The Curse of the Rio

We on board Calpurnia didn't quite share the love for the Rio Dulce that other cruisers have.  In fact, the Rio held for us quite a few curses.  The Rio tried to hold us there forever, like those other old salts hanging out for years on end at the local Bruno's Bar and Restaurant, but finally, after two months, we were able to break free.

Bad Karma

A few days before we entered the Rio Dulce, a sailboat from Alaska was boarded by some local drug-related gangsters.  They killed the husband, Dan Dryden, and punctured the lung of the wife, Nancy, with an ice pick. (Click here only if you want to read Nancy's poignant but graphic report.)  A few days after that, another boat was boarded, the couple was tied up, and robbed at gun point.  Then, a few days later, local justice was served, and the perpetrators were "taken  care of" by their own gang.

Needless to say, when we came in, we did not get a warm fuzzy feel for the place.  What others may have seen as a beautiful jungle river community, we saw more as a poverty-stricken town overrun by the Mendosa family drug-lord cartel.

When we arrived in Livingston to check into the country, one of the first things Mark did was buy a machete.  He bought the biggest one he could find for $4, and then took it to a shop where a man spent 30 minutes with it at the grinder getting it nice and sharp for an additional $3.  He bought a nice looking leather sheath for it in Antigua for $10, and we now have our self-defense weapon proudly displayed on a bookshelf in our main cabin.

The Heat

As is our usual custom upon arrival in a new town, we went in to check out the town the day after we arrived.  Keep in mind that we have been living in Central America and Mexico for over a year now.  We are used to the heat.  We know how to dress for the heat, always find the shady side of the street, carry lots of water.  That day was HOT!  So hot, in fact, that I distinctly remember looking at Mark on our way back to the dinghy and noticing how his entire t-shirt was drenched in sweat.  We sat down to our first of many meals at Bruno's, and a nice older tourist commented that Robert sure looked hot.

The next morning, as we were getting ready to go somewhere, Robert started screaming hysterically, "They're getting me, they're getting me!!"  Robert is not usually one to panic and scream like this, so I knew something was very wrong.  He said that there were bugs biting him all over.  I didn't see any bugs, but I changed his shirt and put bug spray all over him.

This episode repeated itself three or four times, each time with a new treatment.  Each time he got "bitten," the attack would stop when we got down into the boat where the air conditioning was running.  We didn't know if it was an allergic reaction to laundry detergent, a reaction to sunscreen, or a bad case of sunburn.  Whatever it was, it was clear we were not leaving the air conditioned boat anytime soon.

The next day, we asked on the morning VHF net if there were any retired doctors or nurses out there who would be willing to help.  Dr. Bob and his wife, who were on a boat just across the river from us, came over later that morning.  The doctor immediately identified that Robert had "prickly heat," also known as heat rash.  Dr. Bob was a neonatologist in Louisiana and also had a follow-up clinic there for the babies he treated. He had seen a lot of prickly heat, and he himself had an episode of it just last year.  He advised us to keep Robert out of the heat until the condition subsided.

Our plans to go to Tikal, the enormous Mayan site in Guatemala, were put on hold, as Tikal is probably the hottest place in Guatemala.  Instead, we filled our days with indoor play dates with various other cruising kids.  We played a lot of board games and watched a lot of DVD's.  Robert was not at all interested in trying to go outside, as he knew very well the consequences- a painful exploding of trapped sweat glands all over the body.

We waited until the rash had settled down considerably, and decided to head to the mountains, to our favorite town of Antigua high in the mountains, rather than go to the sweltering Mayan ruins of Tikal.  Even this cooler trip had to wait until the rash was almost completely gone, due to the fact that the bus from Rio Dulce to Guatemala City may or may not be air conditioned. As luck would have it, we got a non-A/C bus, but Robert only had one attack en route.

In Antigua, we shopped, dined, and went to the volcano again.  We also went to a dermatologist, where Robert got a different diagnosis- sun poisoning.  Whatever he had, the treatment was the same: cool temperatures, no sun, and wait. 

The Propeller

In Antigua, we rented a car so we could load up on food in Guatemala City to take back to our freezer for our trip north.  After dropping off our food, Mark persuaded me that since we had a rental car, we could drive to Tikal ourselves.  Reluctantly, I agreed to leave the next morning before the sun was up.

After Tikal, we had a short window where we could possibly leave Rio Dulce.  The weather was right, the tide was high enough to cross the bar, and we had all the food we needed.  I was reluctant to leave immediately, since we had been on the go for the last few weeks traveling inland.  My opinion soon became moot.

The marina where we were staying, Marina Nana Juana, had built a new dock and asked us to move to the new dock.  Since we were untied and unplugged, we decided to go a few yards around the corner and fuel up (since we would be leaving soon, and all).  I had the fenders out, the lines ready.  Mark lingered out in the water judging the wind and the current, deciding between two different fuel docks.  Everything was very well thought out, and we were ready to pull up to the dock.

Mark lined up the boat and headed in, slowly but surely.  As we approached, I threw the lines to the fuel attendants on the dock, and Mark put the engine into reverse to stop us just where we wanted to be.  Something went wrong.  There was panic on the dock.  The man with the bow line was pulling hard to stop our boat from running into a panga (small boat) in front of us.  Suddenly, my normally subdued husband was shouting in Spanish!  Chaos!

We did not hit the panga, but we did hit the dock, luckily with no damage to our boat or to the dock.  We were tied up for what seemed like hours as we filled all of our tanks and jerry jugs- using the very slow-flow fuel filter that we have.  As we finally got ready to go, Mark mentioned that maybe the transmission went out.  He felt something at the helm as we were approaching the fuel dock, and maybe that's why we didn't slow down when he put it in reverse. Maybe we don't have a "reverse."

So, Mark fired up the engine, and before untying from the dock, he tried to put it into reverse.  Nothing.  He tried to put it into forward. Nothing.  We were stuck on the fuel dock with no transmission (we thought).  Fortunately, we had friends back at Nana Juana who were able to tow us with their dinghies the short distance back to the marina.

Once back at the dock, Mark avoided the problem for a few days.  He knew a busted transmission was not going to be an easy fix.  Finally, prodded by our friend Peter, Mark reluctantly got ready to check out the problem.  Peter was in the cockpit manning the throttle, Mark was underneath Robert's bed watching the engine and the shaft.

Peter pushed the throttle into forward, no motion.  Reverse, still no motion.  "Is the shaft moving?" Peter asks.  "Yes!" Mark shouts back up to the cockpit. Hmmm... "Maybe it's not the transmission.  Maybe you don't have a propeller."

Now, we have been at this "cruising thing" awhile, and I have learned that ANYTHING can go wrong.  I have thought of many possible scenarios for disaster, however, losing the propeller has never occurred to me.

Mark dove under the boat and checked it out.  Sure enough, no prop.  Mark got on the internet to do some research, and he learned two main things: 1) people who try to get their prop off say it is very difficult to do, and 2) a new prop is quite expensive.

We still have no idea how the prop fell off, but we had a good idea of where it fell off.  Against all odds, we headed back to the fuel dock in the dinghy so Mark could dive into the murky brown river, freshly stirred up from recent rains.

Mark dove into the river at the approximate location of where he thought it might have fallen, and he found it!! On the first dive!!  Quite a miracle that he found it, but another feat that he was able to bring it back to the surface, which took another several dives and about 45 minutes.

After finding the prop and doing more research, it became clear that putting the prop on would require a trip to the States for parts.  The prop nut had also fallen off, and that was too small to be recovered from the muddy river bottom.  Having a new nut sent here would cost almost as much money as flying all three of us to Florida via Spirit Air.  So, we all headed to Florida for a week of American life and stocking up on new clothes for everyone, boat parts, and hard-to-find American specialty food like fruit by the foot.

One Last Hurdle

However, when we were in Florida, Mark's big toe had started to bother him.  We were concerned it might be broken.  We knew that there is no "cure" for a broken toe, and Mark refused to see a doctor anyway, so we went back to Guatemala with Mark limping and in pain.

The pain did not go away (surprise), so a few days later, we went to Morales- a neighboring town with a good hospital; also happens to be the drug capital of Guatemala.  We saw an orthopedist, and he immediately diagnosed that Mark's toe was not broken, but had a build up of uric acid.  Now, this doctor did not speak much English, so I was doing much of the translating.  I didn't know what acido urico was in Spanish or English, so the doctor tried to explain that it was a type of arthritis. "Arthritis??  No, no, no," says Mark. "I can't possibly have arthritis.  That's an old-person disease.  We need to have an x-ray.  I'm sure it's just broken."  The doctor explained that an x-ray would not be necessary, but he would run some blood tests to check the uric acid level and a few other things.

An hour or so later, the lab results come back, and his uric acid level is more than twice what it should be.  Otherwise known as gout.

Breaking the Curse

I didn't think we could break the curse.  I thought we would have to wait until the next high tide in mid-November before we could leave.  And, for that matter, we may as well just stay there so we could make travel plans to go home from Guatemala City for Thanksgiving.  In my mind, we would be stuck in the Rio for another several months.  We would never break free of the curse.

But, back in Rio Dulce, gout or no gout, Mark was determined to leave Guatemala on the high tide.  In four short days, he did everything that needed to be done to leave: install the new water pump, install the repaired jib sail we had taken to Florida, two oil changes, install the exhaust elbow, fuel filter changes... and on and on it went.

Finally, he dove under the boat to re-install the prop.  Peter helped him, but they couldn't get the prop all the way onto the shaft.  And, they couldn't see anything at all under water, so they had no way of determining why it would not go on.  So, we had the boat hauled out.  Total time: one hour.  Total bill for haul out: $250 USD (a steal by US standards).  The boat yard had a die and cast set to repair the threads on the shaft which had become damaged, which allowed the nut to go on smoothly.  While the boat was out, Peter was kind enough to fix several other items which were not on Mark's mind.

The next morning, we were free of the Rio!!  We headed out at 8 am with our friends Sea U Manana and coasted down the river briskly.  The high tide was at 11:20 am, and we got there at 11:30.  Rather than anchor outside Livingston to check out of the country, we decided to bust across the bar while we had daylight and dinghy back to town for the paperwork.  We had one last lunch before saying goodbye to our wonderful friends on Sea U Manana, who were headed back to Roatan to start a new life there.  Meanwhile, we had no plans on where to go after Livingston, but we knew we were headed north.