Very Hot in Guatemala

With being in lock down here in Guatemala it’s still crazy. Food is available and the power is still on. If we stay in the marina here it’s life as usual. Outside the marina maybe in town or just going to a little store to get a soft drink nothing is normal. Every one in charge of anything here is saying no to something in some way. They are painting lines in front of businesses they won’t let you in but a few at a time about 5 feet apart and you have to stand outside behind the lines and wait. I saw a couple walking around in town very tall with a little of there white hands showing so I’m sure they were white people maybe on a boat here. The rest of their body covered. Walking around in town wearing what looked like a mask made out of a tee shirt with only two holes to see through. This covered their whole head and was tucked down in the shirt. Gloves on and it’s hot here.

TOO HOT

This is in the shade. It’s hot. Dangerously hot here. Saturday we went to town in Dumpling our dink and found no cabs running or the little tuc tucs people hire to get around. A friend was there and said he needed a tuc tuc to take him back to his boat. He had been dropped of by another friend in his dink and now he was gone. He said he didn’t think he could walk back over the bridge in this heat with the groceries he had bought. He has a few health problems. Pam sat on a bench in the shade by herself and I ran him back to his boat hoping no one would bother her for setting there. Dumpling our dink is a small boat not built for 3 people and lots of supplies. In town young men were selling mask and Pam and I had a bandanna on our face. They would come up to us and try to get us to buy a mask. Most Guatemalans are kind and not aggressive but these guys had me saying really aggravated now waving my hands for them to leave us alone. The mask they were selling I would not wear sanding varnish and only cost about 60 cent US. Not going to stop no pandemic. On our way back we went to a store they have here in the river that looks like a West Marina store in the US but everything is very costly. We payed double what it would cost in a West Marina store in the US but we needed a gallon of paint. Back in the US we very seldom shop West Marina because if you’re working in boat yards the suppliers that yard use you pay about half of what they charge. This means we paid 4 times what we could get it far in the US. If you hear you can live cheap in a 3^rd world country, “They are not mistaken. They’re simply lying. You can live cheaper in lots of places in the US than down here. There in the marina store speaking in some English I said I felt trapped here with not being able to fly back to the US and the woman running the store said in broken English we could leave anytime we wished. I said how? She said hire a private car or cab to get to the city and stay in a hotel until you can book a flight on a relief flight and fly home. I ask her how much does all this cost and she said. “It’s really is very very expensive but you have the money.” I guess this goes back to what they say in lots of these countries down here. If you have blue eyes you’re rich. With all this going on we are back to just setting this out. As I have said in past blogs. This was jungle not long ago and there is jungle not far from here. In the early morning you can still hear howler monkeys. Here is a fruit bat some birds were tried to kill I think.

Maybe it was near their nest. I stopped the birds attacking the bat and carried it to a heavy wooded place and later I saw it fly off into the deep woods. Some things are still going on. Hear is and old man selling fire wood he cuts somewhere off his bike and may had road for many a mile to get to town.

 

No Easter Parade

Living with the Coronavirus shut down in Guatemala. Life goes on here with what I think is a little crazy. On our boat up the river here it’s life as usual. Leaving our boat going to town is where the little crazy starts. A couple of weeks ago they set a curfew where you had to be home by 4pm in the afternoon and not leave home till 4am the next morning. No boats on the river during curfew. This puts crowds of people in the little town here with the short store hours. Hardware store you have to stand out side as I said in last weeks blog causing large crowds in lines waiting to be waited on. One person at a time. One of the grocery stores will only let in a few people at a time and this is more people standing in lines again. There is always large crowds at the banks here around the first and the fifteenth each month. Walking by last week there was a line almost out of town with cops and bank guards screaming for them to stand six feet apart. This wasn’t working and I felt sorry for people needing money to get by and maybe couldn’t leave without it. All my life I have heard life is hard. Here it’s different to say the least. Jobs are hard to come by. Most workers without special skills make about 14 dollars US a day if they can find work. No one works by the hour it’s by the day. Out of town or in most places off the few paved roads people live with no running water or power. Most houses are jammed close together for safety. One or two rooms with dirt floors. No one lives in a house out by itself with no one else around. Anything of value is locked up before dark. We hear this all the time . You can live in the Caribbean like a king on almost no money. This is just wrong. If you live like a poor American it will cost you big time down here. Having an old junker of a car and a small air condition is living rich. Raw shelled corn is about 12 cent US a liter and they eat corn tortilla “every meal” A lot of women grind there own. The corn they grow here will grow on a rock and a lot is planted on steep hill sides and never tended to. Plant it and see what it makes. Cooking with wood is preferred as they like the smoke taste on there tortillas. I carry a small welder on our boat that will work 110AC and this week I built a grill top for a wood stove they uses here in the marina to cook on. Most cook stoves are made out of a steel drum or more often a wooden table with a little cement on top and two cement blocks. They said they really liked the grill top I made out of rebar for cement.

New cook stove

Life is simple here and I like that. I like the culture and how they live. We have a little helper that has worked for us off and on when we come in here. Helping work on the boat. Doing varnish work or cleaning. I hurt my back and Pam sent a message for him to come help us a little. He rides his bicycle one hour each way when he works for us. Friday he said the whole town was shut down and no stores were open. Easter is their biggest day here to celebrate. Parties, church every one getting together doing something, Total shut down this year. No car or motor bikes allowed on the roads. Only walking or bicycles. He didn’t have no way to buy tortilla for lunch so we feed him a American deep south style chilly hot dog. He said it was good but he would never say it was bad and we sat there laughing about his mother’s birthday with this shut down. Here they set off fire crackers for everything. Before day light they set off firecrackers to wake the one having a birthday up. In the US most packs of fire crackers are in six inches long packs and have maybe twenty fire crackers woven together. You can take them apart and shoot them one at a time or set the hold pack off. Here a pack can be twenty feet long. He said he laid the long roll of fire works with a big bomb added at the end against the wall where his mother sleeps. Before the first glimmer of light he set it off. She came to the door and he grabbed her and hugged her. Where ever we have been kids play with what they find and little girls giggle. The care taker here has girls and lots of family with there kids coming by. Every one seams to like us and their pet ducks just had babies.

Just two hatched

The marina dog that we took to the vet to get quills out of its mouth after she bit a porcupine as I have mention a few times now knows when Pam is going to be getting of our boat and maybe give her something. It’s fun to watch her make her rounds to the other boats looking for hand outs. Life is simple here and we are living good in the neighbor hood but knowing we can’t leave is a worry. We my celebrate Easter a little. I will be wearing my Sunday best today. Cut offs and a clean tee shirt. Maybe shoes. Not going anywhere so maybe not the shoes.

Busy Streets

 

Strange Times?

Making it through the Corona-virus. Hold up in the Western Caribbean. As I have said in past blogs we get our news off the internet. It’s the only way we can get news form the US here. How to find the truth in that news IS really hard as I said last week and makes this being hold up harder on most people every where I believe. A cruiser down here announced over the VHF radio boaters talk to each other on one morning that Trump was being, ( at that Very Moment lead out of the White House in handcuffs and being taken away. This happen a few months back as the news of the day was going on before this mess stared. Later saying it had come up on his computer and had later been taken down but with the news he was getting all the time now it would soon be true. That is extreme I know but what about the little things that come up to lead us in some way to some one somewhere way of thinking. This to me is our worse problem being some what stuck here with out knowing how things really are back in the US and the rest of the world. We are up a river in Guatemala and really “we are fine.” They have a lock down in a way going on. You have too be home by 4 PM in the afternoon and can not be out until 4 AM the next morning. This includes the river and any boats moving on the river. For a lot of local people here the river is the only way to get around. No set down restaurants open only take out. Lots of thing that make no since to me like the hardware store not letting you in but you can stand around out side in “large groups” and if you can get their attention they will bring you things out to buy. Everyone with something that looks like a mask on. Motors bikes zooming by with everyone on the bike still wearing mask, no helmets women riding side saddle holding babies in their arms. I’m not sure if mask sold at the hardware store for dust is effective and you wearing them for so long they are dirty and coming apart. The grocery stores are “crowed” with the short hours open but we have food. Here in the marina where our boat is, it’s life as usual and we are living good. The marina dog that bit the porcupine and we had to take to a vet to get the quills out of it’s mouth is doing fine. Everything is mating and the birds here this close to what was just a few years ago a jungle. are loud and doing bird stuff to attract a mate. The males will puff up his feathers making loud noises chasing the females on the ground and the females will run along in front of them but not to fast to be caught. Everything seems to be alive with spring coming and it’s life as usual if we stay here on our boat and don’t go anywhere. I don’t know what the deal is with spring coming it feeling like spring or summer here year around. It’s hot here all the time with it hotter in the summer. It’s in the upper 90s now and will go a lot higher. There are no flights out of the airport in the city and we had hoped to fly back to Kansas for the summer but when we can fly is uncertain. No buses running from here for the, most of the time, six hour trip to the city. The little three wheel bikes looking thing they run here for a cab they call tuc tucs for the way they sound trying to get you up a little hill will only let one person ride at a time now. If you have your wife with you. One of you has to walk. Like I said, “Crazy.” On the way back from town with lots of groceries Pam went on to the boat in a tuc tuc and I walked. We were working on our dink Dumpling and had it out of the water. The driver came back and I was annoyed at this. He stopped and I kept walking. He pulled along side and said not his fault and in English he said, “Hard, make, living. I got in and gave him his money along with all I had with me with. A lot of change I had in my pocket. You pay per person so it cost us the same but the driver has to make two trips where he could get paid double for one trip. Nothing has changed that much in our life with this and it’s hard to complain if we just know some way what is really going on. Can we go back to Kansas this summer and if we do can we get back “home” down here to our old home built boat this fall. This is the hard part of this. The not knowing and where you can get “Any” news you can trust.

Streets are still crowed on Saturday morning

Tuc Tuc

Dumpling is back in the water now. We went to town in her Saturday.