IN USA

To night we are writing this from Jena Louisiana. This is the first day on our bike ride. If you are a flower on our blog you know we are on a 4 part trip to Kansas . The sailing part of this trip is over, sailing from Belize to Guatemala on our old home built schooner back to our slip there. The bus trip across Guatemala is over and the flight to the US is behind us. What is it like to ride on a bus a long way across Guatemala? It depends on what bus you take. A chicken bus here is just a used school bus from the US and yes you can ride with a live chicken or small pig on a chicken bus, anything you can hold in your lap. In Frontera on the river there, is a bus line that compares to Greyhound in the US but it to can be different too. We never ask for front row seats anymore. They sometimes have security buses that have a door between the driver and the riders and we never know if it going to be one of those buses. If your in the front seat of one of those buses you can’t see out with the curtains they have up front and it will make you sea sick with the rolling of the bus from side to side with them passing most vehicles on the road . One or two seats back you can at lest see out the side windows. The worst thing for Pam and I are the movies they play on the long ride. It’s always the worst movies we would never go see and always loud. Dumb and Dumber in Spanish, and as I said loud or where every thing is blowing up and the hero keeps crawling out over and over. About halfway they have a bus stop to let people off to walk around buy food and go to the bathroom. Food is of course Central American beans, rice, tortillas little peace of meat chicken or pork. The ride starts out at sea level and every thing is green but by the time you get to the bus stop in the dry season it’s almost desert then the roads starts before you get to Guatemala City to climb as the mountains starts and this is why it’s so nice in the city. It’s always cool on top of the mountains up where the city is. As you roll along you see Central American towns that very seldom have sidewalks but always have street vendors and “always” you see women cooking tortillas every where. You also see a lot of motor bikes or trucks with flat bed with frame over the bed to hold on to and a lot of people piling in back of these trucks to ride from town to their little villages. Always chickens and dogs in the streets. Sometimes pigs in small towns. Maybe here I may can say something that has from the first day we made it in to Guatemala until now amazed me. It’s how clean the people in Guatemala are. People with our running water or power always clean. Guatemala City is a lot the same as all big cities. You have the rich in a smaller area than the poor but Guatemala City has a lot to see.

On a street in Guatemala City

Street in small town in Guatemala

The airport there is modern and run like a US air port. On the ground in the good old USA it was after mid night, our first stop was our motel room to leave our bags and then “I Hop” that stays open all night for food we desperately miss. We will try to blog soon what it’s like to ride the last part of this trip on our old motor bike 1100 plus miles from New Orleans to middle of Kansas.

Pam texting when we stop

Made Guatemala

If you are keeping up with our little trip back to the US, the first part of the trip the sailing our old home built schooner “Pamela Ann” back from Belize to Guatemala is over. We made it and “Pamela Ann” is setting in our favorite slip here in the Caribbean at Calypso Marina in the Rio Dulce river here in Guatemala . We left Belize late. No wind, running one of our two old car motors we took out of old VW Rabbits for power when we built the boat many years ago. Slow going at a little over 4 knots. Just off Big Creek shipping channel we had a ship doing things we didn’t understand like heading at us one time then heading north then west then east. We were in 60 feet of water and that meant he could run over us if he got to crazy. It’s shallow in a lot of places around here and you’re safe from ships if you are running where they can’t go. Leaving late and now going slow because we couldn’t sail with no wind this meant anchoring after dark something I hate doing. Remember we are in the Caribbean where rules are few and no one cares if they are rules. In Guatemala they set nets at night every where, across rivers or channels and will get mad if you hang one and hurt their nets. They really don’t care about your boat with you in their country. Lights on buoys are out because there is very few buoys down here. All we could do now was travel after dark by compass, chart plotter and depth sounder. We made it in to our anchorage about 10:30 that night. About 2am in the morning we had a storm with 4 foot waves coming in. This is an open sea anchorage to get out of the north east wind, no protection from a west wind. Getting very little sleep the next morning we headed to the bar at the mouth of the river. At high tide we lined up on a range I set up myself from the sea buoy to a house on shore with a green roof. A boat waiting to go in stared in before us drifted north from the range I set up and ran aground. There is a boat that sets there watching and will come out for 60 US and heal you over. He did and the boat in front of us would move a little and run aground again. They would pull him over again and he would go a little farther. We held our course on our self made range and ran aground ourselves just bumping but now with both motors running hard we made it over with out help but steering up a lot of sand and making Pam nervous. Checking in was easy but the men on the docks there always trying to get you to give them money is tiring always wanting to watch your dink and always hollowing “over here man, over here.” Back at the boat we had bought fried chicken some what like you buy in the US. Here they fry chicken with a lot of garlic in the badder, there in Livingston there not so heavy on the garlic and it’s okay. In Belize it’s hard to find fried chicken even in a restaurant. After eating we took a nap waiting on the wind to blow up the river like it doses most evening. When we stared to leave and go up the river one of the motors would not start now so we left running on the motor we came down with. Later in the very middle of the El Golfete lake we hit and after noon thunder storm and as storms sometimes are down here it was a good one. The wind was strong enough to stop us from going forward and we were healing over really bad with out being able to see any thing when the motor that was running good just quit. I ran forward and dropped the anchored with a 100 feet of chain and a 100 feet of line in 20 feet of water. After a bit I went back up on deck to look at our anchor line, it was tight and the waves now were coming by us with it raining so hard you couldn’t tell where we were. Anchor watch on our chart plotter said we were fine and staying there so Pam and I with the storm raging around us dried off and went to bed resting again. Less than and hour latter we were up putting fuel in the tank the motor was running on we had just run out of fuel on that tank. Now to find out where we were because with the haze and the wind now coming from the opposite direction still raining we went to the compass to get our bearings. Pam saying I can’t believe were lost in the middle of the EI Golfete and having to look at our compass. When we were under way again we had to rely on our compass and chart plotter to know where we were and going, you just couldn’t see but just as it was getting dark we were coming under the Fonteria bridge with our running lights on. People in the restaurant there were waving and making pictures. I hope our old schooner was looking good with her raked mast and long bow strip as we pasted by. We docked in the dark at our slip and it’s hard to know where home really is the way we live but it felt good to be back in our slip. Pam always saying home is the “Pamela Ann” where ever she is but here the Pamela Ann feels like she’s home in a way. The first part of this journey is over and now we leave the “Pamela Ann” here and go on tomorrow on a bus ride from here 5 and a haft hours across Guatemala to Guatemala city to catch a flight to our motor bike in New Orleans and then it’s 1100 more miles on that bike to Kansas. We will try to post what it’s like to make the bus ride across Guatemala when we can. Were hoping to blog what all of this is like as it happens.

Heading to Guatemala/USA

Today we are running, running around trying to get ready for our trip back to the US and it’s not all my fault. It just always sounds so simple just a little black spot in our bowsprit with Pam saying don’t touch that. I did it anyway, I touched it with my knife digging a hole in it and told her I could fix it quick , no problem, just put a little scarf in it to get the rot out. Pam saying we don’t have time. Now we had to turn the boat around with the wind blowing so the bowsprit would be over the dock. A simple thing, I hit the dock and broke a chain. No problem that won’t take long to fix I said. Taking the bowsprit off didn’t go well ether. It had been on there a long time. I broke a bolt, just another little things but hard to buy the right bolt in Belize. Now to cut out the little rot. First cut it was bad with Pam saying the “I told you so thing like it was a song.” I decided to just build a new one. Now where to get the lumber. I ask around and most people here said just use treated pine and paint it, any thing to get us back to Guatemala and our slip there we need to leave. A lot of work to just get us back to Guatemala. I found some mahogany flooring here at the marina that the owner said I could have enough to build the bowsprit and free is always a good thing but it’s flooring. I went to work cutting, scarfing and gluing. Now we have a new bowsprit but we are still here at the marina in Belize and our plane leaves Tuesday from Guatemala city to the US. We just have to leave today and cross the bar in the river at Livingston by Saturday morning. This is setting up and interesting day. Up before day light rigging our new bowsprit and then leaving going to sea tired. When Pam and I were young and driving tractor trailer trucks cross country we would say if we left late and tired we were just practicing for the day we could go to sea. Now we are old and our dreams have come true but going to sea tired is a lot like driving a truck dead tired. I can stay on watch and let Pam go down and get some sleep or she can stay on watch but with the motion of the ocean and things moving around us ,you never sleep well. Tonight if all go’s well we will sleep well, anchored 11 miles across from the bar in the river listening to wild monkeys on shore and the next morning the dream will be still going on as we head up the river. Monday a bus ride across Guatemala, Tuesday a plane ride to the US and New Orleans and then on Wednesday it’s wind in our face as we ride our old bike on to Kansas. Watch what you wish for it might come true and at our age nothing is easy.

NewbBow Sorit is made

Planning trip

It’s settled now, we are going back to the US for a few weeks. We have our plane tickets and our friend in New Orleans has our motorcycle running. This means a trip that starts with us sailing back from here in Belize to Guatemala on our old schooner. First stop after going back to sea for the first day is the anchorage off the bar at Livingston Guatemala. From there after going in, making the bar there some how then checking in is the trip up the gorge into the lake and to the anchorage in Texan Bay. If we have time we always stop and eat at the local watering hole there with Texas Mike and get the run down on what’s happening on the lower side of the lake. Going up that gorge is something to see with it’s high rock walls covered in vines some say are 300 feet high. In the lake it’s building up some but still looks like there is very few people there. From Mike’s it’s on to Fronteras and the bridge, leaving the anchorage after lunch to catch the evening breeze going up the lake. Sailing our old schooner up the lake is a dream that keep’s coming true. For many years Pam and I dreamed of sailing and if you let your mind wonder it sometimes turned “with me anyway ” to dreams of what it would be like to sail a old schooner in the warm waters of the Caribbean. The trip back to our slip in Guatemala is that dream coming true over and over. After passing under the bridge in the river at Fronteras it’s on to our slip not that far away in a little cove called Susanna’s where the old marina Susanna ran has for the most part fell in. Our little marina is on the other side and new. Its very peaceful there and you can walk from there through a little housing development up to the road going into town. In the town there it’s called Fronteras because it feels like a frontier town. It’s little cabs with 3 wheels called “tuck-tuks” Big cattle trucks with stuff cows leave behind flying off the trucks and on you if you are in the wrong place at the right time. Lots of street vendors selling food right there on the street with the cattle trucks coming by and stuff flying. After a few days of being in our slip where one time I was working on our varnish and there in a tree was a wild monkey watching me. Lot of wild life. After leaving there it’s a 5 hour bus trip “if all goes well” to Guatemala City to spend a night in a room there in the city and a shuttle bus ride the next day to the airport for our flight to New Orleans. When we get to the airport things start to change quick. The air port in Guatemala is mostly modern but you still know your in a Central American country, the food is the same and every one speaks Spanish but with in hours it’s the good old USA and good food like real hamburgers and fries. There we will have to find a way to our friends house and our old bike, we will probably rent a car for a day spend a night in a motel and eat. Eat a real steak. Eat gringo food. No more beans and rice “with every thing” no sounds of every one in flip flops. After we get to our bike then it’s ride for less than and hour at a time then take a break walk around looking at things. Then back on the bike mostly with me looking for something to eat. KFC or McDonald’s biscuits make a good snack. Eat a real meal at lunch maybe another steak. Beef in Central America is just bad. In the afternoon it’s find a motel that likes bike people. To do that we stop at welcome centers and get coupons. There in the lobby of a motel that likes bickers you can find people on bikes traveling that make fun of us some but we have one thing in common with all of them, “it’s the wind in your face thing”. Our bike is an old 1987 Honda 450 Rebel like the one The Fonz road in Happy Days on TV. Small in the land of Harley Davidson but big if we were in Central America and just right for us. Sailing our old home built schooner in the warm Caribbean sea, a long bus ride in Central America,a plane ride back to the US and then a 1100 mile bike ride to Kansas to our son’s house with Pam on the back smiling like a little girl. At our age now sailing around the world is out but a little short trip from here to Kansas is still do-able and do I have to say it’? “FUN!”

Happy Sailing Day

More Sailing away into the sunset