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!