Amy had wanted to get the boat and crew up to Florida so we could spend Christmas with my mom in Georgia.  This request required that we speed through Mexico and Cuba and then find a reasonably priced marina to leave the boat in while we rented a car and headed to Cartersville, Georgia for three weeks.

The Offer

With cabin fever creeping into our vessel, Amy looked at me and suggested, "We could head back south to Key West or further, to get out of the cold!"

This was my ticket I had prayed for.  I had not verbally asked for it, nor left notes tossed about with hints of Palm Trees and tropical islands, but yet here it was, an official offer to head back south.

Her offer was Key West, but I knew Miami was just two days further and a mere 50 miles off of Miami is Bimini, Bahamas.  In 5 days, we could be out of the country again and buying drinks with umbrellas in them.  All I had to say was yes.

I let the "offer", stay on the boat with us for a few days.  I plotted in my mind the path we would take, distances, fueling stops, trade winds, which shorts to wear and which white t-shirt would be required again for the hot sun.

I thought about the great times we had in Belize and Mexico.  Places where there was not the daily drum beat of how America's economy was heading for the "end of times".  Robert and I thrived in the "live and let live" culture of Central America.  Where if you wanted to go fishing for crocodiles... and could afford the frozen chicken used as bait... then no one was there to tell you not to.

Our transition back to America had not been entirely smooth.  Robert still bristled at why seat belts were in American cars and why you had to wear them.  The courteous officers of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Dept. would remind me with a $90 ticket that life jackets were to be worn at all times.  And Amy quietly commented from time to time about how a car was now a necessity for the first time in years.

Gone were the times where our dinghy was the trusted family auto, taking us from anchor to shore.

Gone was the remoteness and isolation of tropical waters.  Now was Home Depot and West Marine within blocks for any parts we might need.  So much for improvising, so much for hoarding food.  Why do that when Publix is just around the corner ?

Sacrifice

With the single syllable word "Yes", so easy to say, in the end I found that I could not.  Amy had sacrificed much to be on this adventure.  She had put friends, family, and all the comforts and trappings of suburban living on hold from me.

I knew that the cold streak in central Florida would quickly thaw.  And while Bimini might be easier, the fastest, shortest path to a happy marriage lay on a bearing headed North.

The other day, Robert asked me how do you call Superman.  "What do you mean, how do you call him?" "You know, how do you call him to tell him you need help?" Now I'm catching on.  The Commissioner uses a bat-shaped search light to call Batman, so how is Superman contacted?  "Ohhhh," I say, playing along, "you don't need to call Superman.  He just knows."

After we had eaten dinner, and were waiting on our Key Lime pie to arrive (delicious!), Mark stood up to look out the window.  The entire restaurant overlooks the water.  It is immediately inside the John's Pass Bridge.  We have been intrigued by the extremely strong current, and the current is enhanced by the bridge- the narrowest part of the waterway.

Mark was watching the current, and Robert asked what was he looking at.  So, Mark picked him up and started to point out the interesting parts of the bridge and how strong the current was, and... "Oh my gosh! There's a boat!"  Mark turned to me with the adrenaline-filled expression with which I am now quite familiar, and said again, "There's a boat!"  He put Robert down and ran out of the restaurant.

I knew where he was going, of course.  He was going to go help the boat.  I just had to hope he was going to the Coast Guard, and he wasn't going to try to help the boat by himself.

I looked out the window and saw the boat.  It was a small, 25 foot sailboat.  It was leaning over, but in the dark it was hard to tell what had happened. It still had its navigation lights on, and it appeared to be leaning against the vertical support of the bridge.  It may have also run aground onto some rocks, and it may have come to rest against a barge that was there because they are doing some kind of construction in the area of the bridge during the day.

It took me a very long time to process the situation- maybe an hour.  There is a boat with its lights on, possibly aground.  What is it doing there? Clearly if its lights are on, someone is on board.  What are they doing there? Why haven't they called for help?  Oh, no, maybe they got hurt.  Maybe when the boat hit the bridge, they got knocked out! Oh, no! Maybe they got knocked overboard and now they are in that freezing water in that terrible current! What took me 60 minutes to process, Mark figured out in a split second.

Mark ran out of the restaurant, down the street, and up the bridge to the drawbridge tower.  There he alerted the bridge personnel, who in turn alerted the Coast Guard. See, we didn't have our VHF with us in the restaurant. 

After the USCG was alerted, Mark went to the bank of the water and called to the man in the sailboat.  The sailor said he was fine except he hurt his hand, possibly broke it, and he said the boat was not taking on water.  Mark let him know the Coast Guard was on their way, and asked him what had happened.

The sailboat's outboard motor stopped working as he approached the bridge.  With a strong flood tide flowing under the bridge, the boat was quickly taken by the current and swept him into the construction area where they are placing new pilings for the bridge.  The current wrapped his boat up against a concrete wall and pinned his mast up in the bridge's trusses.  The Coast Guard showed up eventually and helped the man get off his boat.  Sea Tow came and tried to get the boat free, but couldn't do it.  They would have to wait until daylight and slack tide. The 3 knot current was pinning the boat against the wall so that the mast could not be freed from the bridge.

While Mark was gone, I explained to Robert that this was what his dad did: he always finds people who need help, and he goes to help them. Most readers here already know the story of Cowboy Hatt, and possibly the story of Tom from Volcano. And then there was the small speed boat with the Mexican family on board who we towed back into Zihuatenejo Bay at sunset as they were being swept out to sea without a VHF radio.

One of Mark's old friends used to call him Walter Mitty (as in, The Secret Life of W.M.), and my sister calls him Forrest Gump because he always seems to be in the right place at the right time. I don't know what it is, but I'm thankful I'm married to him. If there is ever an emergency,]]> tag:goreads.com,2009://1.123 2009-01-20T05:38:19Z 2009-11-21T04:37:04Z

Rio Dulce, Guatemala is a cruisers' paradise and legendary as a Hurricane Hole.  Hundreds of Cruisers and their vessels from all around the Caribbean spend hurricane season up in the Rio to safely hide during storm season.  Many cruisers come for the hurricane season and love it so much they never leave.

]]> 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.

]]>

Our final destination was Livingston - Guatemala, entrance to the Rio Dulce, but it would take us a couple of days and a couple of stops to get there.  Our first night we stopped in Utila - Honduras, another divers' paradise, but we did not go ashore here.  Our next stop was Puerto Escondido.  Funny name, because it is not a port at all, but it is hidden (escondido means hidden in Spanish).

For months we had wanted to hike through the jungle, but since we didn't have a machete (yet...stay tuned) there was no way to get through.  Here though, the hiking paths made it possible. 

We hiked three of the trails.  One trail went through the jungle and up a smallish hillside leading to a nice vista.  A second trail went from a beach up a different, much larger, hillside.  On this trail there were stairs built all the way up the hillside. At times, I counted stairs, and I would get around 200 and be too exhausted to be able to count any higher.  Then, I'd catch my breath and count up to 200 or so before I lost count again.  I am not exaggerating to say that there were at least 1000 stairs.  The next several days, my legs remembered every single one.

Our favorite trail led from our side of the land, through the jungle, over to a beautiful, isolated beach.  This trail was physically easy, but it required some preparation.  Namely, a good coating of bug spray.  Walking through the jungle, but never stopping because the mesquites would catch you, we heard howler monkeys and swarms of bugs; saw crabs and ants and little lizards; smelled exotic flowers and were surrounded by every kind of jungle plant.

The other side of the trail was a little piece of paradise: miles of deserted white sand beach, seclusion, blue gentle waves and fish jumping around the swimmers (us) from time to time.

Alone in our isolation, we lingered in Escondido for a few days, waiting for our friends on board Sea U Manana.  They never showed, so we figured they must have skipped Escondido and gone straight to the Rio Dulce.  So, we left our little jungle paradise and headed on to the Rio.  

Crazy Anchorage #1

Our next stop was just four hours away- Puerto Cortes, Honduras.  Puerto Cortes is a large commercial port with lots of huge cargo ships and stinky air.  The plus is that the port is in a U shape and provides excellent coverage from North, East and South winds.  We pulled up right to the sea wall at the top of the U and anchored where we thought we would be well protected from the trade winds.  We stayed on board for the night- my adventure spirit had grown a little tired.

Our first several hours anchored at the head of the bay were peaceful.  Then, at midnight, the wind shifted 180 degrees to howl from the West.  With the wind speed picked up to 23 knots and no protection between us and the air, the waves started building.  Soon, our boat was slamming in the four to five foot waves, and we were still at anchor.

Mark and I went out in the cockpit and stared at our situation for about an hour before deciding to pull up the anchor and move the boat.  Normally, moving your boat in the middle of the night, especially in a rain down pour, is not a good idea, especially when you are not familiar with the bay you are in, and there is a sunken boat sticking halfway out of the water in the middle of the bay.  We observed that the waves were coming straight in the bay, building up as they came toward us, and then bouncing off the sea wall and hitting us in the stern again.  The fact that we were in the back of the bay started out as a well-sheltered area, but turned into the worst possible place, once the winds changed.  If we dragged at all, we were in danger of hitting the wall, but our main concern was the damage that the power of the waves could inflict.

With the help of our radar, and an attempt to contact the port authority via radio, we moved the boat at 1:00 in the morning, or as our friends Mic ad Barb say, "O' Dark 30".  Having found a small "nook" in the land we anchored and the water calmed down significantly so we were able to get a few hours' sleep... until the wind shifted back again at 6 a.m.  At that point the wind and waves were on us again, so we just pulled up the anchor and left.

It turned out to be a good thing that we left so early.  Outside of Cortes, there is some strange water.  We were stuck in a two knot opposing current from Cortes to Livingston, so rather than the 6.5 knot cruising speed we had become accustomed to, we did 4 knots most of the way significantly increasing the time our trip would take.

We arrived within sight of the Rio Dulce at 5 pm.  We soon heard a familiar voice on the VHF hailing "any boat on the Rio Dule".  Sea U Manana, whom we had spent the month with in Roatan, and whom we'd been waiting for in Escondido, was right behind us!  We were happy to see them and happy to find out that they were safe.

Crossing the bar at Livingston into Rio Dulce is no easy feat.  It is a very shallow crossing.  High tide was at 7:20 pm- after dark- and it was now about 5:30 pm.  Sea U Manana, a catamaran with a much shallower draught, was able to cross in the daylight.  We, drawing 6.5 feet, decided to wait until daylight for the next high tide.

Crazy Anchorage #2

Since we couldn't cross the bar, we opted to head 10 miles down shore to Puerto Barrios - Guatemala for the night, instead of anchoring out again in totally unprotected waters.  Luckily, since we got there in the dark, Puerto Barrios another large banana export port, has a well-lit channel to enter by.  Mark had been tracking a building storm on the radar for a couple of hours and it was a race as to who would get to Puerto Barrios first - us or the storm.

Just as we were getting ready to anchor, the lightning that we had been seeing in the distance surrounded us.  Visibility went from 1 mile to 50 feet, our boat is 46 feet long.  Mark decided to seek shelter behind a commercial pier used for the banana boats.  We danced for an hour with an industrial tug boat which was having trouble staying put in the building wind and seas.  Each vessel had all their lights on and still neither was able to see the other, other than with radar.

I was on the bow getting drenched.  The 40 knot gusting wind was blowing the rain so hard it hurt as it hit my body.  It was blowing so hard I could not hear anything Mark was trying to tell me 25 feet away in the cockpit, even when we were communicating on the VHF radios.

I was able to go back inside the boat, after an hour of setting and then resetting and the resetting the anchor again and again. My nerves settled down a little bit.  I did not like all the bolt lightning which was strikingl around us.  But the lightning settled down and eventually so did I.

The next morning we traded our spot on the pier with a 300 foot Dole pineapple container ship,  and lifted anchor in the dark so that we could arrive in time for the 6 am high tide on the Rio Dulce.  Two hours later we would finally cross into the Rio Dulce with 5 inches to spare under the keel.

We are currently in Rio Dulce, Guatemala, hiding from hurricanes.  We watched the news with awe and horror as Hurricane Ike ripped through Houston- our final destination.  We pray for all of our friends and family there, some land-based, some boat-based.

In Roatan, we stayed at Fantasy Island Resort and Marina, a resort primarily focused on scuba divers. 

We had a great time there, as the surroundings are beautiful, our "marina" was cozy and secluded, and we had friends there.  Life was somehow much more relaxed there. 

Part of it is that we were tied up to the same dock for a month, so we had time to enjoy life, not just jump from errand to errand and chore to chore before quickly leaving again.  Another big part of it is that we had good friends to share it all with.

Friends and Celebrations

Social interaction is the main thing I miss about being home.  Recently we have made friends with another boat, Sea U Manana (mentioned earlier), with whom we have a lot in common.  Peter and Debbie are friendly, helpful, fun people, and their two sons--  Mateus age 9 and Josh age 11-- are polite, fun playmates for Robert.  Having them around alleviates some of my homesickness.

We celebrated Robert's fourth birthday on Roatan, along with our friends from Sea U Manana and Mima, who also have two kids on board. We had a big party with a pinata, and pin the tail on the donkey, and pizza, and cake.  Everyone, adults and children, had a good time. Click here for a short video.

The Mayan Ruins of Copan

From the island of Roatan, we took a ferry over to the mainland of Honduras to see the Mayan city ruins of Copan.  Since leaving Panama, this was the first time we'd been on the mainland in almost two months!  It was a long day of travel to get from Roatan to La Ceiba to Copan, but it was worth it.

In the town of Copan Ruinas, we stayed in a very nice hotel, Hotel Plaza Copan.  Copan Ruinas is a quaint, nice place to visit.  The architecture and town layout are Spanish Colonial, and the surroundings are beautiful, lush hills.

The Mayan ruins of Copan are breath-taking.  As I walked through the grounds of the ruins, I could imagine living in this ancient city over one thousand years ago.  

The grounds are well taken care of, and you can look around and visualize the ancient city with its market, the famous ball courts where the winning team was sacrificed, royal residences and common residences, and religious centers.  Some of the structures have been unearthed, but much of it has not been. 

Mark was most intrigued by the concept that all around were ancient sites that had yet to be discovered.  You were literally walking on top of artifacts that the government had not the time nor money to research yet.

Copan's claim is that their carvings and statues are exquisite, and it is true.  Their artwork, much of it still covered in the original red dye, has somehow survived through the centuries.  The quantity and quality of it is amazing.

The Mayans have captured Robert's imagination, as well. He loved seeing the ball court and learning about the glyphs and how they "told a story."  I think he thought the glyphs somehow talked.  He was also looking forward to  climbing the pyramids.  We did climb some of the structures, but Copan is not known for large pyramids.

In fact, in the Mayan world, Copan is somewhat small, 24 square kilometers, but it is popular today for its artwork.

While we were in Copan, we experienced something very Central American: a 24-hour power outage. 

In Copan they have the added twist that their water supply is pumped by electrical pumps.  So, no power, no water!  Luckily, I guess, it was rainy season (though this might have been the reason for the power outage in the first place), and so everyone in town had buckets, pails, and barrels of all sizes out in the rain (preferably underneath the corner of a roof) collecting water.  Clearly this was not the first time this had happened.

One does not realize how dependent one is on basic utilities until they are not there.  Our hotel had a generator, so we were not as strongly affected as we might have been otherwise.  We went out to breakfast, and there was no coffee since there was no power. 

And, even though our hotel had a generator (though it ran out of gas), they turned the water off at night.  When I went down to the reception desk to inquire about it, they agreed to turn on their extra cistern for 30 minutes so that we could take showers.

Butterfly Garden

We got one unexpected day of fun in Copan.  We had intended to take the 10:30 am bus out of Copan on Friday.   We didn't account for the weekend crowd, so we got pushed back to the 2:30 pm bus.  With our extra time we visited the Butterfly Garden just outside of town. 

Robert and I had a great time (Mark took pictures).  The Garden has butterflies in all stages of life, from eggs to larvae to pupa to adult.  While we were there we got to see several species in all stages; we even got to see one coming out of its cocoon!  The larva to the left are over 6 inches long, notice Mark's watch for reference.

The TWO butter flies to the left, mimic the look of an owl.  The birds are scared of the owl and thus leave the butterflies alone.

I think the US has a lot to learn from Central America, but that is another blog altogether.  My hope is that we are raising a son who does  not take luxuries for granted.  Time will tell how long he will remember the lessons he has learned here.

Two nights of sleepless travel,

Motorsailing through dark water.

Hoping for calm seas.

Hoping for a cloudless moonlit night.

Hoping for dolphins to come by for some  company to break the monotony

Of staring at instruments.

11398 feet of deep, black water.

Depth gauge blinking 32.8- unable to register the profundity.

Wind 11.4 knots at 30 degrees on our port side.  It, too is blinking. Is it working?

Heading 335 degrees on the compass, 341 degrees M on the GPS.

Speed 6.4 knots through the water; 5.5 knots on the GPS.

More instrument readings, nothing else to do.

Local time 3:47:52 a.m. Counting the seconds until my shift is over.

Sea temp 82.4 degrees. Air temp 81.7 degrees. Humidity 92%.

Sadly, moon setting behind the clouds.

2400 RPMs, ½ tank of fuel, engine water 180 degrees.

Oil pressure normal, batteries fully charged (more than I can say for myself).

Absolutely nothing on the radar and nothing on the chart plotter.

No sign of land, no sign of boats, no sign of life.

Zoom out, zoom out, still nothing.

At the 300 nautical mile level, finally something: our destination, Providencia, a tiny island close to nothing.

And, our last port: the northern tip of the isthmus of Panama.

The Canal a series of x’s marking our waypoints.

Port sky: a few stars.

Starboard sky: darkness. Unable to distinguish sea from sky, black from black.

Music on stereo.

Me, flitting from sudoku to crossword to cookies to journal.

Anything to keep me from falling asleep.

My trusty red flashlight letting me see my pages without ruining my night vision.

Tip of moon barely visible behind clouds on horizon.

The glow of instruments predominant in cockpit.

3:57:47 a.m. – still counting the seconds.

Engine humming, waves sloshing off the hull.

The Island Life

One facet of the Caribbean which makes it quintessentially Caribbean, and distinguishes this leg of our trip from the Pacific leg is the incredibly turquoise water.  It is amazing to me that you go through a skinny 45-mile canal and suddenly the water is completely different.

We had the occasional turquoise water on the Pacific, but here it seems like the water is more often turquoise than any other color.  It adds a more 'vacation' flavor to everything. 

After Portobelo and a few more days in Colon, we headed north to the tiny little island of Providencia, Colombia. 

The remoteness of this island caused in me a bit of claustrophobia.  Providencia lies about 50 miles away from its nearest neighbor (San Andres), 140 miles away from the coast of Nicaragua, and 480 miles away from its 'mainland' of Colombia.

Two cargo ships arrive each week.  As far as I could tell, one ship carries mail, Old Milwaukee beer, and motor scooters, and the other carries fresh produce, which is bought up quickly.  During the two weeks that we were there, I was a little obsessed with the thought of fresh produce.  We'd almost always had access to fresh produce, but here we were on this remote island with a population of 6000 people, and I felt unprepared.  Even to go to the grocery stores on 'fresh produce days,'  it all looked picked over and not quite so fresh.  We were fine, of course, but I worried most of the time we were there that my family was not getting the vitamins we needed. 

To give you an idea of how small the island is, it takes about one hour to drive around the entire island on a motor scooter.  Just about every family has a motor scooter, and usually a family of four fits comfortably on one.  I didn't get a picture, but it usually goes like this:  the toddler standing on the foot rest in front of the dad who is driving, followed by the mom holding the infant on her lap.

We rented two motor scooters one day- extravagant for a family of just three.  To further distinguish ourselves, Robert wore his old bike helmet.  I don't think the islanders have seen a helmet of any kind before.  We drove from our starting point in 'downtown'  all the way to the other side of the island, the Southwest side, where the beaches were quiet and the water turquoise (of course) and the waves were gentle.

At the southwest side, we stopped at Miss Mary's for a long lunch before continuing our circle of the island.  When we got back to downtown, we still had a few hours before needing to return our scooters to the grocery store, so we circled the island again, this time in the opposite direction.

We stayed in Providencia for two weeks waiting for the wind and wave conditions to improve.  We were safe and secure in our anchorage here, but outside the wind was blowing over 30 knots, and the seas were over 12 feet.  Mark and our new friend Peter, from Sea U Manana, checked the weather religiously every day, hoping and praying for better conditions.  As we have watched the weather over the last few weeks, we have noticed that Providencia rarely has good sea conditions.

We finally got a weather forecast that looked like it was as good as it would get this time of year.  Winds were 15 to 30 knots and seas 7 to 8 feet. 

I thought Providencia was small until I saw where we would stop along the way, at Vivarillo Key, before arriving in Roatan.  I would describe as being a patch of sand with five palm trees, located in the middle of nowhere.  (see photo above)  Tiny as it is, we were all glad to have a place to stop and spend the night after our 30 hour, 210 mile journey from Providencia.  The following day we departed for the remaining 180 miles (27 hours)  of our journey to Roatan.

The mom, Susan, was tired of sand and sun and palm trees.  She was looking for some culture, some history.  She thought there must be more to life than sitting under a  palapa drinking a cerveza.  She was home-schooling her two daughters, aged eight and ten, on the boat, and she was really enjoying their American History  curriculum, so she thought maybe she'd like to head to the East Coast of the US and visit all the historical sites.

After my sisters and brother-in-law left from Shelter Bay Marina in

Panama, we took a day sail over to Portobelo, Panama with Kay.  Portobelo has three forts which were constructed by the Spanish to fend off pirates.  Panama was a key location for worldwide shipping and trading long before the construction of the Panama Canal. 

The Spanish collected goods from around the world and stored them in Portobelo. They would then have huge fairs when the goods would be traded  and sold.  In the meantime, these stockpiles were a sitting target for pirates.  Hence the construction of the forts.

This kind of history is not only in Panama, it permeates all of the  Caribbean.  And since our traveling route follows the same path as all ships for the past thousands of years, we see it everywhere. 

Off the coast of Nicaragua, on tiny little Santa Catalina Island, next to Providencia Island, near San Andres Island, Colombia, we found another fort with more cannons.  (I mention all three islands because they are so tiny and so remote, you would  probably only find San Andres on a map, yet Santa Catalina, too, played a key role in the trading and pirate history.)  We anchored between Santa Catalina and Providencia for two weeks.  While there we climbed the hill up to the ruins of the fort there. (Journal entry on Providencia to follow soon.)

 We have made friends with another family living aboard and traveling  through the Caribbean on their catamaran sailboat, Sea U Manana.  They have two boys, ages nine and eleven.  At age eleven, Joshua's favorite movie is Pirates of the Caribbean.  He has two toy pirate boats he takes to the pool, and his favorite computer game is a  pirate game where he maps out strategic locations in the Caribbean, locations he has actually visited!  Plus, when they were in Portobelo, a  local man who had all sorts of Caribbean historical paraphenalia  invited them to his home  and talked to them all about the history of the area.  This is a home-schooling parent's dream!!

A home-schooling parents dream, yes, but not necessarily a dream for the parents of a pre-schooler.  Robert's world now revolves around guns, cannons, shooting and fighting.  New to this whole business of raising a boy, Mark and I are struggling with how to teach appropriate use of guns, pirates and cannons in playing with other children or when the spontaneous urge to shoot something comes up in the middle of dinner.  I assume this stage would have come about sooner or later, and the presence of cannons and forts all around has just caused it to come up now. (Any comments on this topic from other parents of preschoolers are welcome!)

We are very much enjoying life here in the Caribbean.  Life on the Pacific seems very far away, geographically and mentally.  Looking at a map, it is clear that we are quickly approaching Houston, our endpoint.  But for now, we are enjoying all that the Caribbean has to offer, cannons and pirates and all.

Then I looked at my calendar. In order to go, I’d have to catch a flight the morning after my two kids finished school for the year, missing their first swim meet and leaving my husband, David, to manage on his own teaching Sunday school for that week. I could only stay in Panama three days, returning before David was scheduled to go out of town to play golf with friends.

Regular readers of this blog will note quickly how different my life is to Amy’s right now. I, like every suburban mom I know, am scheduled. ]]>

“Cruising,” as is known the life Amy and Mark lead, is the antithesis of scheduled.

But I’ve always subscribed wholeheartedly to the theory that I’d rather regret doing something than regret not doing it. So I met up with my sister Julie, my brother-in-law Casey, and headed to the Panama Canal.

Amy and Mark’s emailed plea was for three more adults to join them through the canal as “line handlers.” Mark’s mother, Kay, had already volunteered and had arrived in Panama City a day earlier.

Our job description, in a nutshell, was to ensure that the rope on our side of the boat remained equally taut as the rope on the other side of the boat so the vessel wouldn’t bang against either wall of the canal. There’s more to it than that. But I learned that the more I read about transiting the canal made me more nervous. Sometimes the less you know, the better. One Web site pointed out that novices serve as line handlers all the time. Most important, the site said, is an ability to take direction well and keep your wits about you. Okey-dokey.

The night before our 7:30 a.m. scheduled transit, Mark gave us a better run-down of what to expect. We got a good idea of what to do as line handlers, as well as a sense for all the little things Mark and Amy still needed to do before morning.

For instance, they had to deal with the dinghy. The dinghy is this little bathtub-sized inflatable boat with a lawnmower motor that takes them from the anchored sailboat to shore. It’s maybe six feet wide, and Amy and Mark are masters at using every inch of its space. I watched them load 10 full grocery bags, then decide to add two 10-pound bags of ice. And that was before Robert, Mark, Amy, and I got on.

I thought for sure the little boat would sink. I’d think that a couple more times over the weekend, so I guess it was good practice.

The dinghy’s home is on the back of the boat, making the boat six feet longer, and sending the boat over some magical tipping point of 50 feet in length and the amount they’re charged to go through the Panama Canal. The dinghy would need to be moved onto the boat. In some out-of-the-way place where it wouldn’t get stepped on and where it wouldn’t add to the sailboat’s 48 feet length.

I’d love to say I stayed up to help, as my crew member title would imply. But I slept. It was, after all, 11:30 or later. In my day, that’s late. In Mark and Amy’s, well, they were just beginning. I listened vaguely as the winches groaned to pull up the dinghy onto the boat. I could have easily been listening to the waves lapping against the boat. I slept on.

The next morning we awoke to rain. Not much rain, but enough to make this novice line handler more nervous about the day ahead. We headed to our assigned buoy, where we’d be picking up our “advisor.” The Panama Canal authority requires that every vessel have either a pilot (for the big tankers) or an advisor (for us small fry). Oscar was a delight. Mark was sure that he hadn’t been “advising” for long. But he’d been through the canal more than once, which was all I cared about.

As it turned out, we were to be tethered to another boat. In order to get the most boats through the canal as efficiently as possible, they often tether some of the smaller boats together to fill the width of the canal. We now only needed two line handlers instead of four, since only our starboard side was exposed to the side of the canal.

The boat we were now closely tied to held an American family headed for Florida. They’d just spent three years in Costa Rica. I felt pretty good about this fact because it made Mark and Amy’s two-and-a-half year sail down the North American continent seem a little less, well, unusual.

And this is the third ship with which we share the lock. Oscar assures us it’s a “small boat” and presents no problem. Maybe. But our little sailboat doesn’t have staircases.

So here’s how this line stuff works. A man throws onto your boat a smallish rope with a ball, called a monkey ball, tied onto the end.

You take that monkey ball and tie it to your rope, which is cinched through a cleat. The man is still holding his end of the rope, pulling you well into the lock before he ties his end onto a really large concrete post.

Once you’re into the lock, jammed with as many other boats as can fit, the locks close.

Now the lock will be pumped with unimaginable amounts of water, raising the boats 40 feet. The undercurrents created from this huge influx of water, apparently, are powerful. One guidebook advises you not to jump in for any reason. Not a problem.

The photo above shows you the seriousness of the job. Casey has his line securely fastened to the winch to keep it taut at all times. Robert is doing his Three Stooges routine. And the party lights hanging from the umbrella are illuminated at night for full effect.

The Panama Canal is divided up into three locks, then one large lake, then three more locks. Traveling south to north, or from the Pacific to the Atlantic as we were, you’ll be raised 85 feet above sea level over the course of the first three locks. You’ll then kick back and motor through the Gatun Lake for 23 miles, or about three hours. Gatun Lake is a manmade lake, formed by the construction of the Gatun Dam. A hundred years later you can still see massive tree stumps poking up throughout the lake. And lots of cocodrilos, or crocodiles.

I learned as we approached the second set of three locks late in the afternoon that we were the last boat to make the entry to the Atlantic. Had we not made it, we would have had to spend the night in crocodile-infested Gatun Lake and pay another several hundred dollars in transit fees. Instead, we had Rickmers to contend with.

Amy and I had joked as we approached the locks that at least we wouldn’t be tethered to a boat the size of the one we’d just passed. Heh heh. We’d breezed past an enormous oil tanker from Antwerp called Rickmers, even getting our picture taken with it in the background to show its enormity. She and I stopped chuckling when Rickmers entered our lock, directly behind us.

 I don’t care how slowly an oil tanker is going. When it’s coming toward you in your little 46-foot sailboat, it looks like it’s going way too fast. And it surely won’t be able to screech to a halt before pounding into you.

For some reason, I was totally unnerved by this tanker sharing the last three locks with us. But we made it through. The bonus of being the last boat through is that all the tugboats, too, are headed to the other side. The hundreds of tankers lined up in Limon Bay of the Atlantic Ocean will need these tugboats to help them through their passage to the Pacific’s Bay of Panama.

We were lucky enough to be tethered to a tugboat through the last three locks, ending our tenure as line handlers on the Panama Canal. To give you an idea of the unsinkability and durability of the tugboats, their crew is required to wear hardhats, not life jackets. When Robert saw the guys in the orange hardhats, he grabbed his and wore it the rest of the journey.

Three locks and 85 descending feet after we’d traveled through Gatun Lake, we were dumped out into Limon Bay. The sun was setting. We had to find the tugboat that would take Oscar the advisor back to shore. And there were countless tankers lined up for their passage to the Pacific.

After seeing Oscar off, our next task was to wind through this line of tankers to get to our ultimate destination, the Shelter Bay Marina. Mark had never been there; the office was closed for the day and unable to give us guidance. So we bobbed and weaved our way among these behemoths, slowly finding our way.

We found in the dark an empty slip at the marina, docked, and hit the hay.

The next morning we explored around the marina. The Shelter Bay Marina used to house Fort Sherman, a former U.S. military base that, among other duties, trained soldiers in jungle survival techniques. Where it’s not surrounded by water, it’s surrounded by tropical forest.

The jungles surrounding the Shelter Bay Marina were my introduction to the sounds of howler monkeys. These little monkeys, which are not much bigger than a squirrel, have the most amazingly ferocious call, hence their name. When Julie went out running early one morning, she said she was sure she heard gorillas in the jungle.

The area around the marina was notable, too, for the number of crabs crawling the roads. One afternoon after a brief cloudburst we saw a truck full of workers heading home stop their pickup, jump out and grab as many crabs as would fit in their backpacks, then move on. We were told they’d either eat these crabs themselves or sell them.

After 24 hours at the marina, it was time for three of us line handlers to head back to the States. Our flight was to leave early in the morning, so we decided to take a cab the night before and stay in an airport hotel. As it turned out, this three-hour cab ride was more harrowing than the trip through the Panama Canal. One Web site said there were a thousand things that could go dangerously wrong transiting the canal. If this is true, there were a thousand and one things that could go wrong on the highway from Colon to Panama City.

Our cab driver picked us up around 9 p.m. with a machete in the back of his car. He explained the machete was for the banditos one could encounter on the highway. The headlights on his circa 1980s Toyota were out of whack, allowing us a much better view of the treetops than the pitch black route ahead of us.

Much of the local highway was under construction, with a drop-off from the highway of several feet. One quick swerve to avoid any of the numerous potholes or swerving cars, and we would have been history.

We made it to the area of the Panama City airport, with nerves rattled but otherwise unscathed. When I mentioned to Amy in an email the treacherous highway trip, here’s her reply:

“We are now used to the conditions, and rather than being appalled at the unsafe ditches by the side of the road, we are pretty excited to see that they are working on the road and that it is asphalt rather than dirt! And, as for the police blockades, we're typically glad to see police out and about.”

Amy’s an intrepid traveler! And a wonderful hostess. The three days on the boat in Panama were unforgettable—and a welcome glimpse into her daily life.

Sometimes when I tell people that my little sister has been sailing for two and a half years around the continent with her husband and 3-year-old son, they look at me like it’s a little bit weird.

After leaving Panama, though, I realized that Mark and Amy look at my life—scheduled to the hour, suburban, predictable—like it’s a little bit weird.

People who are in a hurry can make it from Golfito to the Panama Canal in about a day and a half.  We were not in a  hurry and planned to spend ten days in the islands of western Panama. 

The temperature here most days is in the upper eighties, and nights in the lower eighties.  For the first time I can remember, we can turn off the generator, turn off the air conditioning, open up the boat and enjoy the fresh air -- free of bugs.  It is May, we are in the Inter-tropical Convergent Zone (ITCZ), and rainy season is beginning.  The resulting squalls which pass by several times per day, bring short spurts of intense rain and lightning with gusty winds, however the rest of the day is pleasant.

Jungle Living

It would be very difficult to see and enjoy all that we have been able to if we were not on a boat.  The islands are a remote archipelago, far removed from the mainland of Panama. 

Our first stop in Panama was Isla Gamez, off Isla Parida, 80 miles and 19 hours from Golfito.  After lunch and a much-needed nap, we explored the tiny uninhabited island, dug in the sand and swam in the water.  It was a lot of fun to have an entire island all to yourselves.  Around 9:00 pm, we  headed on for a twelve-hour motor-sail to the small Isla Jicaron, off of Isla Coiba.

On our dinghy ride in to the beach at Isla Jicaron, we saw some dolphins swimming in the cove.  We idled our outboard and drifted around watching the mother and baby dolphin swimming around us- at times they were just yards away!  Once ashore, we walked along the beach- at times in the heavy rain- and listened to the monkeys howling in the jungle around us.

The following day, we went back to the same beach.  Robert walked, ran, climbed, jumped and swam the length of the entire beach.  After about an hour of exploring, we found a place that was dry- not covered by the tide, and open- no bugs, which we thought would be an ideal place for our picnic.

A short walk to the top of the sand revealed a fresh water stream coming out of the jungle, and just as we opened up our sandwiches, the rain started.  We sought shelter under a small tree and sat on a felled tree trunk to enjoy our PBJ's in the rain.  After lunch, Robert crossed the stream to pick some fruit and delighted in sliding down the sand bank as the sand gave way under his weight.

Once back at the beach, we SAW the monkeys that we had heard the day before.  Mark and Robert called to them, and the monkeys called back!  Robert played in the sand, and we all played in the water before heading back to the boat.

Is this Gilligan's Island?

Our next stop after Jicaron was Isla Pedro Gonzalez.  On the beach stands one lone, very well taken care of, bamboo house.  As we walked the beach, we saw remains of other houses and I wondered if it used to be a small village.  I reflected on the one couple living there now and thought they must get very lonely all by themselves.  However, in the few days that we were there, several boats stopped by- some to visit, some to deliver fish, some to work on their fish nets.  Mark thinks they probably have quite a social life.

Here, we went snorkeling.  All three of us put on our masks, fins, and snorkels to investigate life under water.  Robert's snorkel lasted a short time, but he swam around with us, easily floating on his own in the sea water, for quite awhile.  He would put his masked face under water from time to time to look at whatever creature we had spotted.

After enjoying a couple of days at Jicaron, we headed for the south end of Isla del Rey, the largest island in the Perlas archipelago.  Here, we adventured up the jungle river in our dinghy.  We arrived a little after low tide which allowed us to turn off the outboard and travel quietly upriver, carried by the rising tide.  Well, as quietly as is possible with a curious  and loquacious three year old.

Along the river, Mark enjoyed the scenery of mangroves and crabs and listening to the birds in the trees overhead. 

Robert enjoyed getting out of the dinghy from time to time and pulling it across the sand bars that we encountered while the tide was still low.  I spent the journey worried that the large reptile, whose tracks we'd seen on the beach the day before, was going to jump out of the water and eat my son for a snack.

We all made it back out of the river intact (physically, if not emotionally).  As we dinghied back out, we passed through hundreds of pelicans who use the Perlas Islands as their flight training grounds.  Apparently the juvenile pelicans come here to learn how to fly and fish!

The Reality of the Jungle

The islands are beautiful, and we're having lots of fun, but ten days may be too much...or too little.  It may be too little time  because I feel like we're on a ten-day vacation, and we're compelled to have fun  and see all there is to see and do all there is to do.  Hence, I'm a little pooped- a feeling many over-ambitious vacationers may be familiar with.

On the other hand:  too much jungle.  I guess I just need a little civilization every now and then.  We have ten days of laundry spilling over the hamper, I've made ten days of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, followed by ten days of dishes (which Mark usually does).  Fortunately, we only have seven days of trash on board because we paid the Cebaco Bay fuel barge $10 to take our trash a week ago- money very well spent.  Plus, God bless my little family, we only have each other to talk to for ten days.

Technical difficulties

After our jungle river experience, we motor-sailed up to the northeast side of Isla del Rey, next to Isla del Cana.  About two hours before dark, just outside the entrance to the anchorage, we motored through a "trash line" in the water and caught something  on our propeller.  This caused us to pull way back on the throttle and rely on the foresail to bring us in the remaining distance.  Doing 2.3 knots, less than one-half of our normal cruising speed, we arrived and anchored after dark.

But, we didn't let any of that stop us from having fun.  In the morning, Mark dove under the boat and extracted a three-foot diameter ball of two-inch polypropylene rope which had wrapped itself around our prop.  Luckily, it had not melted around the prop and so it came off very easily.

In the afternoon, we dinghied around the corner of the island to  some rocks that were connected at low tide.  One of the rocks has a hole in it that looks like a bridge, which captured Robert's attention.  So, we anchored the dinghy in a semi-sandy place amongst the rocks and began our ascent of the rocky hill. 

We climbed over rocks- some sharp, some steep, some slippery from the tide.  We into and ascended a ten-foot crevice before climbing over more rocks and reaching the forest.  Robert, of course, was a trooper.  The forested part of the hike was easier for him than it was for us because he was able to walk beneath the vines and branches that Mark and I had to work our way around, over, or through.

On the far edge of the jungle, Mark, already complaining about his choice of hiking shoes (flip-flops), stepped in the midst of ants.  Large,two-inch-long black ants with large pincers, and they left two  nickel-sized welts on his foot.  We all quickly climbed down all the slippery, steep, and sharp rocks, back up to the tiny beach where we had left the dinghy.

Once back at the beach, we were able to relax and enjoy our picnic on an uninhabited beach in Panama which is only above water for half the day because of the 15 foot tide swings.

On the way back to the boat, the outboard engine on the dinghy had some difficulties.  This made the long trip back around the island back to the boat a little longer and more adventurous than the first ride.  This problem seems to have "worked itself out" now, but needs some attention soon.

With all this in mind, I am quite proud of ourselves.  We have spent ten days in the jungle, completely cut off from civilization, and we have not only had fun, but we also survived!!

We have continued to poke down the Costa Rico border, finally having made it to Gulfito, the last stop before Panama.  As we turned into the large 20 mile wide bay which Gulfito sits in, I pointed out to both Amy and Robert a small sliver of land which ran down the back of a mountain and down to the sea.  I told them that that skinny piece of land was Panama.

Amy broke out into the David Lee Roth song, "Panama."  She told us she had been waiting an eternity to be able to sing that.  Robert quickly learned the words, added his own dance and then modified the tune to "Panama Canal".  It appears the crew is excited to be getting closer to Panama.

Since arriving in Costa Rica, we have had the "opportunity" to learn A LOT about various animals and insects. 

In one day Amy made a list of "friends" we currently had visiting in our home.  A mouse, one brilliant blue/green moth, several small translucent crabs which had crawled up our drain pipe into our bathroom sink, one medium size crab which has taken a liking to our rear swim step locker, and a small gathering of fruit flies in our refrigerator.

Amy took pity on the moth, took its photo, let it hide from the wind all day inside our boat then sent it on its way.  The larger crab has yet to be dealt with.

Robert found two friends of interest.  One is the large bug Robert is holding in his hands, shown above. 

No one knows what it is, but several people have been discouraged to go into the woods, knowing more of them are out there.

The other animal of interest is a huge turtle which shows up near our dock each day at 10:00 am.  People toss down fruit and vegetables which he chomps down on with his large jaws. 

The turtle measures about 3 feet across and has a preference for bananas, waiting till all bananas have been thrown down before he will eat anything else.  Shockingly, cauliflower is the last thing he will touch.

8 Months

Last August we met some wonderful people in Puerto Vallarta.  Through the summer and fall we got very close to Fred and Peg on Ogopogo.  When we left PV in November, we said our goodbyes, thinking that would be the last we would see of them.

Fate had other plans.  We met up with them again about 2 months later further down the Mexican coastline.  Unable to shake each other loose, we became the closest of buddy boats and traveled together all through central America and finally to our last port stop in Gulfito.

About a month ago, they took on Brian, who would be their crew member for the much longer trip in front of them.  Brian was a long time friend of Fred's, but would quickly become peas in a pod with Robert. 

Robert appreciated Brian for teaching him things that no one else would, such as his favorite "The Three Stooges" routines.  Robert has perfected the "wise guy" bit, but still working on the snapping part of it.

Robert was excited to be a part of Brian's 59th birthday.  Amy surprised him with a carrot cake, which she had bought from a local Mennonite baker.

The next day Ogopogo departed for an 8-day journey to the Galapagos Islands.  Where after their 15 day permit expires and a bit of rest, they will then travel more than 3400 miles over 27 days to the Marquesas Islands.

We had planned to check in each day with each other via our long range Single Side Band radio.  However, due to some unexplained interference in the bay, I was unable to make contact starting on just the first morning.

We have since heard from them and they safely arrived in Galapagos Islands on Saturday, having had to motor most of the way due to light winds.  They also had their own radio issues so they were not able to transmit.

In 30 minutes) we are leaving for Panama. We should be to the canal in about 10 days,when we will pick up my Mom, Amy's sister Liz and perhaps more of her family.  So check back for what other creatures we have found in route.

We have enjoyed our time in Costa Rica; I cannot believe we have been here six weeks.  We arrived in Bahia Santa Elena, the northernmost bay in Costa Rica, where we spent two days hiding from the wind (see: Old Man and the Sea).  We spent a few days in Playa del Coco, where we checked in to the country, and then went on to Bahia Portrero, where the Marina Flamingo used to be. ]]>

At the site of the old Marina Flamingo, we had the most  interesting fuel experience of our travels.  We, along with about twenty other boats (of lesser draughts) crowded into a shallow lagoon.  At 5:30 am. the fuel truck parked on the road overlooking the lagoon and pulled out his 200 meters of hose.  The hose ran from the road, down the bank, and across the beach.   

Someone (possibly a municipal worker?) stayed on the beach with the hose, and somehow "they" attached a few floats to the fuel hose.  Somehow, probably with a panga or other small boat, somebody then led the hose out to the boats awaiting fuel.

We and our friends from Ogopogo both attempted to anchor in the midst of all the small fishing boats in the lagoon.  Neither of us were successful on our first attempt at anchoring in the shallow, crowded lagoon.  The difficulty lay in determining how much anchor rode to let out in the 20 knot winds.  We couldn't let out too much or we'd bump another boat (which Ogopogo actually did), but if we didn't let out enough chain, we'd drag anchor (which we and Ogo both did) in the soft sandy bottom.

The result was a lot of rushing around, much setting and re-setting of the anchor, letting out chain, pulling in chain, checking where the other boats were, where the other anchor chains were, and where in the water the fuel hose was, lest we hit or run over any of the above.  Exhausting.

Once we'd anchored, we needed to  somehow get the fuel on board.  Mark voted that I take the dinghy ashore- into the waves crashing on the beach- and communicate with the fuel truck that we needed exactly $200 worth of fuel.  My Spanish and mathematical knowledge both came in handy, since the man did not speak English, and I had to convert liters to gallons and dollars to colones (and understand it all).

I gave the man my money and ran back (barefooted- I forgot to wear shoes) to the beach.  Luckily, the guy on the beach helped me land my dinghy and held it for me while I was busy converting gallons, liters, colones and dollars in Spanish.  I only swamped the dinghy a couple of times.  And the beach guy helped me push off the beach so I could get deep enough to start the engine, so I didn't get any (more) sand in the outboard.

Somehow I made it back to the boat, avoiding running over the fuel hose, and we started fueling.  We got all $200 (100,000 colones) of our 50 gallons (194 liters), minus however much that spilled into the water. 

Ironically, Marina Flamingo was closed because they were fouling the water too much.  I can't believe that the current method is cleaner than having a fuel dock. Once the fuel was shut off on land, we put the cap back on the end of the hose.

Now it was my turn to jump back into the dinghy and drag the fuel hose through the water so Ogopogo could have their turn and their fun.  Meanwhile, Mark picked up our short anchor chain and went back out to the larger Portrero Bay to re-anchor while we got all of our fuel jugs secured on board.  I dinghied out to him and we pulled up the dinghy to be on our way.

By 7:30 a.m., we were heading out of Bahia Portrero, en route with 210 gallons of diesel to the rolly anchorage of Bahia Carillo.

March 8, Saturday, Mark's 40th Birthday, Barillas Marina, El Salvador to Gulf of Fonseca, El Salvador

Crazy day. Ponga shows up at 6:00 am to escort us 9 miles down river out to open ocean.  Due to sleep deprivation, Mark could not find key to start boat.  30 minutes later, find key hanging on the hook it was suppose to be on.  I still had terrible back pain.  Mark ran over mooring ball.  Departed 6:30 am.  Mid afternoon winds picking up.  Late afternoon, jib sail caught on radar dome.  Early evening radar antenna torn off mast.  Later, gale force winds. Winds would not stop for 40 days, and two countries later !!!

March 9, Sunday, Gulf of Fonseca

Hiding behind small island in the middle of Gulf of Fonseca, with a Honduras coast guard gun boat. Decided not to leave today, wind still blowing 50 knots.  Back still hurts.  Boat is a MESS from our unexpected gales.  Everything flew all over the place.  I'm ready to be off this boat and done with this trip!  But first must move boat to other side of island, wind has shifted.  Approached gun boat to ask if this was a good idea.  10 sailors ran to their stations in their boxers and pointed 50 mm machine gun at me while I asked for directions.  Nice boxers.

March 10, Monday, Fonseca to Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua -- 48nm

A good day.  Amazing what a shower and some sleep can do for one's attitude.

Woke at 5:30 am to pull up anchor and depart.  Mark found two large dead birds in anchor well, would later find 2 more under anchor chain- Yuk!

Left Fonseca and had an easy sailing day.  Motoring, I should say.  Clear sky (some clouds), big swells  but no waves.  Made it to Puesta del Sol by 2:45 pm.

Some Explanation:

When we left Huatulco, Mexico, we were prepared for the infamous Tehuantepec winds.  When we left Jiquilisco Bay, El Salvador, I was not prepared for the Papagallo winds.  The winds were strong as we left Barillas, but we interpreted them as good sailing winds.  We rarely get enough winds to push us along, so we were glad for the 20 knots.

I was down below flat on my back, and Mark was at the helm.  He had the sails up and was having a good time, howling at the moon and all of that, " I'm 40 but not dead yet", thing. 

The winds continued to pick up, and soon got to 30 and 35 knots - gale, by definition - all time record for us.  Mark's howling intensifies.

As we raced along the shore line like a quarter horse deep in it's stride, we had to unexpectedly swerve towards shore to avoid a fishing line which had been laid in front of us by a fishing panga.  Closing with the shore at great speed due to the increasing winds, Mark needed to turn and jibe again out towards sea. The jibe action, brought the jib sail across the bow of the boat, and the leach line in the end of the sail somehow caught on the mast-mounted radar dome, and hailer speaker. 

The radar ripped or should I say unzipped, the leach line all the way down to the bottom of the sail, and the leach line retaliated by yanking the radar dome and hailer off of the mast.  For two hours the 40 pound radar, which was hanging by some very small wires 40 feet up, slapped against the mast.

Mark called me up to help him, and we ended up cutting the leach line from the radar mount.  Battling a 120% jib in a 40-knot wind we finally got the sails safely put away.  The radar hung precariously from the mast for awhile, leaving us wondering what would happen next. Wanting to be a witness to what ever happened, Mark decided to go forward and inspect things a little closer.  Just as he got to the mast, the radar and its metal mount broke loose to free fall the 35 feet. 

Miraculously, in a once in a life time event, the radar path was intercepted by the boom just as it was swinging by in 9 foot cross swells, 50 knot straight line winds and all of this onto a 4 inch wide beam.  If you are having trouble picturing this, try to picture the government's efforts to shoot down a ultra-sonic missile, in space, with another missile.  These are the same odds.

The radar mount, made from some space age material, struck the boom, wrapped a section of it around a piece of line (shown above), tore that off and then continued to roll off like a paratrooper onto the deck of the boat, finally coming to rest farther below in the lifelines.  Mark was able to grab the radar unit before it was swallowed by the sea.

Somebody was looking out for us.  The situation could have been much worse.  If the radar had fallen directly onto the deck, rather than bouncing off the boom, we think we would have a big hole in the boat.  If Mark had not been there when it fell, the radar would have gone overboard as did the hailer speaker moments later.

As it was, we were able to recover all the parts, and once we got to Marina Puesta del Sol, our friend Fred and an army of helpers worked  together to sew our leach line back into the sail. 

Now, a month and a half later, the radar with it's new mount are back up on the mast, but currently out of operation.  It is unclear if we will have radar for the remainder of our trip.

As we sailed passed the Guatemalan coast and decided not to stop, our main regret was that we were missing the volcanoes.  We had been talking about volcanoes for quite some time with Robert, and he had been asking to see a volcano that is "on."  He had seen dormant volcanoes from afar, and there was a volcano we could see from Barillas Marina in El Salvador which was releasing steam, but these would not do.  He wanted to see some lava.]]>

As we began coordinating our trip to Antigua with Peg,  we made it clear that our number one priority was seeing a volcano.  And so, upon arriving in Antigua, one of our first orders of business was to arrange a trip to Volcan Pacaya, the active volcano near Antigua.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of travel agents/tour guides/transportation vendors in Antigua who will take you to the volcano.  We had been told to check in with Old Town Outfitters, as they spoke English and had several interesting trips to go on.  We checked around town with several different tour operators, and became familiar with the details.  When we got to Old Town Outfitters, their price was a little higher, but they offered an English-speaking guide and also offered a meal with the trip, so we signed for the afternoon tour, which was from 2:00 pm to 9:00 pm.  The later tour would allow us to see the lava at night. 

We all boarded the van- Mom, Dad, Robert, Peg, Steve (whom we'd met at the hotel), our tour guide Rodolfo, and his daughter, for the one hour drive to the volcano.  At the base of the volcano there is a national park and hundreds of local entrepreneurs.  Kids swarmed the van trying to rent us walking sticks and trying to get us to sign up with their horse to ride to the top.

Before we arrived, we had discussed that we would need a horse for Robert, so we arranged for that to happen, and then we set off up the mountain.  The first leg of the journey involved hiking up (or riding on horseback) the base of the volcano to where the lava is flowing.  This took about two hours, and along the way we were treated to breathtaking views- of a volcanic crater lake, the countryside, and even a distant view of Guatemala City.

When we reached the plateau where we could view the lava, the wind was howling.  The same wind which provided beautiful vistas also caused us all to huddle in search of warmth.  Darkness was approaching and temperatures were dropping.  Our guesstimate was that the wind chill was in the low 40's.  Some locals were hiding from the wind on a precipice where they could see the lava but also be out of the wind.

Robert and I joined the locals on the ledge and looked out over the lava field.  "How do we get there?" Robert asked.  I explained to him that it was a difficult walk out to the lava, that we would have to walk on the lava rocks, and it would take a long time in both the dark and cold.  Robert said he wanted to go.  I explained that his horse couldn't go because the trail was too difficult for the horse and the rocks were too sharp.  He still wanted to go.  Finally, I explained to him that he would have to walk on his own because it would be too dangerous for mom or dad to pick him up.  "I want to go," he said definitively.

So, off we went!  Two of our party stayed behind, choosing the cold wind over the steep path.  The path was indeed difficult- at times the fine gravel caused us to slide down, at times the rocks were large, other times they were sharp.  There was not an easy path to the lava, but an hour later we finally reached it.  Upon our arrival and our shoes warm from the heat of the lava just below the surface, our guide Rodolfo pulled out some marshmallows from his pack and found a stick.  We roasted marshmallows over the red hot lava which was oozing out from cracks just three feet away!!!

Rodolfo and Mark also used the stick to penetrate the exterior shell of lava, which had cooled seconds earlier, to reach the interior molten lava.  When they poked a hole through, fire came shooting out as the heat and gases reached a new oxygen source.  Robert howled with delight.

Finally, all decided that it was time to go back.  The hike back to where we had left the others was not an easy one.  Using the small flashlights we had brought to guide our way, we had to go back up the steep and sharp mountain side, and back up the crumbly lava gravel.  At one point, the tired Robert asked to be picked up.  We reminded him of our previous discussion: that it was too dangerous to pick him up, and that he agreed to walk on his own.  That was the end of that discussion, and he proceeded back up the path, not asking again to be picked up.

We got back to the plateau, and Robert got back on his horse, and we all descended to the parking lot.  We got back to the bottom, and Rodolfo opened his pack to prepare some delicious vegetarian sandwiches.  Robert ate a few bites, and then went off to make friends with the local boys who were hanging around playing with Pokemon chips.

We were very proud of his behavior for our adventure.  He had displayed the true Read adventure spirit by wanting to go see the lava, courage in climbing the path to get to the lava, and maturity in never complaining of the difficulty of the trek.

While in Guatemala, I witnessed one of Central America's most beautiful traditions: The Lenten Processions of Antigua]]>

My friend Peg and I got up before dawn on Sunday to take a shuttle from Panajachel back to Antigua in order to arrive in time to view the floral rugs before the procession.  Mark and Robert took the opportunity to sleep in, exhausted from the previous days' speed tour of Lake Atitlan, and they met up with us later.  Peg and I had heard much about Lent in Antigua and that it was an experience not to be missed, but we were still in for a big surprise.

We arrived in Antigua around 9 a.m. and dropped off our bags at the Hotel Palacio Chico, where we   had stayed before.   There, the very friendly and helpful young receptionist/assistant manager Daniel, who is bilingual, gave us more information on the procession.  We laced up our walking shoes, grabbed our cameras, and headed for the small, nearby town of Santa Ana.

The streets of Santa Ana were closed to traffic, and people were busy throughout the town working on elaborate  alfombras, or rugs, made of flowers, colored sawdust, and other organic  materials.  It appears each family is responsible for decorating the cobble stone streets in front of their home.  Some alfombras are very elaborate, some are simple.  Some stretch whole city blocks and even  around corners, others are smaller- just six feet or so.  All are part of a tradition which dates back at least one hundred years.

Since we were in Santa Ana early in the morning, we got to see several of the alfombras being constructed.  I asked one man how long it took to create his floral alfombra, and he said ten people had been working twelve hours on it.  That , however is just the construction phase.  After observing their work and the finished product,  clearly several more hours of planning, drawing, ordering flowers and other preparation went into the project.

Later that night, I talked with another of the hotel  employees who gave me more information on the  tradition.  The man I spoke with did not speak English,  so I will lay out the information as best I understood it.  Each Sunday during  Lent, a different church in the  surrounding communities "hosts" the procession.  The first week is Santa Katarina, then Santa Inez, Santa Ana, San Bartolomo, and  finally Merced.  Each week gets bigger and more elaborate, working up to Holy Week,  or Semana Santa. From my observations that day, there must be much community pride tied to the whole event.  Santa Ana is a  small community, but they went all out to create beautiful alfombras; no piece of the streets was undecorated.

After Peg and I had wandered the decorated streets of  Santa Ana, viewing over thirty incredible works of local art, we headed  back to Antigua in a three-wheeled taxi for some breakfast and to recharge my camera battery.  We then took another taxi back to Santa Ana, for the day had not even started yet.

Upon returning to Santa Ana, we were amazed!  Alfombras which we thought were  beautiful before were apparently only just begun.  When we returned, everything was getting the finishing touches.   Beautiful rose arrangements now had baby's breath; images of butterflies created from flowers now had eyes of blue glass marbles.  And, the  quantity of alfombras had multiplied.  The large, elaborate ones were still being worked on, but others had cropped up in our absence, and still others were just getting underway.  By the time the procession started, virtually every piece of roadway was covered with a masterpiece.

After Mass, everything changes.  The event is a mix of funeral, memorial, and  parade.  It is not a parade, as the atmosphere is very somber, but thousands of people come out to participate, process, and  watch.  Hundreds more  people come out to sell everything from hot dogs to purple dolls.  (I thought this aspect of it was very sacrilegious, and I expected Jesus to come out and overturn the tables at any moment.  However, after several hours of viewing the rugs and procession, I was glad to have a hot dog and coke.)

The procession begins after Mass with "Roman Centurions," dressed in red, blowing trumpets.  Following the centurions,  the penitents, dressed in purple, carry the "float" depicting scenes from Jesus' last days.  The "float" (I lack  a better word)  weighs 3.5 ton, as in 7000 pounds, and eighty purple-clad penitents carry it through the streets. There are hundreds of these penitents, for whom it is a great honor to carry the load.  It is so heavy that the penitents unceremoniously, almost surreptitiously, switch out every block or so to give each other a rest.

Following the main "float" is a smaller float depicting a mourning Mary and an angel, carried by women  dressed in  black and white.  I do not know how heavy their load is, but  there do not seem to be nearly as many women to share the load as there are  men for the main float.  There are two more smaller floats; as far as I could tell one was either Joseph or Peter, and the other possibly Mary Magdalene.

  The Romans do not walk on the rugs, but the penitents do.  After several hours of painstaking work, the community's beautiful alfombras are  trampled by the procession of floats and penitents and brass band playing somber dirges.  In a few brief moments, the flowers are mangled, the beauty destroyed, and soon the cleanup crew comes to sweep it all away.The procession circles the town and then heads in to Antigua.  I do not know their path, but as we were back in our hotel room getting ready for bed, I  was telling Mark about my day and he was wondering if he should have gotten out of bed before dawn with me.  Soon, we started to hear the dirges.  Robert, who was following the conversation throughout the day, said, "let's go see the parade!"  It was dark, probably 9 p.m., and the procession was coming down the street on its slow journey back to Santa Ana, twelve hours later.

  Robert and Mark went  out to watch as the procession continued.  The "float" was now illuminated with bright lights powered by a generator, which also had to be carried through town, and there were still throngs of people following along.  The musicians continued to play throughout the twelve-hour day, and they, too would swap out so that no one trumpeter had to play and march all day long.

In the end, Mark and Robert got to see the procession, and I showed them the pictures of the alfombras.  We all had a very full day, and just one more day of wonderful Guatemalan culture.

Culture?

Adventure?

History?

Hiking?

Shopping?

Beautiful Architecture?

Inexpensive cuisine?

Breathtaking landscapes? 

Come to Guatemala!

We didn't have a set itinerary, but we planned to be gone about a week.  Peg from Ogopogo went with us , and she had firmer ideas about where to go and what to see. 

We departed on Tuesday, February 26th and left our friend Fred in charge of Calpurnia and Ogopogo while we were gone.  This was most helpful because our freezer was full, and it was a challenge to figure out how to keep the freezer running all week and still keep the batteries charged.  Fred and the generator were the answer.

Having missed the free marina shuttle because the generator cooling tubes were clogged from leaves in the river just as we were getting ready to depart, we traveled by taxi ($25 total) from the Marina to the town of Usulutan, El Salvador.  We then snagged a local bus (chicken bus) for the 2 1/2 hour ride to San Salvador. Cost: $2.25 per person. 

Arriving in San Salvador late in the afternoon,we decided to stay the night there rather than arrive 5 hours later in Guatemala City in the dark.  We spent the night at the Myer's House Bed and Breakfast, which was recommended by the marina.  A driver from the motel picked us up from the bus station and took us over to purchase our bus tickets for the next day at the King Quality  bus station, which was across town.

Bed & Breakfast:  First and Last

Meyer's House B & B was in an upscale neighborhood- just up the hill from the "Residencia Presidencial" where the Salvadoran President resides behind 15-foot brick and concrete walls topped with barbed and razor wire, along with snipers (not that they are needed, of course).  A little further up the hill was an estate- a full city block- where the owner of Burger King and his son live.  The B & B itself was quaint, but not exactly Mark's style.  Note to self: no more B & B's (sleeping in Aunt Elma's bedroom) for Mark.

We woke up before dawn to catch our morning bus from San Salvador to Guatemala City, Guatemala.  King Quality bus lines rivals any American airline for comfort and service.  We sat upstairs in the double-decker bus, which was $7 cheaper than the downstairs premier class section.  I can't imagine what the passengers downstairs had that we did not.  In full reclining chairs, we were treated to air conditioning, a tasty sandwich lunch, and two Hollywood movies in English with headphones.  At the border crossing, the bus attendants took care of everything so that we never had to leave our seats.  Those on the chicken buses have to get off their bus, answer questions, carry their belongings across a bridge and then load up on an awaiting bus on the other side.

Upon arrival in Guatemala City, we hired a taxi to make an emergency trip to Burger King, and then take us the one hour ride to Antigua.  We had no idea where to stay in Antigua, so our taxista took us to Hotel Palacio Chico, which we loved!  The inn was a former single-story colonial residence with a formal court yard which all rooms opened up to.  Its nine rooms were neither air-conditioned nor heated and moderately priced (about $60 US for a double room).

High in the mountains, the temperate climate makes for comfortable days in the 70's and cool nights in the 60's.  The inn, which was hidden behind a stone wall, was entered by crossing through a three inch thick wooden door.  The door was barricaded shut at 9:00 each night; most other inns appeared to do the same.  Just one block down the street was the beautiful central park of Antigua. 

The hotel offered a free breakfast of coffee, fruit and raisin toast and a very helpful staff willing to assist in any way they could. The showers had interesting "electric instant hot water heaters" on the shower head which offered enough hot water to get by.  Mark thought the fully exposed pigtailed electrical connections just above the shower head was not up to code.  I was only shocked once when I accidentally touched the shower head while trying to rinse my razor.  I quickly learned that if you did not touch the head, you would not get shocked.  Problem solved.

The City

Built in the shadows of three active volcanoes, Agua, Acatenango and Fuego, Antigua is a beautiful city dating back to when the Spanish first settled here in 1524.  It is a magnificent Spanish colonial city with several churches and convents which are hundreds of years old. 

With a strict building code and enforcement, the town's appearance does not seem to have changed at all in 400 years.  Along with five-star restaurants there are also Subway, McDonalds and Burger King, but you will have to look hard for them because the city does not allow them to display any type of signage which does not conform to the original feel of the city.

In 1541, a mudslide from Volcan Agua devastated the then-capital city (now called Ciudad Vieja), so the town of Antigua was built as the capital.  However, damage from the 1773 earthquakes was so devastating that the capital was rebuilt in its new location of the current Guatemala City.

Today, Antigua is thriving with language schools, travel agencies, volcano guides, hotels, eateries, internet cafes, and shops full of local handiwork- especially textiles.  Many of the structures were never repaired from the earthquakes, but the ruins remain.  We saw a picture taken in 1880, of one of the churches, and it appeared in the same destructed fashion as we saw it first hand.

The first day we arrived, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of it all.  Spring time had arrived with us.  Several of the trees were in full bloom and the flowers were bursting with color.  There are women selling their own hand-made woven goods in boutiques, markets, vestibules of hotels, and on the street.  It is all so amazing and colorful, I literally wanted to buy one of everything.  Mark believes the attempt was made in earnest. 

They have taken their colorful textiles and made it into anything that people will buy:  purses, wallets, backpacks, clothing, table runners, placemats, even notebook covers and CD holders. 

That first day I was too overwhelmed to buy anything, but by the time we left four days later, I had almost fulfilled my goal of buying one of everything.

Historic Culture

Shopping is not the only thing to do in Antigua.  For those who are able to control themselves and look beyond the shops, the city is full of history. 

Each year there are over 200 earthquakes of various strengths, caused by the rubbing of three tectonic plates.  Violent earthquakes rock the area a few times every century, so there are many sites around that were once beautiful but now lie in ruins.  The government funds cannot keep up with the destructive forces, so there are some restoration projects underway, but many other sites continue to decay. 

Our travel schedule was so packed with activities that we didn't get a chance to explore some of the  museums and churches that we would have liked to see.  We did, however, get to see the most beautiful McDonalds we've ever seen.  I don't know if McDonald's gives such an award, but if they do, the Antigua location should win the "Most Beautiful McDonald's in the World" award.  We went for the Play Place; the beauty of the gardens and fountains, with a volcano as a backdrop was just an added bonus.

I would love to go back to Antigua; I could even live there.  It is a very international city and very alive with commerce and culture.  We will be going back to Guatemala, through the "backdoor" of Belize on the Caribbean side.  Just a few miles within Guatemala's border lies Tikal, a huge Mayan city of ruins dating back to 900 BC, which we plan to visit.

Sign up now to join us on our next visit to Guatemala!!