RAT-A-PHOOEY!!!

Here, in Robert's Grove it's not all as peachy-keen as one would hope. We have one Guatemalan power boater who isn't smart enough to know he needs to slow down inside the marina. Going out, he went so fast that we slammed against the dock and damaged our toe rail.  Coming in, today, he did the same speed.  Ralph went down to speak to him but, of course, he said he couldn't speak English.  For Ralph, that's not a problem so he spoke to him in Spanish.  Again, no apology..."big motor, big waves, can't slow down any more...", you get the picture.  He'd be the first to complain if someone else did that to HIS fancy boat!!

 

However, this has been the least of our issues here.  We seem to have enticed a rat aboard with our smorgasbord of fresh fruit and taco chips. We found droppings in the cockpit, one morning, so I started looking for other signs.  He'd had a "field day" in the tomatoes; he'd taken bites out of several apples and demolished the pears; he'd somehow gotten in the cupboard above the sink, in the V-berth, and stuffed himself on taco chips as well!  At this point we were thinking/hoping for a mouse...a male mouse, but this was not the case.  We put down small mouse traps and some sticky paper traps, the first night and hoped for the best.

The small traps, alone, with the sticky paper did nothing as the rat seemed to avoid the sticky pads and could steal out of the little traps without setting them off.  We then borrowed these box traps from the chartering company here in the marina. This set up didn't work for us either.  We think the rat came out of the opening you see above, and got one toe on the sticky pads.  In trying to get free, he set off the two mouse traps and probably scared the crap out of himself, so he gave up for the night.  We think this is probable because both traps were sprung and we found one sticky pad inside the opening, and it had a few tiny markings in it.

This was our last set up but, by this time he/she had been aboard 4 days.  That's just too creepy and upsetting!!! We bought a trap of our own and baited it along with the other two.  We also bought the large rat-size sticky pads, so it would have been next to impossible to get out of the V-berth area without being trapped or stuck to a pad. We settled in for the night...thankfully at the opposite end of the boat!! 

SUCCESS!!!  At midnight, Ralph got up to check the traps and we were in luck...not so much the rat!!  We were upset to see that it wasn't a mouse, but glad to have trapped it. I'm not really a hard person, and I do like most animals, but I didn't shed a tear for this one!  Ralph hung the trap from the dock, overnight, so he/she could take a midnight " dip"!  No tears shed aboard Fortuitous, for this critter!

The next night, we put out the traps and sticky pads, but no sign (THANKFULLY) of any more stowaways!  Then we had to set about trying to find where it had been, or if it built a nest...and what did it chew up to do so.  There's Ralph pulling apart the V-berth, but no luck there. So far, we haven't found any sign of the nest or what may have been used to make one.  We keep the companionway doors closed at night, now, and are careful to throw out all garbage and leave nothing enticing in the cockpit.

It should be mentioned here that we had several sets of people wanting to join us, this season...good thing we didn't set anything up with all that has gone wrong so far...oh, and this would have been your cabin...sharing with the stowaway!!

So, are we having fun here??...not so much!!!

Belize

 

 We arrived in Belize 3 days after leaving Livingston Guatemala.  This is a pleasant little place, with half-way decent provisioning and great restaurants...who needs to provision if you can eat out??  

It's  little blurry, in this photo, because it is raining hard!  When it rains here, it really rains!  We got 20 plus gallons of drinking water added to our tanks.  We should have taken a photo, but what we do is wait for the decks to be thoroughly wet, scrub the foredeck, then damn it up behind the deck intake...and let the water run in.  Works very well and faster than our watermaker.



These fishermen are in Placencia Harbour, but we've seen them out in the Cays too.  They all sleep aboard for weeks at a time...God knows where?  What a life!! 

We anchor off this bar, called Yoli's, where we can get free internet from the hotel next door.  They don't have food, except a BBQ on Fridays.

 

There is no country check-in, in Placencia, so you have to go to the big ship dock area by water taxi.  This is the Mango Creek water taxi stop, and from here we go by land taxi to Big Creek for check in. We thought you might never have seen a menu quite like this one...we haven't either. Really, who orders seaweed and Ovaltine?

 

In Placencia they have what they call the "narrowest street in the world"...really a board walk.  Lots of little shops and restaurants.  Barefoot Bar is one of our favourites.

 



 

One of the houses or shops along the route.

 

 

Ralph liked the spelling here!

 Little guys on the front porch.  Wonder where Mama is?

 

This is actually a little out of order as we really did this river tour/hike after returning from Garbutt, which are the photos below these.  It's just too much work to reorganize it, so I'm just going with it like this...unless I let my OCD take over and correct it. 

I let Ralph talk me into yet another river tour/hike combo.  Don't even ask!!!  Just plain stupid, is all I can say.  We went with Homers' Odyssey (Stan and Lynn), fellow cruising buddies from Calgary, and their landlubber friends, Pat and Harry. 

 

This is where we started, called the Monkey River Tour, and the bugs started too.  Before that, we were going too fast for them to keep up.  There were some new ones, called "Doctor Flies" because of their liking to take blood...you get the picture!!

 

A resident croc.

 

 



Bats waiting for their night out. 

 

Our guide was actually very good, but I had a very difficult time paying attention and focusing on what he was saying because I was trying to keep myself safe from the bugs.  They loved me, even though I'd slathered deet on before the trip, and during.  I was a lot better off once Harry suggested I use this breadfruit tree leaf as a swatter!  What a brilliant man!!  Here, Brent, our guide, is showing us how the little hooks on the back of the leaves act like Velcro.





 

Once on land, the doctor flies left us alone...must be just along the river...or maybe just a change of shifts??  The mosquitoes took over...and did an even better job!  They drove us all nuts and we cut it a bit short as all were being "bugged to death"!  Here we are at a large stand of bamboo.





 

 

On the way back, we stopped to watch the manatees.  We didn't get many good looks, nor many good photos.  They're not big on jumping out of the water.



 

Sometimes just a nostril is all you see.

 

After a very long wait for weather, in Placencia, we finally escaped and headed north.  We had a great sail to Garbutt Cay.  When we went to anchor, and go into reverse to set it...we had no reverse.  We couldn't figure it out but the end result is that the tranny is on the fritz.



 

We hung out there, for several days, waiting for Cucumber Beach Marina to tell us they had room.  Eventually, after a real run around, we headed back to Placencia.  We had waited almost a week for them, but no real help. The junk and plastics on the beaches is just appalling! 

 

While there, we went ashore to the tiny mangrove island where we found this huge pile of conch...it's almost obscene when you see this and wonder how long it must take them to get that size.  I must google that.



 

Here are some more.

 

This is where the fisherman lives...talk about basic!

 

This was his collection of fish floats, hanging in the tree.  He also had several hard hats, not sure where from or what for.

 

So, here we are in Robert's Grove Marina awaiting the arrival of our new rebuilt tranny from Maine.  We'll be here a couple of weeks, to three, probably.

 



 And here is the culprit.  No fun for Ralph, getting this out.  150 lbs., all together, and of course not easy to get at.  Wish us luck!

 

BACK TO FORTUITOUS

 

 We left Vancouver January 20th and flew to Guatemala City.  I (Cheryl) had arranged, through the owner of the hotel where we usually stay, to see a local doctor about the bug bites I received last season.  I wanted some answers regarding the chance that the Polymyalgia Rheumatica, diagnosed in Canada, could have been a result of the tabano fly bites.  After numerous tests, he told me I had had (but no longer have) Lyme Disease and that this could have been transmitted by these flies.  So, needless to say, I will be watching for them all this season and will be requesting more in-depth testing at home, in Canada. But, enough about me...

We headed to Fortuitous, on the 22nd, and found her to be in pretty good shape...nice and clean inside and out.

Here she sits in Monkey Bay marina, where we keep her in Rio Dulce.

Alas, all was not as good as it first appeared.  We'd had tarps over both booms, thankfully, but when we removed them and it rained...and boy, did it rain a couple of the days, we found several leaks we weren't expecting.  The worst was in the aft head where, apparently, the new hatch was not sealed properly to the deck.  Water had leaked inside and totally destroyed the headliner.  Thankfully, we had lots of the vinyl and Ralph managed to find the 1/8" plywood.  So, here I am sitting on the dock making the new headliner.  The old one, covered in mould and mildew, is in the foreground. As well as this leak, we had a leaking aft cabin window, a front main cabin hatch leak, and a couple more leaking chain-plates.  We re-sealed all of them and all seem to be in good order now.  Another big issue was we had tenants in the transom of our dinghy, which we had kept in land storage under cover.  Termites had basically almost destroyed it!  Thankfully, we were told there was a Guatemalan fellow who could repair this.  We got a hold of him and, voila!!  3 days later the dinghy came back and seems also to be in good order, so far.  We should have taken photos of this damage but, as is usually the case, we were so upset and in a dither that this didn't occur to us!

This is the view, of Monkey Bay Marina, from the marina skiff that we were lucky enough to borrow to go to Fronteras to buy provisions and such.  Our dinghy was out for repair, much of the time, and besides that it is so small that we would be soaked (along with all our groceries) trying to return from Fronteras to Monkey Bay.  It is quite a long ride.

Speaking of Fronteras, here are some shots of what it is like to shop there.  Mostly, we have to go from little shop to little shop, and they are mostly all lined up along the road you see below, along with food vendors, hardware stores, plastics and you name it!

As you can see, this is quite a challenge as this is also the main road, from Guatemala City to Belize.  All the big trucks carrying gas, food, cattle, and all other types of vehicles travel this road...meanwhile, you are standing at the side of the road trying to pick out bananas and pineapples.  It's a life-threatening experience and, by far, my least favourite town so far!

There is one "supermarket" and I use this term very loosely!!  It is really only for dry goods, with a few veggies and a little meat.  There isn't much in the way of the American/Canadian products that we are used to at home, although some of the smaller shops carry a few things, but at great expense. 

We have to take a boat to Fronteras, as there is no road from Monkey Bay.  We get off at a dock near a bar/restaurant called Bruno's.  There is a lot of boat traffic here, large and small.  These local Guatemalans use these small Cayucos to get about...not much freeboard on these.

And some of the boats are unbelievably overloaded!!

We watched the Super Bowl game across the river, at another marina.  It was a neat venue, but nothing like the San Blas 4 years ago!  A great game if you were  Seattle fans...and we were!

We were lucky enough to touch bases with some cruising friends, from last season: Barry and Lindy (on Samarang) and Sue and Dave (on New Horizon).  Always fun to meet up with friends!

We never tire of the beautiful flowers of the tropics.

We headed downriver on February 4th, to check out in Livingston and head to Belize.  We saw these water-lilies enroute.  We checked out and spent 2 nights at Tres Puntas, 2 hours away, still fixing some other leaks.  Then, we headed for Placencia, Belize, which is our current location. Today, we checked into Belize and all went well with that.  We will be heading out to some of the Cays in the next day or two, and trying to head to some of the northern areas of Belize, that we didn't see last season, then possibly on to Mexico and Cuba.  We are having difficulty getting our email to work through our SSB Radio, so may stick around a couple more days to try to get that going.  We're used to being in touch.  More to come from the Cays!