2/2/2013 - Rio Dulce, Guatemala

A week or so ago we went to Belize for a 3 1/2 day scuba trip.  The trip was through Reef Conservational International, a non-profit organization based out in the Sapodilla cays.  We have been signed up for this trip for months and were excited to blow bubbles again.  The trip started with collectivo van ride to Puerto Barrios.  Collectivo vans are 15 passenger vans that they regularly stuff over 30 passengers in; people are sitting on each other, standing hunched over, hanging out the door, and sometimes even sitting on the top luggage rack:

It's a cheap way to travel though.  Luckily for us, it was a Sunday so the van wasn't too crowded and we each got our own seat.  After checking out of Guatemala immigration, we bought tickets for the water ferry over to Belize's Punta Gorda.  Calling it a ferry is a little grandiose, it's really just a launch with padded seats and a big motor.  They also carry goods between Guatemala and Belize, making it one of the world's smallest international cargo ships:

An hour ride later, we got to Punta Gorda, found a taxi (not easy in a little town on a Sunday), and went out to our B&B for the night.

The next morning we went back into town where we met our group for the week.  I felt a little old; except for one other woman in her 50's, the rest of the group were all 20 something's.  As it turned out, our 30+ years of diving experience made up for their youth and vigor and we were able to keep up with the "kids" :-).

Reef CI is located on a tiny island on the outer barrier reef, about 25 miles from the mainland of Belize.  The entire island is about the size of a football field.  There are several buildings, a few sleeping huts, a dock, and lots of palm trees:

The accommodations are "rustic", but everything is provided and a nice taste of the islands.

After dropping our bags and a quick lunch, we headed out for the first of many dives.   Here's Tom in his Zen diving mode:

The coral around the islands was very healthy but the fish population has been impacted by the invasion of the Lionfish.

Lionfish are strikingly beautiful but voracious eaters with no local predators,  and strip the reef of juvenile native species of fish and crustaceans wherever they have spread.  The Caribbean diving and marine scientific community is very concerned about their impact.  Every dive we went on a couple of people would take down spear guns and "get" as many lionfish as they can, but I am afraid it's too little.  We can only hope that some native species evolves (quickly) to realize how tasty these are and starts to control the population.

It was pretty much eat/sleep/dive for the 3 1/2 days!  Reef CI does a lot of monitoring the reef for specific species that gauge the health of the reef.  We learned about a few new species, like these Flamingo Tongues:

It was soon time to head back to Sunny.  We were very tired but had a great time.

The plan is to cast off our dock lines tomorrow (Feb 4th) then leave the Rio on Thursday with the high tide.  As it looks right now we'll probably have to be "tipped" to get over the bar.  We're both very nervous about that, hopefully we'll be able to plow through the mud like we did when we got in, but this isn't as high a tide :-(  Everyone on Thursday late afternoon cross your fingers for luck.

Cheers,

Carolynn & Tom

1/12/2013

Here's wishing all our friends and loved ones Espero que tenga un próspero año nuevo  (I hope you have a prosperous New Year). 

Not a lot going on.  We're still in the Rio Dulce in Guatemala, we think our keel is growing roots down to the muddy river bottom.  The hope is to get out on the high tide the first week of February but we have hit yet another snag.  Tom started checking all of our systems since we have been sitting at the dock so long.  When he got to the windlass (the motor that raises the anchor), it ran but he didn't like the way it sounded and decided it needed to come out for a detailed inspection.  Several hours of swearing later, the motor was disassembled and he found that the magnets in the magneto that were supposed to be bonded to the case had dis-bonded.  How the motor turned at all is a mystery.  Without a working windlass we're not going anywhere, not trying to pull up a 90 pound anchor and many pounds of chain.  We have sent the case to a local electrician but don't have a lot of hope it can be fixed.  In the meantime we are desperately trying to order a new motor.  Unfortunately the company we need to deal with is stuck in the last century (early in it!).  No credit card, no paypal, they suggested we just come into their office!  I've got my bank sending them a check thru snail mail and then we'll try to get it flown down by the end of the month, not holding out a lot of hope.  Meantime next week we are headed to Belize for a week of scuba diving :-)  I'll take lots of pictures and do a good blog after we get back.

The only really interesting thing that has happened was last month we celebrated the "burning of the devil" at the marina.  To start the new year with a clean slate, all of our worries, regrets and problems are written on slips of paper, tucked into the devil which is then burnt to ashes :-)

Here's the paper mache "devil":

Marco, the dock manager preparing to hang it in a safe place:

The flames are starting:

Fully engulfed:

The new year now has a clean start.

Cheers,

Carolynn & Tom

11/25/2012 - Rio Dulce Guatemala

A few weeks ago a group of cruisers from the river went to Sampango for the day of the dead and giant kite festivals.  Sampango is past Guatemala City, so it was a full day of travel to get there.  Tom and I have made the trip from Rio Dulce to Guat City a few times by bus, so going with a group in a nice van with a group of friends was much nicer.  We stayed in the City overnight, got in some shopping, then early in the morning piled back in the van for the hour drive up to the festival. 

The day of the dead (November 1st) is a big holiday in predominately catholic Guatemala.  It's a time for families to remember and honor their ancestors, clean up gravesites, etc. For more than a hundred years, the locals up in the Guatemalan highlands have built and flown giant, colorful kites for the celebration. Anthropologists believe the practice actually goes back more than 3000 years to the Mayans. The biggest of these celebrations is in Sampango, outside of Antigua.

The kites are painted in images either representing someone who passed away the previous year, or maybe just fanciful or important symbols.  While most of the kites were "only" 10-15 feet in diameter, some of these were significantly bigger.  I tried to pace off the size of the biggest and I came up with between 50 and 60 feet!  And all hand painted.  Here are the pictures I took, but they really don't capture the true majesty!

Our first view of the staging area, most of the kites are still being put together so are not yet up:

I liked this one with the little "mini" kites around the perimeter:

One of the most elaborate ones, this was easily 50 feet tall.  The detail was amazing:

This was one of the biggest, I tried to pace it off (difficult because of the crowds) and came up with over 60 feet!  Several people though it was even bigger...

Here's the construction of the back.  They try to make these as light as possible, but also make do with what's available. 

Here's another even bigger!:

After wandering around watching them finish the construction, we decided to explore the rest of the festival.  Lunch roasting:

We eventually made our way to the cemetery.  There were many families having picnics, planting flowers, painting the tombs and burning incense.  We felt a little awkward taking picture, but here are a few I surreptitiously shot:

Then it was time to watch the kites fly :-) 

A few more kites have been erected and the crowd is pretty thick:

We paid the equivalent of about a dollar each for bleacher seats.  If they even allowed something like this back in the U.S. they would require the entire staging area cleared of spectators with large barricades and security keeping the crowds well away.  Here in Central America, they have a few kids run down a line telling everyone to make way, 5-6 big guys grab onto the kite line, running after the kids, the crowd scatters and hopefully the kite catches the wind before it arrows into the crowd, shear chaos.  Actually some of the groups were pretty well organized and could get their kites more or less in the air, but it looked pretty dangerous to be down under where the kites were flying/crashing.  Luckily as far as we could see there were no injuries.

Clear the crowds and run/pull:

It's up!

Two up at the same time:

Unfortunately there wasn't enough wind to even attempt anything larger than the "small" ones (12 foot diameter) before we had to go meet our ride back to Guatemala City.  Though as we were driving away, we saw one of the 20 foot diameter ones way up in the sky.

Overall it was a very fun day made more so since the majority of the crowd looked to be local Guatemalans.  The only bad thing was whenever you get that big a crowd, the pickpockets come out and one of our group got his wallet lifted.  In my opinion anyone bringing a wallet with drivers license, credit cards and lots of cash to something like this is just asking for it to be taken.  For me, other than enough for lunch and a few trinkets, everything was back in the hotel safe or still on the boat...

Cheers

Rio Dulce, Guatemala - 10/22/2012

The blog has been pretty quiet lately, Sunny has been tied to the dock at Mario’s marina since the last update and we haven’t been doing a lot of blog worthy stuff. For 2 months, I (Carolynn) was up in Southern California helping to take care of my brother; Chuck who has been very sick. I left Tom and Ginger back in Guatemala to fend for themselves. Chuck is doing very well so I’m now back on the boat. Unfortunately only a few days after I returned, Tom got the bad news that his mother had fallen and broke her hip. He is now back in Northern California helping her with her recovery. It is very unclear as to when we will be moving on. This is a nice place though to be "stuck". The river is safe year round and there are enough cruisers moving in and out that there's usually something going on.

Looking back, I had not updated the blog since we first got to the river so here are a few things we did before I left for California:

Fourth of July party at the marina. Whole roasted pig in a pit, live music with a local band and xylophone and lots of friends and laughs:

One morning a group of us went up the river a mile or so to the old fort "Castilla de Sa Felipe". The fort guarded the Spanish galleons from the pirates while the Spanish were off plundering the Mayan gold. The river, and especially the bar at the entrance must have been much deeper back then.

Here we are at the head of the flotilla, about to be passed by the other, much faster dingys  (look at the concentration on Tom, but almost everyone's dingy is faster than ours).

On the way we saw this sign on the river, it says roughly: "I sell marijuana".  I verified this with a local who confirmed that yep, that's what it says and the authorities don't care as long as they sell to other locals, gringos if caught will get a "fine" (probably pocketed by the police).

The fort is set on a point of land with views both up and down river.  The fort is in the process of being restored and the grounds are beautifully manicured.

The fort, complete with a small moat and draw bridge:

View downriver back toward town:

View upriver toward lake Izabal:

The fort was a maze of narrow corridors and steep steps, good for thwarting invaders:

How do I load one of these?

A few weeks later we took a one day trip to Quirigua; a midsized Mayan site with some of the tallest stelas, or carved stone monuments. The local sandstone is very strong and not prone to shearing or fracturing, allowing the sculptors at Quiriguá to erect the tallest freestanding stone monuments in the Americas. Restored from the jungle from 1974 through 1979, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.  It was quite impressive, unfortunately the few signs were in spanish, so we probably lost a little in our understanding.

Stelas protected by palapa roofs:

Intricate carving

We then walked to the "ball park", those stairs were steep!

Well, that's about all for now.  There were a few other minor excursions and a few pictures from our trip back to California, but this update is long enough.  Our long term plans are very unclear with Tom still up north, hopefully we'll be able to move on sometime this winter.

June 15, 2012 Rio Dulce Guatemala

About time for me to update the blog, right? 

About a month ago we went from a salt-water ocean boat to a fresh-water river boat.  For the summer we wanted to go somewhere relatively safe from hurricanes.  On Guatemala's Caribbean coast there is a large river called the Rio Dulce (sweet river).   About 25 miles up the river there is a large community of cruisers, marinas, ex-pats and rich Guatemalans.  High mountains and a long winding river mean that any hurricane that were to hit this area will (hopefully) dissipate before it gets to us.  Hundreds of boats show up each spring to spend the summer here.  Most people however button their boat up and go home for the summer.  It's a beautiful area, deep in the jungle with volcanic mountains all around.  Parrots fly overhead and in the morning we can hear the roaring of howler monkeys across the river.

Before we could get here though we had to cross the bar at the river entrance.  The depth at the entrance is around 5 1/2 feet at nominal tide.  We draw close to 7 feet, so we definitely can only get over at high tide.  The tides here in the Caribbean are much less than the pacific side (2 foot swings verses 20 feet), so there are only a couple of days a month that the tide is high enough that we have a chance of getting over without help.  Also the "deep" part is constantly shifting.  Locals at Livingston, the town at the entrance, make money coming out in little speed boats (pangas), "tip" the boats and pull them over the shallow spots.  We really didn't want to do that, so we planned to come over at the highest tide in May (+2 feet).   We got the latest waypoints, the time of high tide, lined the boat up, crossed our fingers and hit the bar as fast as our boat would go (which really isn't very fast).  We plowed a furrow through the mud but were able to force our way through :-).  15 boats came over the bar that morning and only four had to be tipped and dragged, not too bad.  Once in we got checked into Guatemala and headed up the river.

Our last view of the ocean for many months:

Rio Dulce, here we come:

We quickly entered the winding gorge where  Johnny Weissmuller swung from vines in the 1930's in his Tarzan movies.  I tried to capture it with the camera, but none of the pictures really showed the sheer cliffs disappearing into the jungle.

We spent the night anchored in Golfito lake then the next day pulled into our summer home at Mario's marina.

There are quite a few cruisers also spending the summer here, as well as quite a few that pulled in years ago and have never left.  There are lots of things to do; dominoes, volleyball in the afternoon, potlucks, movie nights.  Or just hang out in the very cold pool (cold is good here as it's very hot and steamy).  The local town has basic provisions so we're well set.

That's all for now.  We'll be traveling to California for a couple of weeks to see friends and family, as well as marvel at what a supermarket is.  

4/26/2012 - Roatan, Honduras Islands

We're currently on the Island of Roatan, part of Honduras.  It's been a while since our last post, internet connections have been a challenge.  Our last post was from San Andreas.  Since then we spent ten days on Providencia, had a fabulous sail to a tiny reef called the Hobbies, checked into Honduras on Guanaja, then moved to Roatan.  Here are a few highlights of the last month:

Providencia:

We went for a hike up the hill and caught this iguana admiring Sunny at anchor:

We went on a couple scuba dives with our friends, Susan & Michael on Calypso.  The first one was a "shark feeding".  One of the guides had a spear pole and caught 3-4 lion fish.  Lion fish are not native to the Caribbean and because of their fast reproduction and voracious feeding, are a major threat to the health of the reefs.  Divers are encouraged to kill lion fish and based on the sharks behavior, this is a common occurrence.  As soon as we dropped down below 60', 5-10 black tip reef sharks started following us around like puppy dogs.  The guide would hold up the speared lion fish and the sharks would circle the divers until one got up the nerve to grab the lion fish from the pole:

It was a fun experience and at no time did we feel too worried, though at times the sharks were all around and swimming through our group.

We watched the annual horse race on the beach.  This is a two horse race, one from the north end and one from the south.  The islanders spend months debating the merits of the horses and thousands of dollars worth of Colons (the local currency) is bet.  On the day of the race, hundreds show up on the beach and drink, party and argue for hours.  Then the two horses are paraded past the crowds, go to the far end then they're off!!  The horses thunder down the crowded beach, somehow avoiding killing anyone (though that's not true every year), then it's over, except for the months that will be spent arguing about the race. 

Here's a shot of the crowd that the two horses will be galloping through in about a minute:

Unfortunately, the wheelchair bound mother of the owner of the winning horse was so excited at the news that she had a stroke and died.  It put a damper on the mood, but everyone said she died happy.

We left Providencia, and several days later pulled into the island of Guanaja, Honduras. 

Here is Tom's description of our visit:

Today we went ashore to get some local currency; lempira (about 20 to the dollar). We left the boat and headed for the small island about a mile south west of our anchor spot. As we were putting along at dinghy speed a local passed us and waved in a slightly larger and much faster panga.

About a 1/4 mile further we noticed he had stopped and was looking at the prop on his outboard. It is very common for floating or semi submerged trash to tangle a prop and stop an outboard fairly quickly. As we drew nearer he motioned for us to come closer. As we did so he removed the cover from his engine and a plume of smoke escaped. Just as on land, large amounts of smoke emanating from the engine causes less than joyful thoughts. We tied his painter to our stern and started towing him to the island. As we approached the island we tried to get his attention so we could determine where he wished to go ashore. After some effort we determined that he had a house on the water front and we towed him into a dock that was really nothing more than the stilts his house was built on. We inquired as to the location of the best local market and were given directions along with the advise to hurry since they close from noon till two, it was eleven forty five.

We tied up at the public dock and walked to the bank. The streets are no more than 6 feet wide and there is no motorized traffic on the island. Everything is transported from the dock by push carts or dollies or in the case of lighter materials just carried. By the time we had our local money the stores were all closed and we had two hours to waste. We thought we might find a place for some lunch and so we took a walking tour of the island, about twenty minutes later we had covered every dead end and street on the island.

On our tour we had seen a sign for a restaurant, but the gate had been closed, not uncommon as many restaurants do not open until late in the afternoon or early evening. We found our way back and the gate was open so we looked at the menu printed on the fence outside, they advertised three kinds of chicken wings, hot dogs, hamburgers and fries. We walked up to the front of the building and looked in, there was an old woman sitting on a coach watching television.

Thinking we were clearly in the wrong place we walked back out the gate and were about to leave when another women looked out from her front yard and asked who we had lost, or a loosely translated Spanish version thereof. We told her we were looking for the restaurant to get some lunch. She informed us that the house we had just been to was a restaurant and went over and spoke to the women inside. After some consultation the she informed us that the only thing they had today was fried chicken, rice, salad, and plantains. We said that was fine and were invited into the house. We entered the house into the living room and felt a little uncomfortable as the old woman sitting on the couch was still watching TV and seemed to completely ignore us. In about 30 seconds a second woman came out from the back of the house and invited us to sit on the back porch as it would be much cooler there and less noisy as the TV was up fairly loud.

We exited the rear of the house, through the kitchen, and were seated at a small plastic table with two plastic chairs. Before we could be seated the woman had to invert one the chairs to remove a cat that was sleeping there. There were also two small dogs that while chained had free access to our location and we needed to become friends before we could be seated. A few minutes later the woman who seated us arrived with two plates of food; fried chicken and potato salad with rice and fried plantains, as an after thought she brought ketchup and a frozen bottle of orange soda.

The food was superb, the chicken tender and moist, the potato salad had a little spice and fried plantains while they look like bananas are really a perfect replacement for French fries and that's what the ketchup was for. We were there for about an hour and the entire time the dogs were quiet and did not beg, the cat came and went and the breeze felt quite comfortable in the shade. After we settled our tab and exited through the side yard we wandered off to find the local supermarket though our stomachs were not nearly as eager as they had been when we landed. Again we found, that in this part of the world you should not judge a book by the cover, if you can't find what you are looking for you should just ask and people will point you in the right direction.

After a few days, we went to the larger island of Roatan.  We decided to pull onto a dock so we pulled into Fantasy Island.  This is a fancy resort on their own island, lush beautiful grounds and lots of iguanas and monkeys.  This guy was very interested in our cat, and vice versa:

We've also gone a few wonderful dives here and fed lion fish to some big eels (but no pictures).

That's all for now.  In a couple of days we'll be moving on to the Rio Dulce, Guatemala.