NO GO

We have had a lot of good times in the whole of the the Western Caribbean and our trip back to the US for Christmas was good but in all good times a little rain may fall. I have the greatest respect for people that keep ever thing in there lives fixed and everything in top shape. I seem to have a little trouble with that sometimes. People that are one top of every thing seem to make more money, maybe there too I have had some trouble. When we built our boat the lack of money meant if we had a motor at all it was going to be a challenge so I found two (old then) VW rabbit diesel motors out of old cars. Found two old marine transmissions and made the adapter to make it all work myself. One of the motors got to where it was hard to start so I overhauled it and it still didn’t want to start so I said maybe I would work on it another time, we still have one good motor. It’s small and slow but we can sail if we have to. In being back in the US our time in Belize for our boat being still there went on and you can only stay 90 days before you have to import your boat. Our time is up and we had every thing ready to go to Guatemala. Dumpling our dink on board, groceries bought, fuel and water. Stared the good motor we have never had any trouble with and it ran great for maybe a minute warming up when it stared making a horrible racket and it quit. Won’t start now. Pam went back to customs to beg for more time with them saying we could be fined heavily for staying to long after we had already checked out like we did. They gave us 28 more days and checked us back in with out fining us but of course we had to pay for those days too. Now to get parts for our old motors when I can find out what happen to it or them and to make it worse we were robbed a couple of years ago of all my tools and they took the main socket we use to take the head off. It’s just a 1/2 inch drive allen socket 12 mm. NO where in all of Belize do they have one. Pam has spent two days calling every place that sell tools. Ordered one from the US already but it may take a month to get here along with a new head gasket. To make this more of an adventure I was wrong about the allen socket it’s a number 10 and I have one. With the wrong one coming we are paying good money to get down here you just can’t take it back for a refund if it ever gets here. Remember what it’s like going to a parade here where if you ask what time they will say this afternoon and you say what time this afternoon and they say before dark. We can sail to Guatemala but not up the river through the gorge in to the lake. Trying to sail across the bar at the entrance of the river there will be a nail bitter too if we have to. We can check in to Guatemala there and out the next day and sail back to Belize and our time starts over again if we can get back over the bar but it will be hard sailing always in to the wind and currant and we can only cross the bar at high tide. No room for tacking crossing the bar. Never will we have the wind right and the tide at the same time to sail across that bar at high tide. If we had money I would order us two new 45hp Yanmars diesels. If a frog had wings he would not smack the ground when he travels but like we always have, it’s problem solving and we are working on it. The adventure goes on but it’s different when you are in a country where you can’t even buy an allen wrench bigger than 10mm. Where it’s common to hear. “They don’t make a wrench that big.” Remember the next time you need something and you are told they will have it for you the next day and you’re upset because you want it then what it’s like for people like us. “Living in paradise”

Still at the dock

One of the veggie places here.

Pig Tails

If you keep up with our blog you know we are here in the Caribbean to see and do thing’s with the locals and not so much the beach scene. We are still in Belize but leaving today going back to sea headed back to Guatemala. This week we tried a local dish the locals love here. It’s called boil-up. It doesn’t sound that way in Creole but that’s what they are saying. The management here at the marina are from Southern California and they ordered lunch as we did but I was wondering if they heard the little carpenter that was telling us about it say boil-up or maybe they heard something we do in the states like low-land boil. It came and the management wouldn’t even try it. Some how it was funny watching them but I know some people draw the line quick as to what they will eat. Pam and I have been to California and people out there like their food looking good with something green sticking in it or with something drizzled over it. This boil-up dish is a corned pig tail ( corned meat is meat cured in just salt) a piece of very strong fish, you could smell it when you opened the box, a boiled egg and different roots grown under ground. One of those roots is a type of sweet potato but it’s green color inside. Pam being the sport she is, she tried a little bit of all of it but said the fish was just too strong. She worked on the pig tail hunting any meat on it that was not just fat. I eat all of my pig tail and sucked the bone trying to encourage her to do the same but she said she was not impressed and to leave her alone. The egg was just an egg but every thing else was different. Maybe the next time the locals here sell this to a California gringo and family they need to stick a little piece of mint in the pig tail and drizzle something over it. I don’t know if they know what mint is here and if you ask them to drizzle something over it they may think you want it hot and hot they can do. Here in Belize they don’t sell fried chicken like they do any where in the US but in the next few days if we are lucky we will be back out of the ocean and back in Guatemala. There they do, so hopefully we will be eating fried street chicken soon. We will post how our trip went when we get there.