local music is worse and it’s hot , but what a trip this has been.

Some of the products available on the street