A Day on the Rio

The Rio Dulce, which means Sweet River, is where the cruisers go to play. They say it is like a cruiser’s day camp and they are right. There really isn’t a typical day for us, some days we had to be off the boat as work was being done in the main saloon and we would play a game of mar jongh, volleyball at 4 p.m. and a dip in the pool to cool off then of course happy hour to follow the hard day of fun. Other days we started working when we got up and stopped for volleyball, or worked through until 6pm.
Our first week on the river we tried to organize some boat work projects, like: getting our forward diesel tank replaced and general cleaning of the stainless steel. The marina offers workers at $4 US an hour to help out, so at that price Cheryl was very happy to give someone else the job of cleaning the stainless steel. Some jobs you do yourself: Karen and Cheryl spent the morning removing the foam around the old diesel tank. Then Marvin worked with Cheryl to finish the job as Karen and Cheryl had agreed to go for an afternoon sail with a couple, where the woman had not sailed before. This women is from Colombia and her and her husband just bought a catamaran and she had no idea on how to sail so Karen gave her a crash course for a half day.
To give you an idea of where we have been staying, it is about a 2 mile dingy ride into a little town call Frontiera where you can buy most anything from fruits and vegetables, meat to motorcycles. There also seems to be a large number of pharmacies, almost one at every corner. As our 2 dingy engines have been acting up we decided we are going to buy a new engine, so off we went to town and bought a new 8 hps Yamaha Enduro engine. What a difference 4 more hps makes, now we can go so fast Karen can dry her hair on the way into town. Zoom Zoom… Frontiera has a large bridge that spans the river, apparently it the longest and largest bridge in Central America so it has become a local attraction, when you reach the high point of the bridge most buses and even transport trucks stop to look around and take pictures, you can even buy juice and peanuts at the top as a local entrepreneur has set up a makeshift vendor stand. It is certainly worth the walk as the view from the top is amazing. There is always a lot of traffic in town, a great deal of it trafficking in cows in open trucks. So we don’t eat from the road side food stands.
For a bit of exercise you can go for a walk behind the marina. You walk through the village where most of the marina staff live. You also go through a rubber plantation. Great views from the top of the hills.
What do you do when you are tired of board games and volleyball well you get a bunch of cruisers from your Marina and go explore one of the side little rivers. So off we went covered in bugs spray, with camera in hand and a full tank of gas. 8 dinghies went exploring and we felt like we were bold new explorers trying to find a new world. The river was so thick with little water plants that we had to paddle for some of it and as one dingy blazed the path ahead, the plants would close up again in seconds it was like no one had gone ahead of you. It was quiet except for occasional sound of the Howler Monkeys saying “hi “.
Our next excursion was a trip to Guatemala City, a 5 hour bus ride on nice air conditioned bus almost as good as our buses at home and the roads have as many potholes as our too. Guatemala City is divided up into 25 zones with 4 million people living in the city…talk about traffic jams. The tourist zone which is where we spent most of our time has sidewalks made of Guatemalan green marble. The drivers are nuts here though, they have these raise speed bumps where pedestrians are supposed to cross but for the Guatemalan drivers the bumps are just there to launch their car in the air and if there is a person there who cares. Even the sidewalks are fair game for cars and motorcycles. So when you walk around, which we certainly did a lot, we had to have our eyes and ears open to make sure we did not get hit by a car or motorcycle. We don’t think they would really hit you but it sure looks like and we don’t want to test that assumption. We went to Guatemala City to do some shopping and exploring and sure enough we found most everything on our list even the things we thought we could only find in Canada. And guess what, it was way cheaper than Canada. They have large stores like a Costco or Walmart and a million hardware stores (okay only a few) and we probably went into all of them at least it seem like it. Like every city, probably everywhere there is McDonalds, but here they deliver!
We forgot to mention the people here are very friendly and helpful, an example of this was one time we were standing in front of a car dealership with a map and both of us thought we needed to go in two different directions, okay we were slightly lost, so this guy who overheard us asked if he could assist us, we of course where miles away from where we need to be so he asked if could give us a lift. He said his driver and car was right there and if we would like he could give us a lift. So we took him up on the offer. No we don’t usually go into strangers cars but this guy seem to very nice and he certainly looked like he had money. As we were driving he asked why where going to a hardware store and we explained that this what all cruisers do when they go into town. Not only did he give us a ride he recommend this great restaurant, he felt it is the best in all of Central America, called Don Mikel. He said make sure you are there by 6 pm or you will wait in line for hours. So after our day of shopping and getting our hair cut we went to the restaurant he recommended and boy was he right, the food was amazing and yes by 6:15 p.m. the line-up was huge.
We had been invited to spend a couple nights in Antigua with some cruisers that we know from our marina, who had rented a house for a month. Maggie and Paul picked us at our hotel in Guatemala City and off we went to Antiqua via taxi but first we need to stock up on some food and wine.
Antiqua was the capital of Central America but earthquakes and volcanoes damaged much of the city, many buildings have been rebuilt, but some of the churches had not been. The streets are cobble stone and very narrow with walls all around. But behind the walls is where the hiden treasures lie, usually you will find a house with beautiful courtyards and fountains and Maggie and Paul’s place was magnificent they a 2 story house with 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, kitchen, living room, formal dining room, library, sitting room and 3 courtyards all with fountains. Each bedroom had a fireplace and boy did you need it because Antiqua is in the mountains and it is cold up there at least for us, okay it was 55 F. We spent 3 lovely days with Maggie and Paul, eating out and exploring the sites. We even went to the local market where the average size of most of the people there was less than 5 feet so Karen felt tall. We wondered around the market and dreaming up ideas for appetizers and bought the ingredients for a fabulous appetizers night. Oh yeah the wine was good too. We said our goodbyes to Maggie and Paul and the city of Antiqua knowing that we will be back to spend more time in this beautiful city.
One of the cruisers friend (Jimmy on Blue Water Cat) organized a Full Moon party and race up to the lake about 4 miles beyond us. This is one of the advantages of being on the river, you don’t have to be stuck to the dock, as there are plenty of anchorages and rivers to explore. As we were heading home two days later we decided not to move Interlude up the river so we joined Jimmy on his catamaran, yes a boat with two hulls. We are still wondering why they need two hulls. We took our gennicker and had a great race. The party was held at place called Denny’s Beach were we stayed for 2 nights and played Karen played Mar Jongh and Cheryl entered a kayak race, played bocce, horseshoes and then it was time for volleyball of course! The next day we dauned our best riding duds and went for a horseback ride, that turned out to be about 4 hours and very aggressive, but a great way to see the countryside. The horses were better prepared for the ride then our butts.
Back to Canada. Getting back was not as easy as it should have been as Mexicana Air was going out of business. In fact we ended up on the last Mexicana Air flight, we did get to waggle our wings in a fly by of the Mexico City airport. Once in Canada something like 18 beds in 5 weeks! It was good to see everyone. We kicked off the visiting with a 50th birthday party for Cheryl. A great turn out and great food. We did the rounds of the doctors, visiting family and friends. Karen went to Winnipeg and Kenora and Cheryl went off to Edmonton. Cheryl had enough Dill Pickle chips to last her a few weeks, and as you can guess, she really didn’t share them. (Okay she shared a 1/3 of a bag)
Back to the Rio. We were to have had wood work done while we were away, needless to say that wasn’t done. And when we got back we found that the lid of the fridge had delaminated. The wood work and the repair work to the fridge is in our main saloon, so it made it very difficult to live on the boat while the workers where there. Basically our entire main saloon was in the V-birth. So 5 weeks later we have the new diesel tank in and filled. Good news is it holds 66 gals, which is more than before, so we are happy but the bad news is when Karen checking the tank she noticed that it was leaking! So our main saloon is only partially back together. Just in case you are wondering why we wanted a new diesel tank is the last one leak too!
We did celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving. By the way there only 2 boats at our marina who are Canadians the rest are mostly from the states with an occasional Brit to add some flare. Everyone chipped in making their favourite holiday dish and marine provided the turkeys. Great food and great company!
We did a quick trip to Tikal (the largest Mayan city) and Yaxha, a few hours from the Rio. We went with cruisers from 3 other boats. We stayed in a lovely little hotel in Flores, an island town. You walk around Flores in about 20 minutes, which we did, then circled it again one street up. A very quaint, quiet town.
We had a guide for Tikal and Yaxha who did a great job explaining what life was like, he made sense of the ruins. Temple one from Tikal is used in the tourist brochures for Guatemala, and it is every bit as impressive in real life. Tikal once held some 150,000 people, only a small amount of it is excavated, which we are glad of as we walked and climbed all day. The views from the tops of the temples are amazing, but you have to remember not to look down. Two of our crew are birders and there are a lot of different birds to see, they added greatly to the trip.
Yaxha was a much smaller city, less was excavated, but it is still very impressive. It had a very different feel from Tikal, quieter, more laid back. Which is probably just about how it once was. We were there on Bruce’s birthday. Karen called from the top of temple 4! The ruins are in the middle of the jungle, so the only way you get cell phone reception is from the top of the tall temples!
The next party was Halloween. Cheryl dressed up as a can of deep woods off, the perfume of choice on the Rio. Karen came as a Gemini, an angle and devil. Everyone said that they voted for Cheryl’s costume as the best costume, but she didn’t win! Still a great time was had by all.
We continued with the boat work job list, then at the end of November we went off to Cuba to have a holiday with Karen’s brother Bruce. This was a special week for Karen’s parents as they often went to Cuba and this resort. The resort puts on a special week for all returners and Karen’s parent never missed it. Some of the returners at the hotel did not know that Karen’s Dad had passed away, so there were a lot of tears. This was also where we spread Dad’s ashes alongside Mom’s, and Champagne was added to the ground. It was a great week that went by way too fast. Cheryl is not tired of lobster, but had her fill. We even started to get tired of smoked salmon!
Quite a contrast coming back to Guatemala City. The traffic! In Cuba the roads are almost bare, a few horse drawn carts/wagons, a few bicycles, even bicycle taxis, but very few cars. Guatemala City on the other hand has a huge number of cars and therefore lots of traffic jams.
One day we had some 22 people from the marina go to a restaurant for prime rib. We went in the bigger power boats. The one we were in has a 175 outboard! You can see Cheryl enjoying the ride back.
We are planning on leaving the river on Monday for Roatan, maybe with a stop in Utilia, part of the Bay Islands of Honduras. We have the usual last minute things to do, plus we need to test the diesel tank for leaks again! TTFN