La Paz, Mexico - Bahia Santa Elena, Costa Rica

Wayne

Yesterday, we were shocked to discover that it was June already and decided that we had better hurry up and write. The old saying that time flies when you’re having fun must be true. We’ve done a lot of things and seen a lot of places since Christmas, so here goes.

We spent Christmas and New Years with our friends Dennis and Judith on their boat “JAD”. This is the second year in a row that we’ve spent Christmas with them and now we’re officially family. The weather felt a bit weird for Christmas, as the temperature never went below 65 degrees even at night and there was no snow or Christmas trees. We had a great time anyway, ‘cause Judith is a fantastic cook. She made some traditional Eastern Canadian dishes and Susan made delicious pumpkin pie.

Twiggy celebrated Christmas in her own special way by going swimming at 2 AM Boxing Day. She woke us and all the neighbors up with her screaming. When we got up on deck we discovered a little drowned rat-like creature in the water next to the boat holding on desperately. We dragged her out and then spent the rest of the night drying her off and warming her up. She was hypothermic and probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Anyway, we got her warmed up and took her to the vet the next day. He’s really nice and very gentle, but Twiggy found it pretty unpleasant as we had to go back four days in a row to treat water in her lungs. The worst part was getting her temperature taken. I’ll leave that to your imagination.

Early in January, we took the bus from La Paz to San Diego to visit Susan’s folks. They spend the winter in Palm Desert these days, so it was handy for us. The bus ride is pretty ugly. The buses are actually quite nice, as they are air conditioned, have washrooms and make frequent munchie stops. The problem is that the trip takes 22 hours. We eventually made it and spent the next week in absolute luxury. Howard and Shirley bring their motor home down and then stay in the nicest campground I’ve ever seen. There’s a couple of pools, Jacuzzis, weight room, ping-pong table, snooker tables, cable TV and telephones to each site. We ate a lot, went to a movie and shopped for hard-to-find food items. Then back to the boat on our 22 hour bus ride.

Shortly after we got back, my folks came for a visit. They brought tons of mail which included a pile of personal letters that we devoured. We had Christmas again, including a Santa Claus piñata. We got Mom to bash it open but it turned out to be a dud, no candy inside. While they were here we also went for a sail out to a nearby bay and I took Dad and Mom for a ride in our dinghy to a sandbar a mile away. Between the two of them they cleaned almost every shell and dead puffer fish off that beach. They smuggled most of them home, even though some of the puffer fish were still giving off fishy odors.

We left La Paz a few days later. We were heading for Mazatlan but for once we weren’t in a huge rush. We were traveling with our friends Harry and Petra on “Thetis”. Harry and Petra are irritatingly young, just 26 and 24 respectively. They are the youngest couple that we have met out here. It would be OK if they were on some ugly mutt of a boat that was always on the verge of sinking, but “Thetis” is a really nice boat. At least we can force unasked and unneeded advice on them since it’s a law of the sea (that should be said in a deep voice) that you must provide unrequested and preferably incorrect advice at every opportunity to anyone younger than yourself. We should know, having received more than our share. We sailed to an island called Espiritu Santos (Holy Spirit). There is a really great anchorage there where we went last year with Randy and Leanne when they came to visit. We had a good time passing on the time honored chocolate clam hunting techniques to Harry and Petra even though the water was a wee bit on the chilly side and they didn’t have wetsuits. We also had a bonfire/barbecue on the beach one night and Harry, Petra and I climbed the island. It isn’t very tall, maybe a thousand feet, but it’s very steep and the rock is all crumbly, with big boulders ready to fall all over the place. It’s a Wile E. Coyote sort of place. Last year Randy and I had climbed it and we thought we found some burial mounds but Randy wouldn’t let me dig them up (some sort of a grave-robbing phobia). Now I know that this is going to be hard to believe, but, Petra just happens to be a papered anthropologist. This means that it’s science when she’s grave robbing! Naturally started digging. Only one problem, they weren’t graves. We still haven’t really figured it out. The mounds sit on top of solid rock. They are piles of smaller stones about ten feet long, three feet high and four feet wide. They sure looked like burial mounds but there wasn’t anyone inside. We continued our island tour and found a pair of big horn sheep horns. We had been told that they lived on the island but it was hard to believe until we saw those horns.

We finally headed off for Mazatlan. This is about a two day crossing of the Sea of Cortez. It was a really hard passage for us as there was almost no wind. This meant some very slow sailing and quite a bit of motoring. We did have a funny experience on this trip. Just as we were leaving the Baja coast, we heard Dennis calling us on the radio. Dennis and Judith had left a week or so before for Mazatlan and our radio only has about a 15 mile range so this was a bit of a surprise. As it turned out, they were in Mazatlan and we were getting a radio skip of almost two hundred miles. Twilight Zone material.

We spent a couple of weeks in Mazatlan. It’s a really nice town and we had the additional excuse that I had to go up to the States for a couple of days. There’s two parts to Mazatlan. The old town in which the buildings probably average 100 or more years old and have a Parisian look to them and the Gold Zone or tourist area which could be anywhere, full of tourists and shysters. We, of course, preferred the old town. Susan went to Spanish school there and thoroughly enjoyed it. We ate out a lot and sat sipping drinks in outdoor cafes on the square. Very European. For some reason everything seems to be cheap in Mazatlan, especially eating out. The harbour is a really good anchorage but unfortunately it is straight downwind from the sewage plant. We never actually smelt any sewage because the chemicals they use are so overpowering. Eventually we had to leave just to get away from the smell. As it turned out though, Carnaval was starting the day we wanted to leave. Mazatlan is supposed to have the second best carnival in the world so we stayed one extra night to see the beginning. They closed off the waterfront for about twenty blocks and there were bands, dancers, restaurants, and hawkers everywhere. In addition, most of the attendees dressed up, wore masks or painted their faces. Everyone had a good time spraying each other with shaving cream and silly putty string-in-a-can or throwing empty eggshells that had been filled with confetti. We were approached by this woman selling something, which we couldn’t understand. Eventually, she talked me into holding onto two little silver bars attached with wires to a box on which she was turning a dial. I let go when I started to get a shock and the woman put her nose up, said it was only four volts and flounced away. We eventually figured out that it is a test of machismo. You are supposed to hold on as long as you can and apparently I did not exhibit much machismo.

After leaving Mazatlan, it took a couple of days to get to Puerto Vallarta. PV is not really our favorite place, but we needed cellular service so we stopped for a while at La Cruz which is only a few miles from PV but much quieter.

From there, we spent a day and a night getting to Bahia Tenacatita. This is a nice bay, with no town to speak of and a really neat little river that winds back up into the jungle. The jungle encloses and completely overhangs the river and it’s full of birds, iguanas and fish. We followed it for miles until we came out in a lake on the coast.

After only a couple of days in Tenacatita we headed to Manzanillo. Again we needed cell service. We ran into a friend there. This guy’s name is Bob and his boat is Adios. We have run into him from time to time over the last couple years, but never really got to know him. He is alone on his boat and was getting ready to leave for Tahiti. We had him over for a coffee one day and he told us an amusing story. He had done a passage out to Hawaii and back to San Francisco in the late ‘80s. He was by himself then as well. One day he had the bad luck to get a spinnaker wrap. A spinnaker wrap is when the spinnaker (a sail) gets wrapped around the forestay (a heavy piece of wire coming from the top of the mast (tall pointy thing in middle of boat) to the front of the boat). This is a relatively bad thing and really has to be solved. After trying everything that he could think of and gradually passing from the desperation zone into the insanity zone, Bob decided that he would have to go up the mast. This is never much fun, but when you go up a forty foot mast at sea, the gentle rolling and pitching at deck level might be a ten or fifteen foot swing because of the leverage and you’d spend most of your time holding on for dear life. Anyway, he was struggling with the wrap when a big wave came along and rolled the boat badly. He lost his grip on the mast and went swinging out on his harness around the forestay. He now had a spinnaker wrap and a Bob wrap. He had no way to get down at this point and started to worry that he might be found there two or three months later dried out like a piece of beef jerky. Finally after several hours, another big wave came along and rolled him back. He was so exhausted that he clambered down the mast and fell into bed. Later when he woke up, the spinnaker had miraculously unwrapped itself.

We were in a rush at this point as I needed to go up to Utah for a month and we needed a safe place for Susan and the boat to stay. We spent a couple of days getting down to Ixtapa which is just a couple of miles from Zihuatanejo. We put the boat in the marina there and I spent a month in Utah and LA.

 Susan

I settled in for a month of loneliness and work on the boat while Wayne was away. Being lonely and working hard on the boat both proved difficult to achieve.

First off, Marina Ixtapa is decadent. I felt like someone on ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’. The marina is brand new with great shower facilities, nearby restaurants and an incredible private pool with beach access and beach palapas. At least part of every day was spent lounging around the pool, body surfing in the waves or building sand castles on the beach with friends. So much for working, it was way too hot anyway. The marina also has its own crocodile (or crocodiles for all I know). When I finally saw the beast lazing along between the boats, I was astounded by how big and prehistoric he looked. I’m glad Twiggy didn’t try to practice her swimming here.

This also turned out to be a good place to have guests since we were actually staying put for a while. First our friend Bobbie and her friends Robin and Trish came to visit. Talk about a small world. After a day or two we discovered that Robin and I went to high school together in Prince Albert (we were a couple of years apart). I certainly had that ‘don’t I know you from somewhere’ feeling. The girls had all sorts of adventures while visiting and I hope, a good time.

Shortly after they arrived (and got their first sun burns), we four and Harry and Petra set off for a few days in Mexico City. We had a great time! The trip there was quite an adventure as we accidentally got cheap bus tickets. These cheap buses have no bathroom, heat or air conditioning. This is my second trip to Mexico City and I loved it more this time. Such life, such history and movies, movies, movies! Harry, Petra, and I got our fill of new (well new to us) films and we all did some sightseeing. One day was devoted to the pyramids at Teotihuacán just 30 miles north of the city. This is a must see! If you know any of these girls, check out their pictures. I forget how many they took on the trip but I’m sure it’s some kind of record. Harry, Petra, and I also had a rather frightening experience on the subway. Just imagine thick smoke and the smell of something burning all experienced in a dark subway tunnel between stations in a stalled, lightless subway car many levels below ground. We all could have lived without that experience. Everything turned out OK of course and it was only a few minutes of terror. Aside from that, the subway system here is exceptional and the best and easiest way to get around in this huge city.

Our return trip to Zihuatanejo/Ixtapa was quite a bit different. We went for the deluxe bus with air conditioning, a snack bar, reclining seats with leg supports and best of all, a bathroom. Thank goodness for the bathroom as I got deathly ill on the way back and was sick for a couple more days after that. Bobbie, Trish and Robin had continued on to Acapulco from Mexico City for a few days. It turns out that both Bobbie and Robin were just as sick as I was.

Robin and Trish flew home after two weeks and Bobbie stayed for another week to take diving lessons. A couple of days before she left and just after Wayne returned, our friend Helen and her friend Emma arrived.

Now just so you aren’t saying to yourselves ‘don’t go to Mexico, you’ll get sick’, know that Emma arrived here already quite ill. Helen and Emma took full advantage of the pool and beach to relax and unwind. Our accommodations for tall people are somewhat lacking and they’re both allergic to Twiggy but I think they had a good time too.

Sadly here we said good-bye to Dennis and Judith on “JAD” as they headed off for Hawaii and ultimately Victoria. As you tell by how much we write about them, they are the best of friends and have been since we met them in San Francisco in September 1994. We are missing them a lot and look forward to seeing them again someday.

One other interesting story while in Zihuatanejo. Wayne and I played doctor! Not what you’re thinking! After carefully studying the Where There is No Doctor book, we jabbed each other with needles to administer our second dose of Havrix for hepatitis prevention. We’d been storing it in the fridge since our trip to San Diego in January. We were overdue to be getting this shot but I’d been conveniently forgetting about it. Wayne was just dying to give me mine, but I wanted to go find someone a wee bit more qualified. He finally convinced me (I think there must have been hypnotism involved). Let me tell you, as my mother used to tell me, it was much easier to give than to receive. Somehow I’m sure that she was referring to something else. So here goes! We’re all washed up and looking like doctors who’ve just scrubbed for major heart surgery. We then had to transfer the serum from the syringe that it came in to a smaller one. The nurse that sold it to us assured us that we didn’t want to use the original, much larger, longer needle. Now it’s time to give the shot, and Wayne wants me to stick him first. According to the book, you hold the syringe like it’s a dart and jab it in quickly to avoid pain. Well I was shaking so badly, that I’m surprised I didn’t miss his arm (this is not a butt shot). All goes well, even pulling back on the plunger to make sure I didn’t jab a vein. This sounded the worst to me but wasn’t so bad. Now it’s my turn!!!!!! Wayne winds up with his dart stance and jabs me good. I’m not looking but actually feel the bottom of the syringe contact my arm as he buries the entire needle! Thank goodness the nurse had us change needles or it may have come out the other side of my arm. Wayne tells me that he was a little surprised by just how easily that sharp little needle sank into my flesh. Perhaps he was expecting to have to put some real muscle into it. I’m still not looking and it doesn’t hurt at all but it feels a little heavy and weird. It turns out that you need to get a new grip on the syringe after getting the needle in with the dart stance. Wayne thought that it was pretty thoroughly attached being that it was completely buried in my arm so he let it dangle free for a moment while he collected his thoughts and got a new grip on the syringe. He seemed a little surprised when I bled quite a bit more than him after withdrawing the needle. I wonder why! All kidding aside, I thought we both did a great job and it was kind of fun, after the fact that is.

Wayne

An EPIRB (emergency position radio beacon) had been on our wish list for a long time. When activated in an emergency, these beacons radio your exact position anywhere on earth to a satellite and from there to various Navies and Coast Guards. This is something that you would never use except as a last resort since you typically get to leave your boat behind when you are rescued, however, we like the idea of having one as ultimate insurance. We finally decided to get an EPIRB while I was in Utah. This along with the dozens of other things that I had been asked to bring back, put me over the Mexican Customs import limit. Normally boats and ships are allowed to bring in almost anything duty free as they are considered to be ‘in transit’. This was my plan, but, the people at customs weren’t having any of that. They gave me the choice of paying the duty or leaving it behind and returning the next day to sort it out with the boss. I returned the next day and was told that they were trying to work it out and that I should come back the next day. The next day I took Susan along for backup. “Remember to cry!”, I said. She brought a bottle of water and a bag of chips as ammunition. When we arrived they said we would have to pay the duty. “Oh no!,” we said “That won’t be possible.” Well then we could go to Acapulco and talk to the big boss. “Nope, can’t do that either.” “OK,” they said “We’ll try to work it out but it’ll take a long time.” “No problem.” said Susan, commandeering the chair in front of the boss’ desk and pulling out her water bottle and chips. “We’ll be happy to wait.” Things moved pretty fast after that and twenty minutes later we had our EPIRB and were being driven back to the boat by an assistant. We did end up having to pay a small fee and we never were able to determine for certain whether it was legitimate or went to the office party fund. Personally I’m waiting with baited breath for the day that Susan tries the old chips and water bottle tactic on Canada Customs!

For my birthday, Susan took me to the hottest restaurant in the world. This place is hot in every way. It’s in Mexico so that’s a start. The meat for the tacos is cooked on an open rotisserie that you can get a tan from and they have a record collection of the worlds hottest sauces. The sauces come in many colors, including red, burnt orange and grass green. Even the guacamole, which can usually be relied upon as less than hot, was muy picante! The sauces come in three levels of hot; very hot, weapons grade, and nuclear power. By the time we were done dinner, we had each drunk about two gallons of juice and we were still phosphorescent for several hours after.

The passage from Zihuatanejo to Acapulco was one of the nicest we’ve ever had. We had cleaned the bottom of the boat just a couple of days before leaving and as a result the boat was very fast. In addition, the wind was from behind and fairly strong at about twenty knots. We put up our twin jibs on spinnaker poles and just enjoyed the ride. For hours on end the boat would do seven and eight knots and once we actually hit 9.5 knots. We did almost nothing the entire time as the wind was steady and our windvane did all of the steering. This is what sailing should be like every day!

Susan

As we remembered from the previous year, Acapulco is a great place to stock up and get your fill of ‘civilization’. We ate ribs at Tony Roma’s, frequented the brand new 10-plex movie theaters and shopped at Wal-Mart and Costco. We were a little sad here as it brought back memories of our last few days of cruising with Allan and Didi last year before we went in opposite directions.

Wayne

An interesting incident occurred while we were anchored in Acapulco. There is a big old steel party ship anchored out in front of the Acapulco Yacht Club. It is yellow, green and pink with fake palm trees on deck and a concrete or papermache water slide that slides you right into the ocean. It’s about 150 feet long and looks like it may sink at any moment. We anchored near it, as there isn’t much room for anchoring. Of course we always worried that it might swing into us in a windshift, but, we didn’t have a problem until one night at about five AM we woke up because the ships’ watchman was yelling at us from just a few feet away. It was dead calm and we had drifted in opposite directions. The ship was close enough that we could reach it to push off with our feet. The rail of this thing was over our heads so we would definitely have had some serious damage if we had touched.

Susan

Just before leaving Acapulco, we put the boat in Marina Acapulco so that Wayne could make a quick two day trip to the U.S. It was the most expensive marina that we’ve ever stayed in (no other choice in Acapulco). It turned out to be about $50 Canadian per night but it sure was nice! For the four days that we were there, I/we took full advantage of the beautiful rooftop pool and better yet, a lounge with comfortable sofas, intense air conditioning, and a big TV/VCR. Each night we’d settle in, blast the air conditioning and watch some of our taped movies or the TV shows that Wayne taped while in Utah. It was Heaven! Acapulco was unbelievably hot and humid! It seems that the last month or two before rainy season begins is almost unbearably hot.

Wayne

As we say good-bye to Acapulco, we are finally heading off to see some new territory.

We had our first squall the night before we reached Huatulco. It was just after sunset when the lightning started and the wind went up to about 25 knots. This is an uncomfortable amount of wind and means that we were getting heavy spray and the tops of waves onto the deck. These things weren’t really the problem though. The problem was the lightning. It was all around us, mostly sheet lightning with the occasional bolt looking for something nice and tall to hit. Of course we know that the chances of being hit are almost incalculably small but that didn’t stop us from being worried. You can see a squall on radar and this one looked pretty small, maybe one mile across. Unfortunately, when we got into it, it seemed to grow and we had it with us for hours. By the end of that time we were soaked, the cat was soaked and the boat was swampy down below. Since then we’ve had lots of squalls and are getting used to them and a little better at dealing with them. They still seem to either grow or follow us whenever we get near one though.

Our stop in Huatulco, Mexico was basically just to clean the bottom and obtain an exit Zarpe but it was a sad day for us since we were leaving Mexico. We had been there for fifteen months and have nothing but good memories. The Mexican people are honest, kind and friendly. The country and coast are beautiful and the climate is very nearly perfect except during hurricane season which is what was hurrying us to leave. We’re trying to be optimistic but are having a tough time believing that we’ll ever see a nicer place.

We left at about 3 PM planning to arrive at Salina Cruz at daybreak, however, there was a strong current with us and we arrived at 1 AM. We had had no wind for a couple of hours but off of Salina Cruz it went from zero to twenty-four knots within a couple of minutes. Luckily for us, one of the other boats was ahead so we knew what to expect. It was a beat but very fast and we had a really nice sail until mid-morning by which time we had our full mainsail up and our genny and spinnaker out on poles. The rest of the Tehuantepec was easy with squalls at night and light winds and calms during the day.

During the second night in the Tehuantepec we heard a Mayday call. This is the nautical equivalent of dialing 911 and is only supposed to be done in life threatening situations. Unfortunately the call was not complete with no boat name or position given. Down here, everyone pretty much is the volunteer coast guard so we tried to raise the person who had initiated the Mayday to get enough information to help, however, we never heard another thing. This really worried us. There is nothing that you can do without knowing the location of the boat that’s in trouble and because whoever it was spoke English, they were almost certainly a friend or acquaintance. Later, we heard that one of the other boats, whom for convenience we will designate ‘Mayday Bob’, was boarded by the Mexican Navy right at this time. Mayday Bob is a bit of a doofus and decidedly xenophobic, so although he wouldn’t own up to it we are pretty sure that he is the key to our little mystery. We think that the Navy surprised him and he was thinking pirates or something silly like that.

Puerto Madero is in the state of Chiapas. This is the area in which there has been an armed uprising lately. As a result, I guess, the Navy keeps a pretty close eye on this section of coast. All of the other boats that were doing the passage when we did were boarded and searched. We weren’t, probably because we prefer to spend our time well offshore beyond the 12 mile limit and we didn’t stop at Puerto Madero. We were planning to keep going out of Mexico, past Guatemala and finally stopping in El Salvador or Honduras in the Gulf of Fonseca.

Off the coast of Guatemala, we encountered contrary winds and seas. Since we weren’t making much progress anyway, we decided to stop at Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala. After we had made up our minds to go to Quetzal, we decided that we had better bring down the mainsail. We had left it up in the faint hope of a breeze, but the swells were rolling the boat so much that it could have been damaged, so it had to come down. To do that we both went up on deck and began folding and tying it to the boom. Suddenly the boat took an extra big roll, the boom swung across and caught both of us in the stomach, taking us with it for the rest of its swing. We both got a death grip on the boom and when the boat rolled back, we ended up pretty much where we had started. We had visions of the autopilot steering the boat into Quetzal three or four hours later with the two of us dragging along behind in our safety harnesses.

It was along this part of the coast that we started to see all of the volcanoes. What a view on a clear day. Most of them are so straight that they look like green pyramids. We were also struck by the green lushness of the land after leaving dry season Mexico.

News flash! You’ve heard of the Bermuda triangle, well now there is a Guatemalan Time Triangle in which time actually stops! We have on board, three watches, one kitchen timer and a wind-up ship’s clock. When we arrived in Guatemala all three watches and the kitchen timer had bit the dust.

Quetzal is Guatemala’s manmade Pacific port. The commercial section looks really modern and efficient, though small. We were over at the other end in the middle of the Navy base. The base area was nice and clean and seemed pretty secure since the gates were guarded by several men with machine guns. The Port Captain comes out to check you in here and charges a fee of one hundred US dollars for seven days for which there is no receipt. We knew that this was the deal here, but, have made up our minds that we are going to try to get ‘no receipt’ fees lowered in the future.

The day after we arrived we went into the nearby town of San Jose. I hesitate to call this a town, city dump might be more appropriate. Actually that would probably be an insult to a well run dump. This place is the grubbiest, filthiest, smelliest place we have ever been in. Most of the streets are dirt except when it rains and then they become six inches of mud. There are a couple of canals that look like they might be made up of fifty percent plastic garbage and fifty percent sewage. There is definitely no litter ethic here. When you’re done with something, you just drop it on the ground, even if you are at the front door to your mother’s house and twenty people are looking at you. We recommend San Jose as a tourist destination only to those who wish to study infectious diseases.

Having experienced the joys of San Jose, we’re very glad that we decided to take a short inland trip to see Antigua. If we hadn’t, San Jose would have summed up our impressions of Guatemala. Antigua is fairly near Quetzal (the country is really small) but it feels like it’s in a different world. First of all it’s up in the mountains so it’s much, much cooler than the coast. It’s also very clean. Antigua is the old colonial capital and many of the buildings and ruins are hundreds of years old. The city has been around since the 1500’s but it is ringed by volcanoes and has experienced several devastating earthquakes so the capital was moved to Guatemala City. There are dozens of really old buildings that are ruins but have been left alone. It makes the city very picturesque. Antigua is also well known as a place to come and learn Spanish. There are dozens of small, private schools.

There are many Mayans in Antigua (and all of Guatemala) selling handicrafts. They are famous for their embroidery. The embroidery is very colorful with lots of pinks, reds and yellows. All of the ladies wear embroidered blouses which, if you know the system, identify the wearer’s village. These are actually a genuine article of clothing although it may be the equivalent of ‘Sunday best’. We bought a few pieces of embroidery and some wood carvings. The Mayan people that we talked to struck us in two ways. They are really tiny. Even Susan looks down at most of the women. The women probably average 4’8” and the men no more than 5’2”. Also they were really nice. After Mexicans, Guatemalans didn’t seem all that friendly, but the Mayans were always smiling and seemed to enjoy talking to us.

Before returning to Quetzal, we took advantage of the many restaurants to choose from in Antigua. We ate far more than our share of Italian, Japanese and Thai food.

The buses in Guatemala are really fascinating. They are all old Blue Bird school buses, brightly painted in vivid colors, usually packed full with the roof piled up with baskets, boxes, jugs and lumber. Besides the driver there is an assistant whose job is to convince people that they need to go wherever the bus is going. The assistant starts in the terminal by excitedly yelling the major destination at anybody silly enough to be within earshot. Once the bus leaves it slowly cruises the town, not obviously on any set route, looking for people who just might want to go somewhere today. Surprisingly, they actually get a few. Throughout all of this the assistant is screaming the destination to anyone within a half block or so and the driver slows or stops for anyone who exhibits the slightest interest. Eventually we head out of town. Usually by this time there will be three people in each seat, actually two and a quarter people in each seat. The three quarters that is hanging out in the middle is held up by pure thoughts and by leaning against the fellow unfortunate who is falling out of the opposite seat. Out on the highway there will be people standing on the side of the road waving at the bus. The driver can’t resist stopping and soon there will be ten or fifteen people standing. Last year when Didi and Allan were here there were so many people standing that people slept standing up. Standees must now be illegal because when we pass a cop the assistant yells for all the standees to duck, and they do. The other odd thing on the buses are the snake-oil infomercials. These are well dressed young guys who stand up near the front of the bus and give long impassioned speeches about the benefits of using their particular snake-oil. Then they walk down the aisle distributing sealed childproof bottles of something-or-other. Surprisingly enough, many people shell out the few Quetzales requested. The Home Shopping Network needs to branch into Guatemala. Don’t get the wrong idea about these buses. Provided that the trip isn’t too long, they can be the cheapest and most entertaining way to travel.

Prior to leaving Guatemala, we wanted to get a little fuel as we were low and we were pretty sure that it wouldn’t be easy to get in Honduras. There seemed to be two possibilities at Quetzal. We could take a taxi into town with our jerry jugs, or try to buy it from the Esso station on the Navy base. Naturally we thought we’d try the base first. The Esso station was just a pump, no shack and no attendant. I continued on to the nearest building, a navy radio room, I think. The duty officer was a really nice guy, but, I had a difficult time understanding him. The Guatemalans use a lot of different words and have a much different accent than the Mexicans and I never did feel that I was getting all that they said. Anyway, he told me that I couldn’t get fuel there and that I should go into town for it. I said OK and started to leave when he called me back and said that I should come back at seven and he could help me get fuel. I assumed this meant that he was going to drive me into town and so I tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted and as I didn’t want to hurt his feelings I agreed. Harry needed fuel too, so we both went up to meet this guy just after dark that evening. When we got there, he had us tie the dinghy to one of the navy ships, introduced us to the guard (complete with machine gun) and asked for our jerry jugs. We were starting to get worried about this whole thing, but handed over the jugs. He disappeared down into the ship only to reappear a few minutes later to say that the fuel supply was locked up. We were delighted to express our sorrow and appreciation and then skeddadle.

The first night out after leaving Quetzal, we had been motoring because there was no wind. Often in these conditions, we can leave the main and the mizzen up, and just roll up the genny. This is what we had done when one of us (no names to protect the guilty) saw a squall approaching. I (oops, gave it away) brought down the mizzen and left just the mainsail up. Five minutes later the wind was up to fifteen knots. Fifteen knots is a nice sailing wind, however, that same nameless person might have thought about that huge black lightning-filled cloud a quarter mile away. Oh, no. Instead, the genny was rolled out. Within seconds, we had thirty-five knots of wind trying to tear down our mast, tear up our awning and throwing bathtubsfull of water onto the deck and into the cockpit every second. There was so much rain and spray in the air, that you literally could not breath facing into the wind and the rain felt like cold little needles being driven into your skin. We managed to get the genny reefed and two reefs put in the main. We even got the awning down with only one big tear and several small tears.

After a difficult trip from Quetzal with many squalls and way too much rain, we had a nice sail into the Gulf of Fonseca. We were able to sail right up to our anchorage at Amapala on the island of Tigre in  Honduras. Within minutes there was a launch headed our way with the Immigration officer, Port Captain, Chief of Police and four or five others. They all came aboard, looked over our papers and performed a cursory search. These searches always amuse us. There are literally hundreds of places to store things and we regularly spend hours looking for some seldom used item. Searches normally take less then five minutes and usually not even all of our cabins are looked into. Our largest locker, which is big enough to store two or three people in, has never been noticed. Once the search was over, the Port Captain explained that there was a $75 US fee to pay. We knew this was the going rate and even though we were expecting it, we tried to bargain him down. No dice. He did say that if we didn’t have the money (that was our ploy), he would allow us to leave but we’d have to leave immediately. We finally gave in and agreed to pay. This is an unfortunate thing for the people of Honduras. They are unbelievably poor and partly because of this fee, few boats stop here. Given the number of boats on this coast, the money that would be taken in by local businesses could be quite substantial.

The only bank in Amapala doesn’t do Visa cash advances so I had to go to the town of San Lorenzo on the mainland to get some money. Getting there from Amapala is interesting. First, you take a ferry to the mainland. This is not like a BC ferry. It is a hollowed out log about three feet across and 30 feet long. They hold up to 20 people or so and make pretty good time as they are outboard powered. The trip takes about 15 minutes and costs 50 cents. From there you take a bus to San Lorenzo. The bus was the oldest, most decrepit vehicle that I’ve ever seen. It was stitched together with welds, had a piece of twine to keep the door from opening too far, and a piece of rebar to keep it closed. It was always kept running or parked on hills so that it could be roll started. The scenery was beautiful with bright red rock and green, green jungle. San Lorenzo was a nice, neat little city with very few cars. On my way back, a different water taxi driver wanted me to pay $5 US for the trip. The entire group of passengers was assisting the driver in trying to convince me that this was an appropriate price. I ended having to pay $1.50 US and later was told that $5 is the cost for a whole boat to yourself.

Susan

The first day anchored in Honduras, a young woman, her young son and her brother in a wooden canoe made by hollowing out a tree visited me. Her name was Mercedes and she spoke very little English. My Spanish skills were tested but I think all the studying has been worth it, as we were able to understand each other. She offered her services to do our laundry and also asked if we had any vitamins to spare for her boy. I gladly dug up a bottle of One-A-Days to give to her and she was very grateful. Each day Mercedes returned to visit (or return laundry) in her canoe. Her and her young brother found our photo albums entrancing. On my birthday, they even rowed out to the boat with mangoes as a birthday present.

That first day, a larger hollowed out tree boat used for fishing also visited me. The fisherman’s name was Antonio. He spoke no English but I managed quite well. He was offering me some of the largest shrimp that I’ve ever seen. I explained that I had no money at the moment as Wayne was in San Lorenzo at the bank. He seemed surprised and explained that he would rather trade for the shrimp than sell them. I asked what he needed and his answer surprised me. Here’s his list: fresh or canned vegetables or fruit, canned beans, canned chilies, canned meat, or best of all; peanut butter. It turns out that it’s difficult to find and buy just about anything around here except shrimp and fish. I had no problem unearthing two apples and two grapefruits to trade for a large quantity of delicious shrimp for dinner. The next day we got even more and larger shrimp for my Birthday dinner in exchange for a can of fruit cocktail and a can of peas. You gotta like that! Antonio and his partner came aboard and chatted with Wayne for quite a while. Wayne brought out the photo album to show Antonio a Dorado as they were talking fish and he was just as fascinated by the pictures as Mercedes and wanted to look at them all. Antonio also explained to us which of the surrounding islands belonged to Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. It’s rather confusing as this bay is fronted by all three countries.

Wayne

Hondurans are so poor, it’s scary. Amapala especially has fallen on hard times. Everywhere we went, drunks would hit us up for a few Lempiras, kids would extort a little money out of us for ‘watching our dinghy’ and everyone would peer over our shoulders in banks and shops to count the money in our hands. We constantly felt that we had to watch our things and we never felt comfortable leaving the boat alone. On the other hand, things were so cheap that you could live with paying the outsiders price (like 25 cents for a Coke) even though you’d see them charging locals less. We actually had a couple of things disappear from the deck of the boat and although they could have fallen overboard, we never really felt comfortable afterwards.

By the fourth day we were tired of Honduras and ready to leave. We got up at five AM to finish up the repairs etc. from our last trip. When the town started to wake up, I rowed in to spend our last Lempiras on diesel fuel. One of the men standing around on the pier met me as I arrived and took possession of two of my jerry jugs. Obviously he was going to help me get fuel. We walked into town (none of the three vehicles on the island are cabs) to the fuel store. It had no diesel. I thought this was the only place in town, but my guide knew of another. It too was out of diesel. At the third store, now at least a half mile from the waterfront we found a source. They wanted about fifty cents per gallon more than on the mainland but since they have to bring it over in open boats in fifty gallon drums, the price didn’t seem out of line. They tried to palm gasoline off on me (it’s a little cheaper here) but I caught on and insisted on diesel. Then they measured out 13 gallons of diesel using an old one gallon syrup bottle with a broken neck and wanted me to pay for fifteen gallons. After a little arguing, I got my fifteen gallons. My assistant meantime had tied an old piece of twine between two of the jugs and after placing an oily old scrap of cardboard on his shoulder heaved them up. We made our way back to the pier and for his help, he charged me ten Lempira (about $1.20).

The trip to Costa Rica was tough. Having gotten the Honduran fuel out of drums, we weren’t too sure whether it would be OK and without using it we couldn’t do much motoring. Of course the wind took this opportunity to be from dead ahead. We had decided to stay at least twelve miles off of Nicaragua to avoid being boarded by their Navy, but after two days of beating into 20 to 25 knot headwinds (this wind comes over Nicaragua from the Caribbean and is called a Papagayo wind) we turned and got as close to the shore as we dared. This gave us much smaller waves and we made better progress. We finally arrived in Bahia Santa Elena, Costa Rica three days and one hour after leaving Amapala.

Non-sailors will probably want to skip this next paragraph. We learned an interesting thing about sailing on this trip. We had about 20 to 25 knots of wind about 45 degrees off the bow with three to six foot windwaves for most of the trip. Being an offshore wind the waves were close together, about twenty-five to thirty feet apart. This made it a beat with the added complications that while the boat was descending one wave, it would often slam into the face of the next, virtually stopping us. In addition, when the bow got up in the air on one wave, it would often be thrown to leeward and we would lose some mileage until the boat got straightened out. We had our 95 percent jib up and a double reefed main and thought that putting a reefed mizzen up might help hold the bow up. It may have helped a little, but it also increased our leeway and had our lee rail about three inches under water. Finally we took down the mizzen, rolled up the jib and leaving the reefed main up, we put up our new staysail. We didn’t actually think that it would work well with this amount of wind (the staysail is very small), but we were tired of walking on the walls down below. Amazingly, the boat stood up, our speed went up to about seven knots, the bow stopped blowing off and leeway almost disappeared.

We have two charts of Bahia Santa Elena. The British Admiralty chart calls it Port Parker and the US Defense Mapping Agency called it Bahia Santa Elena. Whatever you call it, it is a fabulous harbour. The day that we came in, it was blowing over 20 knots outside while inside it was as smooth as glass with just a gentle breeze. Because it is 30 miles or so upwind from the first Port of Entry into Costa Rica, not a lot of boats come here. Also it is a national park (Santa Rosa) so nobody lives on the shores. The result is a clean, quiet anchorage with wildlife on shore and fish in the water. We’ve enjoyed a whole week of solitude. We’ve done a few jobs on the boat but basically we’ve lounged about, watched the sunset (beautiful here), swam and snorkeled. Surprisingly enough, it is rainy season but we’ve only had one rainy day. I know that the north coast of Costa Rica is drier than the rest but I wonder if this is typical throughout rainy season.

Our favorite wildlife recently has been the squeaker birds. We actually don’t have a clue what their real name might be, but I can assure you that squeaker bird is a good name. These little guys are about 8 inches long and the same wide. They’re brown and white and they have huge Donald Duck feet. They don’t seem to need to eat, they just fly around squeaking and having fun all day long. For some reason they really like the boat. I think that the backwash from the sails must be fun to play in. Anyway, they get a group going and fly around and around one side of the boat squeaking away. Once in a while one of them will show off by landing on the deck and tottering clumsily around while slyly watching you out of the corner of his eye. Or, when they get tired, and want to stop for a rest on the water they put their landing gear down, brace their legs and water-ski for about six feet. They’re really comical little guys and we like having them around.

Another bird that we like less is actually called a Boobie. Boobies are really dumb. They’ll go after your fishing lure and occasionally get themselves caught. Lately, Boobies seem to be very tired and feel the need to rest on our boat while we’re at sea. In addition, they all seem to have diarrhea. A couple of weeks ago, we had one sitting on top of our mast, one on the anchor, one standing on deck and one on the mizzen boom. They are really clumsy and for the first few minutes they were continually falling off of their perches. Eventually they got used to the motion and settled in. We were pretty surprised by this behavior as we have seen lots of Boobies before but none have moved in with us. They wouldn’t leave even when we walked right up and yelled at them. Susan finally pushed one off and I bonked one on the head with a book. We didn’t mind the one on the anchor but the one at the top of the mast was making a mess and bending our wind instruments. We tried everything including a slingshot, but finally had to give up and keep him for the night.

We’ve seen two new kinds of dolphins recently. Heading into Honduras, we were escorted by the two largest dolphins we have ever seen. They were at least twelve feet long. We wondered if they might be pilot whales but never got a good enough look to be sure.

The other dolphins are very small. They’re between three and four feet long and very dark. The really like to jump and often will jump right out of the water for a breath rather than just raising their blowhole.

Since passing Huatulco we have seen thousands of sea turtles. These are the big boys of the turtle world, anywhere from eighteen inches to three feet across. They seem to spend most of their time hanging out on the surface getting a suntan. When it’s calm you can often see four or five without moving your eyes and once in a while you’ll see a bird standing up on the water. When you get nearer it turns out that he’s resting on a turtle. When it’s windy and the waves build, you can’t see the turtles at all. This worries us as they can weigh up to three hundred pounds and we wouldn’t want to hit one at speed. The behavior of the turtles seems to vary by country. In Mexico and Guatemala they ignored the boat even when you could reach out and touch them. Off of Nicaragua, they dived as soon as they spotted us. I wonder if this means that they are still hunted there.