A Little More Guatemala

This my be our last week in Guatemala in the Rio Dulce river here. We may come back to paint the bottom of our boat but for now it the way it is for most cruisers, we don’t know for sure what we are going to do. We are leaving here soon to go to Belize. There maybe we will have an opportunity to work a little to off set us getting robbed last year. Any where in the world, poor people with almost nothing will steal if given an opportunity. There are a lot of people in the Caribbean who’s wealth in a life time can be carried in a grocery bag. We hit a sand bar and had to leave the boat to go for help and not only did we have to pay to get the boat off, we were robbed and are still slowly getting over that but as they say, “It happens”. We will miss the river here. As I have said in lots of our blogs about the Western Caribbean and Central America, “The food is bad, the music worse and it’s hot, always hot. The locals eat rice and beans with corn tortillas and it changes very little. Even the beans change very little, it’s always black beans over cooked and whipped into a paste that looks like black peanut butter. If they have meat it’s always cut very thin manly because every thing that grows here is tough. They graze there pigs on grass. Old free range chickens running lose in there yards are tough. I could go on about what the locals think is good but Pam and I being from the deep south in the US, we like to cook and eat well, this problem is solved for us by shopping hard and shopping in Central America is finding out where you can buy something you like. Shopping in Central America is need to know for sure. Learn or find out where you can get something. Here is a indigenous women I like to shop at her little store, maybe 10 feet by 10 feet because she some times has round tomato.

Here it’s roma tomatoes, they don’t eat them raw they mostly cook them. The word in Spanish for a round tomato here is “tomate manzana”or “tomato apple”. I know, it doesn’t make since. In her little store she had one of the vegetable bins cleaned out for her baby to sleep in.

Here women raise their babies with them close by and most take them to work with them especially when there small. Most local women still make their own clothes and some still weave their own cloth. It got “cold” here this week, the temperature dropped to “70” in the early morning for a few minutes and the kids next door were cold and so was their dog so they sewed her a little dress made out of the top of a sock and scraps of cloth. Happy people and happy dog. I guess the thing we have learned about traveling is you can’t always have it your way so maybe happiness is learning to just roll with it. A good day in paradise is a dog in a dress and round tomatoes. “Going to be a great day.”

Valentines Day

It was Valentines Day here this past week and they celebrate the day here about the same as the US. I try to read the local paper here most days and on Valentines Day it was the usual stuff. Lots of shootings, lot of robberies. The usual stuff you read about here and maybe every where. The US has no bigger problems with people settling their disputes with a gun than here. There is always pretty young girls in the paper. They start early here with beauty contest. This maybe to much information but they like little women here with big butts.

Always foot ball, that’s soccer here and the people here are crazy about their football but one thing that caught my eye in the paper was old couples that have been married a long time and they put their picture in the paper for Valentine Day.

These two were showing their early days together in a drawing not a picture. Remember a lot of people here live a basic life with very little and maybe this may be all they have of the early days, just a drawing. The early days for Pam and I are still strong in my mind. I picked her up at school and we “Ran Off” as they say. Lied about our age and got married. She was 15. I was a lot older at 17 and it will soon be 53 years. She had never seen the ocean and we didn’t know, people could and did live on boats. Life has a lot of twist if you live long enough. I don’t think we have any pictures of us really young. That’s what happens when you live on the move as we have in our lives. Things get lost. Maybe we can do something special this year on our anniversary coming up soon but we all know it will never be the same as the day we “Ran Off”. When I look at what the years have done to us, it’s sad in a way but I feel better when I think of all the places I heard her giggling and happy. Maybe spending the night in tents, cabs of old big rig trucks crossing the country. Motels or a small tents with our old motor bike near by. Boats of all kinds, the list goes on and so does the adventure. The word for love in Spanish is Amor. To all that read this, “Happy past Valentine Day and I hope you are with the one that make you giggle. Me Amor the real Pamela Ann and the boat we built together and named after her. I will have them both in the ocean soon and going some where again I hope. Hope you had a “Happy Valentines Day.”

Double Blooms

 

In the last few weeks we have had two people ask if we cared if they shared our blog with some one else. I never thought about people not sharing it if they like it, so to make this perfectly clear, “Sharing this with others would make us really happy.” To us it’s like we are sharing our adventure we worked so hard for as the years went by and now, “We are finely doing it.” We are planing to leave here soon and maybe we are not coming back here. Done this now, going some places else to see what’s there. This makes it important to take as much in as we can. Life is basic here.

Truck loaded and headed back in the hills.

Look at this truck loaded with groceries and store stuff, probably bought in a local store here, headed up in the hills to a village store no bigger than maybe a bathroom in a house in the US. They keep most of this stuff stored in their house and bring to their tiny little store as need. The boys in the back hanging on may have stories to tell when they get back. A day in town. They call this little town “Fronteras” here on the river in Guatemala. It is a frontier town surrounded by large ranches and even some jungle. If you ask how far this truck has to go before they get home they will tell you in time not miles. 25 to 30 miles can take 5 or 6 hours or more if the creeks are up. Here in this picture these saddles are working saddles for cowboys with out much money and need to work their horses. 

Nice saddle

They will put a small folded blanket or cushion right where the rider sets and go work cattle are fence lines all day, where ever they need to ride a working horse. Maybe one or more of those boys on the back of that truck will be back and buy one of these saddles some day. Their mother my weave them a saddle blanket right there at home in really bright colors. Maybe one of these boys will ride a horse with one of these basic saddles and a hand woven blanket up in the hills to see a girl so she can see he has a fine ride. When I see these people from up in the hills and down roads that turn into just trails, I think about their lives being so different from Pam and I but so much the same as in, they are all just looking for what they need to keep them happy. They think we are rich and maybe we are but they, if you get close enough to them to listen to them talk about their lives, don’t think they are poor at all. Here is a young man and a women on a bike.

Some one with a good bike here is doing well. If you look close she has on traditional clothes. As she climbed on she pulled her skirt in from the back side to pulled it tight at her knees and they took off. Made pants out of that skirt I guess. This is unusual for the traditional women to ride in those dresses on a bike and she does this a lot by the way she pulled that dress in. You can only wonder what stories these people have to tell with their traditions clashing with their needs and wants today.

Kitchen

Here is a typical kitchen and the stove women cook on every day. A wooden table with a little cement slab and cement block to make a fire box. A peace of medal to cook on. Maybe some tin for a roof and here a plastic drop cloth to stop the rain from blowing in. The woman on that bike probably cooks every day on something like this. If she has a light in her house, she is lucky and probably living near town. Power and running water can get scarce in a hurry as you leave town in a lot of this country where flowers are always in bloom. Pam loves to watch a flower bloom on a tree here at the dock. First it grows a long pod for days then when it’s ready within an hour after dark it blooms.

Two pods will bloom tonight

A double bloom tonight and a full moon too.

Always in the early part of the night. Pam has took to cheating some I guess. She is not standing there waiting for it to bloom in the dark for an hour worrying if it’s going to bloom. When she think they are about ready she whacks them with a stick. They bloom so fast they will shake the limb they are on. The whole limb will be shaking. It’s like, I think it’s going to bloom, maybe not and then you wait and wait and then almost like an explosion its over. If Pam come in saying, come hold the light for me, I know she is about to whack one. I guess it is all in a day of old dreamers still searching for adventure.

Looking UP

 

When Pam and I decided to write a blog I knew I didn’t want to write about religion or politics. We have enough people trying to put one or the other of that on us all the time. I knew too we didn’t want to tell how we solve the simplest problems every week. Pam told a psychiatrist one time that life is just solving problems every day. He said he was impressed with that incite into life and no he is not a court ordered doctor I was sent too. Been lucky so far and haven’t been made to go talk to one, at least not yet. He was on a boat near us. He did say talking to me made his day more interesting some days. He wouldn’t tell me what that meant. I’m going to break that rule of not telling how we solve problems just a little today because I’m so pleased with myself and feel the need to tell our friends that follow us, things are slowly but surly looking up. Looking up maybe just a little but looking up just the same. We have been having some not so good luck as in needing to leave here last year with the bottom of the boat dirty, boat needed a bottom job, this really hurts the speed of the boat. Needing to leave here because we had run out of time we could stay here. Politics and rules. Left and hit the trade winds. The trade winds blow here coming from 60 degrees at 25 knots gusting to 35 knots for months non stop. No need to even check the weather for what the wind is doing and where it’s coming from when the trades are blowing, always the same. Doing battle going into the trade winds trying to go north with a dirty bottom, I went behind an island to take refuse from the wind and ran aground, always the captain fault, “That’s me.” I didn’t take in account the current running behind the island. When I saw we were going side ways it was too late. Had to leave the boat and go for help. Getting it off was hard and “expensive” and while we were going for help to top it all off, someone went on our boat and we were robbed. Our time in Belize we did make a little money. There you are not allowed to work with out jumping through a lot of hoops and paying the Belize government lots of the money. So much for politics every where. Ran out of time there and had to leave so we came back to the river here in Guatemala where its only a little over 60 mile trip back and safe here. On the way back our biggest problem was a forest now growing on the bottom of our boat making it very slow and now we had no wind. Motoring we had the batteries charging but when the motor was off the ships batteries went dead in a short time. When you have more than one thing going wrong it feels like you’re being piled on. We made it back with a women sailor friend that came to sail back with us saying, every thing is fine were making it. It’s a lot better when our old schooner “Pamela Ann” is doing a fine job, not just making it. In the river we took a few days at anchor to just rest before we headed back up the river to our old slip. On the morning we left going up river, we were running the motor and making a steady 3 knots at 2/3 throttle when Pam said we are gaining speed. Through the morning the speed went up, the crap growing in salt water on the bottom just fell off now with us being in fresh water. Little things looking up I guess. Back at the slip I tackled the bad batteries. In the US a golf cart battery is going for $130 US dollars each. We need eight. Down here we found some as high as $375 US dollars each. Remember we need 8. We found on line for $25 US dollars some stuff they say can restore old batteries. $25 per battery x 8 still is a lot and that stuff had to be shipped down here. Decided to isolate the batteries one by one and check to see if one was better than another. Bingo, two batteries old and shorted out. Hooked the 6 not so great batteries back up in series and they’re holding all day above 12 volts with just the solar panel. Maybe that’s just looking up a little, should be over 13 volt with solar panel working but I’m happy. Laying in bed this morning it was noisy being here so near the jungle. Mother nature is loud some times and I will miss hearing chickens crowing at daylight to add to the morning call of every thing around us to get up when we leave here. We are waiting on the stuff we bought to replace some of what we lost to thieves in Belize to be shipped here from the US. Going back to Belize soon as we now need to leave here again. We will be back in the US this summer and this adventure will be over. Need to work some now after the shopping trip in the states buying stuff we need. We are now refer to the credit card as “The monster”. Just another problem we have to deal with but for now it’s solving little problems in paradise the best we can and the lights are back on shining bright on the “Pamela Ann.”

Baby in blanket tied around woman’s head.

Woman in traditional dress. Some still weave the cloth at home.

A box is a kingdom no mater where ever you are at.

Always Bananas