Traveling Blog

Writing while Traveling

We are in Guatemala City today and people here are wearing coats with it in the mid 70sF. We are headed back to the US for Christmas where it is getting bone chilling cold up there. I would like to mention the Christmas spirit here in Guatemala City right now. All the kids excited. Red Santa Claus hats everywhere. American Christmas music in Spanish every where. ( The Chipmunk’s Christmas music in Spanish is really funny) Lights every where The street they have blocked off of with no cars where it’s just foot traffic was wall to wall last night when we got here with shoppers and the see and be seen crowd.

Crowded street

All these trips like this we take can be a challenge at times. Most trips are what can go wrong? Bus to the city with very few road blocks. Six hours. Road construction only. Cab to our hotel no problem. We treat ourselves now after we have had trouble with so called cheap places to stay. We found we can stay in a really good hotel for some where around 60 US dollars where the so called cheap places are $40. We been staying at the Royal Palace right on the promenade street where they blocked off street I mentioned before.

Beautiful tree in the lobby of Hotel Royal Palace

As I said we stroll the street with the see and be seen people for a couple of hours last night. I say all the time in our blog down here the food is bad, music is worse and it’s hot. I usually don’t like street food but I do love trying it. Bananas fried whole in oil is really good. Better than plantains. Some time chunk of pork frying in oil is really good. Sometimes I never know maybe what I just ate. In a restaurant one time Pam thinks we eat a big headless, tailless rat. That is what it looked like. Not real good but we could live on it with a little hot sauce. In this culture they love garlic, chocolate and cinnamon but live on corn tortilla. You get corn tortilla with every thing here. When Pam and I stared driving big rigs crossing the US we found food there different from what we were raised on. Today as I get older Everyday, with the life we live maybe all of life is like politics. With how we live out lives how different we all think. I put in a blog already how a women from up north on a boat down here in the river where our boat is now was saying now discussing southern biscuits and gravy is when a women that make good biscuits in our world will make a southern man smile. Maybe this is what keeps us going. The always trying new thing, seeing new places. Maybe too, some times it’s great to live some what’s normal with normal being the way we were raised. Going back out to our little house out on the prairie hopping for a white Christmas. Set by a wood fire and eat a real steak. We have lots to do out there. We need to prompt the book we just published and put more of my art in galleys. We need to to get both online so people can find our work. Coming soon to this blog as how to look for our work. Then it’s back in a month to our boat and finish putting the motors we just got in and get them running. Then it’s rework the damage we had when our boat sank to above the floor boards on one of our trips back to the states. It’s hard to get thing to work on time as in our coming and going and hard to leave our boat with the most teak wood I have ever had in my life to work on our boat.

Our teak air drying while we are in US

Even if these motors are old they are a dream come true if I can get them going and running good.

Pamela Ann at her dock in Calypso Marina, Rio Dulce, Guatemala

How to love and live our life on our boat and the life we have out on the prairie. At least the real love of my life is right by my side always where ever we are. Life is good. When we get to our little house on the prairie I will shoot my shotgun, drive the 50 year old Chevy truck. Go to Walmart see what we can find there. Eat a steak cooked on a wood burning grill. Listen to the Canadian and snow geese flying over head. Wear nice clothes to keep warm and look nice for a change.

                                                         Love Life and Live

                                                     but it is not always easy

                                                  We want to wish everyone 

                               “Very Merry Christmas & Very Happy New Year

 

 

 

 

Challenges?

I think it’s ever cruisers dream that likes making things happen to try to step up to a challenge to get things done when needed. Sometimes in crazy ways. It’s fun sometimes to work it out. How to get a boat to some place with very little money are working against mother nature building something. Here in the Caribbean we have seen two couples that made it here from the US with out a motor. All they have is a small dinky with a little small outboard to dock the boat and no motor in there sail boat. It takes a real sailor to do that. Pam and I have faced challenges in our life from just how to even get a boat so we built one. Our boat is home built and even if we have very little money we are sure we needed a motor so we improvised and put two old at the time VW diesel motors out of junk cars and made the parts to make it work ourselves. How well did it work? We went sailing but the weakest part on this boat has always been the motors. As I have put in a past blogs we found two old but hopefully good boat motors to replace them with down here.

Got Motors

Now the problem, how to get them in our boat with us tied to the dock with us always short on money. One motor we bought used but it was running good setting on the ground in a scrap yard. It’s a 4GYanmar, 37 hp. The other one we made a sail cover for and took it out of a catamaran setting in a work yard ourselves. It’s a G3Yanmar 27 hp. They said it ran. Getting it out was a challenge. Payed to have a backhoe set it down. Friends car with trailer to get it here. Motor really rusty and dirty looking bad with some bad parts. Made some wooden motor mounts we been calling feet so we could slide it around and it not fall over. Cleaned and painted now to start it. Wouldn’t start. Looking it over when Pam said, “Will it run with the hole for the breather stopped up like that?” I had it stopped up so water couldn’t get in the motor cleaning it. Took out the rag and tape off and away it went. Now to get them from the marina yard here on the dock and on in the boat. We put in a blog we got some teak lumber where they were cutting a large teak tree between two houses. You have to get a permit to cut a tree here now. A few years ago they were deforesting the land cutting so fast and cut half the trees here in the whole country in ten years. I’m not sure a permit was used but I got 125 board feet of teak for just a couple dollars a board foot. Treated pine is 4 dollars a foot here. What a deal. Some boards are 16 inches wide one inch thick. This lumber has not had time to dry and is still heavy but really strong. It seems like a dream using teak lumber this way to slide these motors on to the dock and on the boat. Then laying teak boards down on deck to slide the motors in place to set them in the boat.

Walking and rolling the motors on to the boat deck.

Using short pieces of broom handles to roll then. When one broom handle rolled out the back put it back in front and roll it a little more. Now to get them in the boat.

Got Both Motors On Deck

When we built the boat I designed it with a large 5 foot hatch over a cabin we call the cargo hole. We use this cabin as my art studio where I have a drawing table to work on. Now how to get the motors over the hole and down in the boat. We built a ladder sometime back to get on the dock here from the water. Tied that to the shrouds standing up. Made a frame on the other shrouds and used a walk board across to them. Using a come-a- along we bought here new that is a peace of crap we managed to lower them down inside.

4G hanging easing it to the floor. Pam said she may put Christmas light on it.

Using teak boards down on the floor we slid the smaller motor in place. Now to make motor mounts and get it set up and running.

3G setting in the hole where we hope it will be happy.

Always time and money. Leaving this coming Sunday to go back to the US to our little house out on the prairie for Christmas and do something out there about my art and the book we published to help it sell. Getting old but not giving up. With just a few more dollars coming in if we could make that happen and good marina motors we are on our way again. On our bucket least is one more trip up the east coast to Nova Scotia, Canada. Do something in the tall ship festival there. Our boat is a fully rigged top sail schooner. They like schooners up there. The adventure goes on. More teak than I can use and real boat motors. I wonder what it feels like to really be rich.

                               Remember some dreams do come true.

                                  Maybe the Caribbean is paradise.

            And maybe we all can do more than we know if we never give up.