Placencia February 2016

So, we spent nearly a week in the Golfete, a lake on the way from Monkey Bay Marina enroute to Livingston where we'd check out of Guatemala. After getting fuel in Fronteras, we headed down-river. Once a little way down, our motor quit. We restarted but still had problems so we anchored in the lake to figure out what was going on. Turns out, our filters were plugged so we changed those. We started again, but same problem and in the end, the uptake from the bottom of the tank was also plugged solid. We remedied that too, but had now missed our tide window to cross the bar at Livingston...so we crossed on Feb. 10th and headed straight to Placencia Belize. It's a much nicer town than Fronteras and English speaking. However, it is much more expensive to enter or be in the country and a lot more for provisions as well.

This is the main street, twice as wide as in Fronteras and NO semi-trailers or tuk-tuks to deal with.

As you can see, not even many cars going back and forth.

This is one of the 3 or 4 veggie stores. Strange, in Guatemala there were mangoes galore and avocados too...here, they say they're out of season...how can that be?  Wish I'd bought more when we were in Guatemala!

This is one of the other general grocery stores...there are about 6 of these, all owned by very unfriendly Chinese folk.  We're not sure why they're so unfriendly...we speculated that maybe they've had some prejudice problems, but don't know for sure.

It's very tropical here, obviously, and when it's hot it's VERY HOT!

But, for the most part here, this is what we've been seeing.  There has been cold front after cold front coming into the Caribbean from the east coast of the USA.

Hard to see here, but it's just pouring and quite cold...for here.

This is a view of Fortuitous from a local bar where we had dinner.

So, one of the nights we had a big blow/rainstorm and this Moorings catamaran dragged anchor onto us at about 2 am (of course) in the morning in about 25 kts of wind and driving rain.

We were attached for quite a long time. The charterers didn't even wake up until we banged on the hull and woke them. Then, only the 2 men came to do anything. We didn't know how many were aboard, so asked. When they said there were 4, we were more than a little ticked off!  Told them to get them out to help fend off. They didn't provide fenders, didn't start the motor or pull up the anchor until told to do so. Doesn't look like much damage, but we are very sad about this!!!

The charter people took full responsibility and we have been dealing with Moorings for the past week. They wanted to fix it here, but then we'd be here for another couple of weeks, so we said no. We'll have it all done in Florida, if we ever get to leave here.

Lots of scratches and gouges and the teak rail is lifted, so we'll have to reseal this before leaving. Moorings settled today, and paid us out so we can have it fixed in Florida. They were pretty good about it, but it all takes time. We hope to be heading out to the cays tomorrow, although there are 2 or 3 more cold fronts coming this way...we'll see how it goes.  Still overcast and cold here.