Happy in Kansas

To all our friends that follow our blog we have been back in Kansas a little over a week and I can’t stop eating. I learned many years ago when Pam and I stared to drive big rigs cross country here in the US how different people eat here in the US and that different really comes on strong as we travel to other countries on our boat. I hear people say all the time that you can live cheaper on a boat in the Caribbean than you can in the US. I can’t see it. Maybe that is true for some but we just can not live on black beans and rice ever day with a little slice of expensive pork or chicken now and then We can not eat local Caribbean beef in Guatemala or Belize. It is nothing like American beef. Even Mexican beef is not that good. When you go in a store like the main grocery store on the Bay Island of French Harbor, Honduras where they have every thing shipped in you can see what you are buying by its color. US beef is pink. Mexican beef is reddish brown and Guatemalan in almost black. We also hear people say we can eat fish every day living on a boat down there but that’s not so easy with the locals fishing every day and keeping every fish they can catch. There is no fish too small there. The really small fish maybe only one inch long, they will wrap in a corn tortilla and place the cooked tortilla back over a wood fire and roast them a little eating the little fish inside just the way they came out of the water. Even the produce that is piled high on the streets and at markets is what they can’t sell and ship north. Here are apples that have Washington state US stickers on them. These apples are shipped to Guatemala because they won’t sell in the US. Have you ever eat a apple the size of a bird egg? What do you do with them?

Apples shipped to Guatemala?

Most people in the US don’t realize how picky eaters they are. I was raised on a farm and Pam and I have kept up our farm skills even living and traveling on a boat. Here in Kansas it’s easy to live a little like we are back on the farm. There is a grocery store in a little town near here that we can buy meat cheap. We bought a two pack of pork shoulders when we got here that was on sale for 99 cent a pound. Cut it all up and put in in the the freezer. Pork steaks to be cubed with a old time cubing hammer we have if we want to or to cook it any way you cook pork. Roast to be cooked with the small blade bone left in and all the extra fat and scrap pieces to be made in to sausage.

Cutting up our cheap meat

Making our own sausage

It’s hard to tell people how good the old family recipe sausage is to us. We like butchering and if we buy large cuts of meat some times and cut it up ourselves we can live cheap. We can buy rib eyes most of the time out here if we buy a hold rib eye and cut it ourselves for eight dollars a pound but on sale maybe six dollars a pound. Even chickens in Guatemala is costly, maybe three dollars US a pound. Out here if your living cheap chicken leg quarters are on sale for forty nine cent a pound this week. We will go back to our boat in the fall when it gets cold out here but for now it’s all good.

Back In “USA”

We made it. We are safe and now at our little house out on the prairie in Kansas. The trip to Guatemala City in Guatemala was a little worrisome with going through check points. Maybe the cab we haired had something not in order. To travel from our boat in the river on the coast of Guatemala to Guatemala City and on the airport we had to have papers to even travel in a cab. Guatemala is still shut down. This was our sixth try to leave our boat there and fly back to the US for the summer and to get out of their Shut Down and the Caribbean heat. At each check point the cab driver would augury with the police. At one point the cab driver gave the police some money and came back saying they were just corrupt. At the air port it was a reality check. It was just strange walking through the air port with more people there that work there than people flying. We came back to the US on a reparation flight on a Boeing 737 with maybe 25 people on board. The crew said they flew down empty. It cost us 4 times as much as we normally pay for a ticket but it was worth it. Here at our little house or neighbors were not glad to see us. They said we were more than likely bring in the virus and they were afraid to be near us. Our son planted us a few tomatoes at our house way back when we stared to try to come back.

Vine ripened tomato. “YUM, YUM”

Our Little House

Old Motorcycle ready to ride

Being back it’s going from what to do next or what to eat next. More to come next week. Our biggest worry now is when we will be allowed to return to our boat and we were advised before we left that it may be some time before we see our boat again. Until then we are enjoying life out here in Kansas USA.

Still in Guatemala

We are still in Guatemala and they canceled our flight to go back to the US and get out of this Caribbean heat “again”. Lock down Still going on. No movement on Sunday every thing has to stop and no one can go anywhere. The rest of the week you have to be where you stay by 6 in the evening and you can’t leave there before 5 the next morning. Have to wear mask every where. If you need to move your sail boat or big power boat to another marina you have to get permission and papers from officials. Can’t go sailing in the lakes or river. They are letting a few sailboats come in from other countries and putting them in quarantine for two weeks. The people have to stay on their boats and have what they need delivered and set on deck, with no contact with anyone. This is a safe place to hide from Hurricanes and boaters are wanting to get out of harms way and come in here for hurricane season. We booked another flight to leave on July 16th and we are trying to line up a cab with papers needed now so we can travel to get to Guatemala City and the airport. Trying to book a motel that will let us stay and can get us to the airport the next day. All this is “very” costly now. Credit card is going to take a hard hit but we need a break from all this. We have been told by other boaters to just have us a strong drink and settle down. We don’t drink and this makes this even harder on us. We did not come here to do happy hour with other boaters or find ourselves setting “every” day on our boat with a bottle in our hand watching the sun go down with all this going on and it this hot calling this. Paradise. We came here to go places, see things and do things. Not happening now and most of the real cruisers have already gone home back to their countries and have their boats stored here. We waited too long to leave and have been trying for sometime to get a way we can afford to get out and back to the US for the summer. The 4 of July is upon us and we can just dream about a big rack of fat pork ribs on a grill back in the states. Pork here is not that good. Very little fat and small sometimes. “Very” tough most of the time plus cost you a lot more than in the US. Can’t have a party here. No gatherings. Not a good time to just go to sea and head back to the US with it being Hurricane season. Not knowing what country my close their borders and you find you are trapped out to sea and need to sail on with no stopping points. We have been warned that when we leave we my not be able to return to our boat when we want to. Then there are people here that always take things too far with out using their brain making things even harder. I was standing up in our little dink Dumpling on the end of a dock in town with no one around and no one on the dock drinking a Pepsi with my mask down when and older white women specking English came by in a launcha with a dirty looking old dog telling me to wear my mask. I showed her my drink and she stared making faces at me using her finger pointing to her mask over and over as she left. This doesn’t help and shows the frustration people all over the world is felling I guess. She was showing her frustration with showing me she was doing her part and as it has always been through out all my life. All I ever want in life is to be left alone. As they say in the cartoons. Stay tuned and see what happens next.

Coconut tree

 

Bananas