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... and then the Cockroaches came.... When we got back to Mario's Marina after our land trips, we were pleased to find the boat in ship shape. The engine started right away, the batteries were healthy and we had only a little mould here and there. However, we were upset to find that cockroaches had finally invaded us. Most cruisers already had that problem by the time they reached Guatemala, so we were boasting that we had been spared. We were quietly praising each other for being so neat and clean, and that this extra effort obviously paid off.... So it was doubly upsetting to be greeted by the beasts in the galley on our return. We were told that the Rio Dulce cockroaches have wings, so that's how they got onboard. Well, we isolated the problem to the knife rack by the galley sink where we could see a few crawling around. We tried all kinds of remedies to get rid of them, everything from a solution of borax, sugar and condensed milk to bug sprays and fly swats. Finally, after three weeks, we seem to be rid of them. But what a pain. You have to be very careful down here. We never bring groceries onboard in cardboard boxes as the cockroaches lay their eggs in the corrugated walls of the carton. Also, we always examine carefully the fruit and vegetables in the cockpit before bringing them down into the boat. The farmer's markets are usually invested with the beasties. So you can see we have our set of unusual problems in paradise... Mayas sewing under the Palms for $1 per hr! The first week back, we did a lot of work on the boat getting it ready for our exit into the open Caribbean. We had some of the local Guatemalans do the polishing and scrubbing and one fellow sewed four slipcovers for our cockpit cushions. We bought six metres of "tipico", i.e. traditional Guatemalan fabric, for 20 dollars and Ronny, a Maya Indian, spent four hours making them on his manual sewing machine under the palm trees for four dollars! Imagine, one dollar per hour! And that's good money down here! We were tempted to give him more, but have been warned not to do so. If everyone (the Gringos) start to pay the locals more, prices will obviously go up and the cheap labour will disappear in no time. Instead, we gave gifts to show our appreciation. T-shirts and baseball caps were particularly popular. While in Rio Dulce, we were concerned to hear of a cholera outbreak in a village nearby. According to the local lab clinic, 15 people had died. This prompted several boats to leave the river earlier than intended. They were worried that quarantine might be imposed in subsequent countries on tourists coming from Guatemala. The hurricane season was still not over, so we chose to stay put until the end of October, as planned. We were super cautious with our food and water intake and ate out only when on land trips. We later heard that no questions had been asked about the cholera issue when cruisers arrived in Honduras and Belize. Apparently, cholera is an ongoing problem down here, and not much attention is paid to it by the authorities. Imagine it may have to reach epidemic proportions before any action is taken... The wonderful World of Electronics I (Anne) spent quite a bit of time on the river learning to use a weather fax programme, which enables us to capture weather forecasts on the computer. It is neat how it works. I use my laptop computer hooked up to the single sideband (SSB) short-wave radio through a modem, tune in to the specific frequencies at regularly scheduled times, and with the capabilities of the weather fax programme, can receive a complete weather report for the area of choice. When the transmission is finished, I make a hard copy on my printer for further analysis. Pretty nifty! The weather forecasts are the same as we listen to on the short-wave radio, i. e. from the National Weather Service in different areas of the United States according to location required. However, the reception is often garbled or disturbed by other users, so typically, when the report reaches your area, it fades out or is overpowered by someone on a frequency closeby! So the benefit of receiving a printed report is obvious. The only thing we need to figure out now is how to safely secure and operate the equipment at sea while heaving all over the place! There is no end to the challenges out here!
Finally, we were ready to leave Rio Dulce on October 20. There was going to be a high-high tide at Livingston on October 23 at 0615 hrs. so we had time to take a couple of side trips on the way down the river. We chose to take NOR SIGLAR up a side river of Rio Dulce, on the Rio Chacon Machaca. The entry to this river, which was actually from Lago El Golfete, was difficult to find, since it was hidden by high reeds. The entry was very narrow and shallow - only 8-10 feet, but once we were in the river itself, it widened to about 100-150 feet and depth of abt. 25-30 feet. It was a strange feeling to motor up this river, first through dense jungle, then into open savannah where cows were grazing right down to the river edge. When they saw us, children came running down to the river from their straw huts. They may never have seen a fancy sailboat motoring into their territory before, and they were very curious. We checked out of Livingston together with three other boats on October 22, ready for the sand bar at sunrise the next morning. This time, it went like a dream. We were down to 2.0 meters but didn't touch. It was at the end of the rainy season and the river was very high. Snorkelling with Skin Divers After checking into Belize at Punta Gorda, we headed out to our "friends", on the shallow but beautiful cays again. We had 8 days till our friend from Montreal, Mike Sauze was coming for a 12 day visit. One of the highlights was snorkelling with some local divers in the Ranguna Cays area. It was fascinating to watch these young boys go down to 30-40 feet without scuba gear to catch conch and lobsters. It was really incredible to see them skin-dive so deep down where they searched under rocks and corals for lobster. When they spotted them, they hooked the lobster on a short handled stick with a fishhook at the end of it. It was very primitive - but it worked! The divers were able to be down for 2-3 minutes at a time. In the space of abt. 1 hour, one of them brought up 20 conchs and 5 large lobsters. They were out from abt. 0900 - 1500, so you can imagine what kind of catch all 4 of them returned with!Feasting on Lobster and Friendship It was exciting to watch and we swam alongside them, holding onto their small cayuko, which they pushed along as they were scanning the sea floor for a catch from the surface. At the end of the day, they brought their catch and cayukoes back to the "mother ship" (abt. 25 ft. fibreglass outboard fishing boat), loaded the 4 cayukoes onboard and sped back to their little lean-to fishing camp on the cay to clean the catch. This took a couple of hours till sunset, when they had everything safely packed on ice. A larger fishing boat from the mainland came out to the cay once a week to pick up the catch and bring them fresh supplies of food and water. Needless to say, we had a great feast on lobster tails that night. We got 5 beautiful tails, 4 conch and a large red snapper, all cleaned and filleted for abt. $10 worth of canned food, which they preferred to money. We had dinner and lunch out of this for 3 days. The "kids" were really clean cut - they refused our offer of both beer and cigarettes... October 30, my birthday, was celebrated with one of the best sails we have ever had down here. Anne baked a birthday cake and served sardine and goat cheese sandwiches, my favourites, for lunch. Not bad for a square head, eh??? I even talked to my parents on the ham radio maritime mobile net from Ontario that morning. Who said we were far from civilisation? Mike arrived on schedule on November 1, and like all our other visitors, he brought our mail and some spare parts for the boat. He also brought a wonderful gift - a portable water purifier - great for these countries where the water is always suspect. No peace for the wicked, though. The next morning we were up at 0500 hrs. to get Mike and Anne to the bus for Tikal, the famous Maya Ruins in Northern Guatemala, which they visited for 3 days. I stayed with the boat, mainly because it wouldn't be safe to leave it at anchor (weather/robbers), but also because I was totally "ruined out". You can see only so many ruins - besides, there is always maintenance to do on the boat. The Joy of Cruising: Wet Dinghy Rides and packed "Chicken Buses" Before we even got to the bus station, we got thoroughly soaked. It happened in the dinghy on the way into the dock, sloppy waves crashing into the dinghy. Belize City harbour gets really choppy and you can't avoid it, even if it is just a short distance. Oh, well - although it looks mighty funny to walk down the street slopping wet, it takes only a little while to get dry in the 30 degree plus heat. Mike and I got tickets to the Guatemala border 72 miles away at $3 per person and we were on our way, once again for me - on a packed "chicken bus" - but a first for Mike, and a really trying experience! Pretty slow going, it took 3 hours to the border, but that was nothing compared to what we had in store in Guatemala. There, we had another 50 miles to go, but on unpaved, narrow, rough roads full of potholes and a real mess after the rainy season. Another "chicken bus" would have taken us all day, so we got fancy and hired a minibus with 6 other people that brought us within 30 miles from Tikal. So the last bit we had to take the local bus again, and we finally arrived at the national part by 4 PM, 9 hours travelling time for 120 miles. Mike was not impressed..... We tried to get lunch at one of the junctions but had to settle for the only thing on the menu - two tiny pancakes with honey each! While we were treasuring these morsels, we were deluged with local children trying to sell us "carvings". It was literally junk, but Mike was "taken" by the children, who are always so cute. So seeing that he showed some interest, we were instantly surrounded by about a dozen little Indians, waving and yelling "Buy from me! No, me, me, me!!!! Finally, they got a few quetzals each to have their picture taken with Mike and we sent them on their way! Suddenly, they weren't so cute any more! Once in Tikal, we settled in at the Jungle Lodge, which was not cheap at $40 for a double/$30 for a single. This place is literally in the thick of the jungle and facilities are pretty simple. They have no communications out of the park in terms of telephones, fax, TV nor electricity, so they run the generator for part of the day and turn it off at night. I am glad I brought a flashlight so I could see to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night! We were very lucky to get hot water the first day, but that was it! Sunrise over Archaeological Wonders We wasted no time to explore the part before dark, wanting to get our bearings in the 6 square mile area of ruins, so that we could find the famous Temple IV in the pitch black the next morning. We had been recommended to watch the sunrise over Tikal from the top of this temple, so we wanted to familiarise ourselves in the area before this excursion. It was very exciting to hear the howler monkeys serenading each-other in the tree tops, not to be outdone by the Mackaw parrots and toucans. We also saw lots of golden turkeys, which are very colourful, and several fox like animals (name unknown to us). The glow over the ruins in the sunset was almost eerie and the walk back to the hotel a bit spooky. Boy, was I glad to have big, strong Mike with me! We had a plain, boring dinner that night at a sterile Americanised restaurant which advertised that their fruit and vegetables were safe to eat and water had been purified. How comforting to know way out in the wilderness! The Maya ruins at Tikal are without doubt one of the world's archaeological wonders. The massive ruins are concentrated in the centre of the National Park, an area of abt. 200 square miles and a section of 6 square miles has been cleared, revealing over 3000 buildings. The University of Pennsylvania has been excavating on the site since the 50's and today, there are abt. 100 buildings and pyramids in various shapes and sizes completed. Settlement at Tikal began abt. 600 BC and was continuously occupied until around 900 AD when like other Maya sites, it was mysteriously abandoned. Population estimates for Tikal at its peak range from 40 - 75,000 people. Armed Guards in the pitch black of the early Morning Jungle Since we had made such an effort to get to this place, we wanted to make the most of it, so the next morning the alarm clock went off at 0500 for our walk through the pitch black jungle, flashlight in hand, to Temple IV to see the sunrise. We couldn't believe it when a uniform clad, armed parks guard approached us in the dark to see if we had valid tickets to enter! They sure take their job seriously in the jungle. It was over a mile's hike to Temple IV, and quite an awkward climb up six ladders on our hands and keens to reach to top! Only the top part of the temple, which is the highest in the park (over 200 feet), was excavated, so we had quite a time of it climbing over the lower part of the overgrown ruins in the dark. Temple IV is the highest pre-Colombian structure in the Americas. It was strange sitting high above, gazing out over rooftops rising up from the misty sea of the jungle. I couldn't help but think of how it must have been more than a thousand years ago when the plaza was alive with activity. Unfortunately, a clear sunrise never materialised, and the mist never did totally lift, so the experience did not meet our expectations. We did hear the jungle wake up and come alive, though, and that was real magic and special enough. The howler monkeys were particularly vociferous. On the way back to the hotel for breakfast, we got lost and hiked over 5 miles before we finally sat down to a terrible breakfast of crisp fried eggs, beans and sawdust toast (no butter, marmalade or jam), instant coffee and no juice. After breakfast, we joined a group with a Maya Indian guide for a proper tour of the ruins. Edgar had excellent knowledge of the history of the Indians of Central America, having attended a two-year course on the subject. He delighted us with little stories of Indian day to day life also. Some may not have been totally accurate, but made good entertainment anyway. He impressed us with his knowledge of current world affairs and was the first one to tell us that Clinton had won the election! Medicine Doctors and Nature's Remedies Edgar was a wealth of information. He maintained that his mother had been a medicin doctor, and as a child, he often had to go out in the middle of the night to find plants or leaves for her to use in her cure of sick people, who usually would come to see her at night. Therefore, he had a good knowledge of plants and would tell us what illnesses they would heal, or other things they were used for, cooking, plant dyes, etc. etc. It was most interesting. He had a twinkle in his eye, though, so there were times I wondered if he was putting us on - "dumb tourists" - you know.... The trip back to the boat was relatively uneventful, as we splurged and hired a car all the way to San Ignacio, just past the Guatemala border. The roads through Belize are pretty good and the bus trip not too agonising. A Woman and Child in every Port After having provisioned, we took off immediately to show Mike as much as possible of the reefs in Belize in the few days he had left. The first stop was Bluefield Range where we had had so much fun with Nicole in June. We arrived after dark and were looking forward to seeing our old friend, Eterio, who runs this tiny fish camp/"hippie" resort the next morning. At 0630 hrs., we woke up to the sound of a guy paddling towards us in his red cayuko. We thought it was Eterio, but suddenly we heard him greet us with "Goddag, Goddag! Jeg ser dere er norske!" ("Good morning, good morning, I see that you are Norwegian!"). This was Finn Martin Langaas from Drammen in Norway, who has lived in Belize for 19 years. He has taken over the camp from Eterio, who apparently had started to drink too much, and was sent to town by his son, Ricardo, who owns the camp. I hope we didn't start it when we gave Eterio a bottle of Tequila in June! Finn turned out to be a real character. He has fished the cays of Belize for 19 years and knows the waters and reefs like the locals. Before that, he was a seaman/cook for many years on the United Fruit Company's ships. He has one daughter in Mexico, one in Oslo, one in Tokyo, one in Belgium and a son in Copenhagen.... The only woman he married was the mother of his daughter in Mexico, and she died young. Finn cooked us a delicious dinner that night. We brought a full bottle of Linje Akevitt over, had a couple of drams together, and then Finn went berserk and ended up finishing most of it on his own. He hadn't had any akevitt for ages - hope he doesn't go the same way as Eterio now! Finn was going to come out to the boat with freshly baked tortillas at 0630 the next morning before we had to leave on a long day trip all the way to Lighthouse Reef (abt. 45 miles). But he didn't show up. No wonder - so we had to leave without saying good bye to him. We called him on the VHF but no reply. An hour later he called us and was most upset that we really had to go so soon. He was very sentimental, as he doesn't meet many Norwegians any more. We got a bit of everything on our way to Lighthouse Reef. Good sailing, sudden rain squalls with heavy down pour and wind gusts up to 38 knots. We eventually had to take the main sail down. We motored the last six hours, nose into Easterlies and heavy seas, in order to make it into the tricky and shallow anchorage before dark. And we made it by the skin of our teeth, groping our way in through the reefs in poor light, overcast skies and strong winds, and got the hook down just before it got dark. Lighthouse Reef and Cousteau's Blue Hole The next day, Mike and I went to find and snorkel the famous Blue Hole inside Lighthouse Reef. This reef is a true Pacific-like atoll, boarded on all sides by a continuous well-defined rim of living coral. The Blue Hole was "discovered" by Jacques Cousteau on his research vessel, the "CALYPSO", in 1972. It is a circular hole abt. 450 feet across and 500 feet deep with coral encrusted walls and caves with underwater stalactites. Mike and I didn't see those since we were only snorkelling, but it was still a bit spooky. There was no one else there, and we only managed to find the hole with the help of compass courses from a nearby old shipwreck on the main reef. There are several wrecks on all these reefs, by the way, a graveyard somewhat like the West Coast of Vancouver Island. From Lighthouse Reef, we sailed directly to Isla Mujeres in Yucatan in two days. Isla Mujeres, which is a small island just 5 miles east of Cancun, is quite nice, but exists entirely on tourists, so we didn't really enjoy it that much. Cancun must now be the largest tourist trap in North and Central America. I don't think we have ever seen such a conglomeration of large, opulent hotels and beach resorts. Just awesome (read: awful). Isla Mujeres is the jump-off place for Florida. Here, sailors wait for the "Northers" (NNE winds) to change to South and South-east winds, in order to make it across the Strait of Yucatan, riding the Gulf Stream current up the Strait of Florida to Key West. We had to wait for abt. a week for ideal conditions. Then we left for the approx. 3 day passage. Contrary to all the other cruisers, our destination was Cuba, where Americans are not allowed to go, except in very special circumstances. But more about that in our next letter. 15 Months and 7,000 nautical Miles later.. Today, the calendar shows December 10, and we are safe and sound on the North American Continent again after having cruised abt. 7000 nautical miles in the last 15 months. It sure is nice to be back in civilisation again, especially after the last two weeks in Cuba, where conditions are shocking. We are glad that we still had provisions left in the bilges, as there was virtually nothing to buy there, and food was severely rationed to Cubans. Tourists could go to special stores for food, but it was extremely expensive. Anyway, I (Anne), won't get into all that now, as I intend to write about Cuba in a separate Travel Log. So here we sit in Key West where the temperature is approx. 25 degrees, writing Christmas letters and actually feeling cold! We must have become acclimatised to the 35-degree temperatures in the tropics! On the ham net this morning from Ontario, we heard they were getting lots of snow there, and with that in mind, we are trying to get into the Christmas spirit. We will be thinking about you all during the holidays, hoping this finds you well and that you will have a particularly Peaceful and Happy Christmas and New Year. We miss you all and hope to hear from you in the next mail parcel, which we will be picking up in Fort Lauderdale next week. Copyright © Anne Brevig & Martin Vennesland. www.norsiglar.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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