8/16/01 - A tropical wave in the eastern Caribbeann sea evolved into a tropical depression forecast to move westward toward Central America. So we decided to depart from the beautiful reefs of the Sapodillo Cays for the safety of the Rio Dulce.

The town of Livingston is more of a town than many we had seen in the past months. There were fairly well stocked markets here and restaurants and bars along the streets. The cruising guides said the only access to Livingston was by water, but there were several cars on the roads? We were kindly received by port officials who spent about four minutes aboard greeting us to Guatemala. A couple of hours later, we were able to pick up ship's papers at their various offices and pay our port fees: Customs, Immigration, and Port Captain fees together totaled about Q500 (Q7.7 = $1). This gave us authorization for a three month stay.

8/19/01 - Finished with the brief stop in Livingston we motored up the Rio Dulce - running on fresh water! Maybe a first foor "Sand Dollar" - certainly since we'd had her. We could hardly believe we'd arrived, this was a very abstract goal when we set out for it: to find our way to some obscure short little river down in Central America and hang out there for a while... To have it come true, well, Lisa's grin said it all.  

BELOW: Lisa at the helm as we depart Livingston and approach the Rio Dulce canyon, Guatemala

With a potential hurricane in the area, lots of other boats had the same inspiration to go into the protection of the river, so we joined quite a fleet of sailboats moving up the river canyon. The current in the river is about two or three knots, so this five-mile trip upstream took a couple of hours, but it was a beautiful clear day and very scenic. The next day, local fishermen in a "cayuco" -  a dugout canoe with built-up sides - demonstrated their net-casting ability. Hard to believe they could stand up in a cayuco, never mind throwing a twenty foot cast net from it. We heard the fishing was not too great in the Rio Dulce these days due to overfishing, there were quite a few cormorants and egrets about so maybe there were still some fish left, but the birds were not as abundant as they were in years past according to some so maybe the birds were noticing the lack of fish too.

BELOW: The Cayuco Club at Mario's Marina - viewed from the mast-top of "Sand Dollar"

8/22/01 - We stayed an evening at "Gringo Bay", named for the fact that some waterfront houses there were owned by foreigners from the USA and Europe. The land is part of a Guatemalan Nature Preserve, but waterfront land can be leased and improved to a limited extent. There is no road access or utility service to Gringo Bay, but Kent and Jennifer of "October" had a beautiful house and garden, with Talapia fish ponds, freshwater lobster ponds, and of course a great view. They had been on Gringo Bay for about 10 years. While we visited, Cade mentioned that it would be fun to have a cayuco and Jennifer promptly took up this musing as a mission. A few hours later, her hired hand, Carlos, had worked a deal with some local purveyor of cayucos hidden in the surrounding jungles, and we had another boat in our little fleet! We named our cayuco "Tanto Rio" - "so much river".

8/23/01 - We arrived at Mario's Marina near the town of Fronteras in time for the weekly Wednesday night Mexican food night at the Cayuco Club Bar (when you buy a drink and roll doubles on the dice, you get a marker for a free drink). There was much to do with guests (Lisa's mom, Luella, and cousin, Polly, with her husband, Victor) arriving in less than two weeks. We had to solve some puzzles such as where the guests would stay, how they would get around other than by cayuco - reliable but damp and slow, and what sights we would see once they arrived. We also worked on getting the SSB radio repaired, learning to use the cayuco - apparently we were about the only gringos on the river that had such a thing - and restocking our food supplies. There were many people to meet here - quite a few sailors who came here for hurricane season up to a decade ago and never left. We wondered if such a fate could be in store for us as well? Maybe the cayuco was just a sign of things to come?

BELOW: A favorite produce stand in Fronteras - The Fronteras market featured the best selection of fresh produce we had seen for months. Hundreds of flies (not visible in photo) buzzed about, taking advantage of the occasional item of produce crushed underfoot by the crowd

8/29/01 - after a few days of orientation at Mario's Marina, we went exploring the surroundings a little more. We stopped by the town of Fronteras for some last minute provisioning and then moved on into the Lago Izabel which is a vast lake on the Rio Dulce. There were some sights up the lake which Margret and Ulli of "Filia" wanted to show us, so we would have the familiarity to visit them again if we liked, while the Filia crew were gone to Germany for a while in September.

8/31/01 - We anchored off Finca Paraiso (a Finca is a ranch), and paid Q5.00 ($0.65) per person as a sort of admission fee or toll to cross the ranch lands (a 45 minute walk), and have the peace of mind that ranch-hands would keep careful watch over our boats and dinghies while we were gone. The mountains in the distance to the north of this finca rise to an elevation of about 3,000 feet above sea level. The lake elevation is 0.8 feet above sea level. From the finca, we walked to the foothills of these nearby mountains where a cold mountain stream flows beneath a geothermally heated waterfall. The water in the fall is about 100F and the stream water is about 75F, so there are comfortable spots in the water for anyone.

9/03/01 - We anchored in the second row at Mario's Marina. The second row is boats that are not on the dock, but just rafted together near the dock. This was a good arrangement as there was a night watchman to provide security for the boat while we were gone to greet our guests from the USA arriving in Guatemala City.

We finished giving our cayuco "Tanto Rio" a paint job and hauled her up on the bank at the marina while we were away. "Tanto Rio" was about 16 feet long and made from a single tree trunk - we gave Q600 ($78) for her, almost cheaper than an equivalent weight of firewood in many parts of the USA! When we departed Rio Dulce in November 2001, we sold Tanto Rio to our friends George and Mecca on "Sailabout" who decided to stay in the Rio Dulce for a while and help Casa Guatemala and also run the Monkey Bay Marina

9/23/01 - Lisa's mom visited us for two weeks and departed Guatemala on 9/22/01. While she was here, we visited Antigua and Tikal. Here is a brief recounting of the visit:

We began by picking up Lisa's mom, Luella, and cousin Polly and her husband Victor. They arrived on the evening of the 7th of September (Luella's 84th birthday) and the next day we rode over the mountain from Guatemala City to Antigua. The street scenes of Antigua are dominated by church ruins and the surrounding volcanoes. The streets are also filled with highly entrepreneurial Quiche mayans who are eager to sell beautiful hand-woven fabrics, carved flutes and masks, freshly roasted cashews and other locally grown nuts, and various jewelry featuring lots of locally mined jade and silver. While roaming the streets of Antigua, we were fortunate to find the store of Maxine and her daughter Wilma. We had seen pictures of these ladies in photographs on "Filia" (Margret and Ulli have been visiting these ladies for several years and have a series of photos of them as Wilma has grown into a young lady.) They have excellent english and also excellent abilities as weavers. Their whole family weaves fabrics for the shop. They are located a few blocks north of the central park in Antigua and they are well worth seeking.

BELOW: (L to R) Luella, Lisa, Polly and Wilma, (front) Maxine - Maxine and Wilma are expert mayan weavers in Antigua.

Our few days in Antigua, ended on a major down note on the 11th as the disasters in New York and elsewhere unfolded like a weird dream on virtually incomprehensible (to us) spanish language television. After a few days of recuperation on the Rio Dulce, where we hung out in bars watching CNN, on the 18th we rode a van to Tikal.

The central courtyard at Tikal is between the Jaguar Temple or Temple 1 - see photo, and the similar sized Temple of the Mask or Temple 2 (from which vantage this photo was taken). This is one of the most spectacular of the Mayan ruins and seeing the magnitude of this site inspired us to pick up a copy of the Popol Vuh, or "Book of the Community [of the Quiche' Mayans]", which is a fascinating piece of literature that includes the mayan myth of creation and the legends of their predecessors.

BELOW: The Jaguar Temple (temple 1) at Tikal

Our guide at Tikal was Alberto. A guided tour at Tikal lasts two or three hours and costs US$10 per person. It is wise to arrange a guided tour with a guide as soon as possible when visiting Tikal as there are not interpretive signs like one might expect to find in a US Park. Alberto spoke excellent english.

9/28/01 - We and several other cruiser visited Casa Guatemala which is an orphanage along the Rio Dulce. There was a dormitory at the orphanage that was damaged in an earthquake a while back and appeared in danger of collapse. Of course, without this building, the children at the orphanage were somewhat crowded into the other structures and this seemed unfair to us who are accustomed to a better roll of the dice in life.

We decided to contribute some volunteer effort to the orphanage by helping them demolish the old building and then design a new one. Although they know a thing or two about building structures on pilings for earthquake resistance, they do not have a great concern for fire escapes, electrical safety, or even some basic structural design concepts. So we could really give them some useful advice and perhaps allow them to build a safer and less expensive dormitory than they otherwise would.

11/10/01 - In early October, we successfully knocked down the old dormitory building. Sailors from the boats "Sailabout", "Pure Miracle", "Hazel Belle", and "Whisper II" helped with rigging spare anchor rodes to come-alongs and chainfall hoists, and with these and the pull from the local construction crew, we managed to pull the building over in about two hours. Within a week after the building was down, the local workers had completely disassembled the building and salvaged virtually every piece of wood and other construction materials. After that, we worked with the crews of "Sailabout" and "Pure Miracle" and with lots of helpful advice from several other interested sailors, to design a new dormitory. This was a big design project for volunteers.

BELOW: Demolition work at Casa Guatemala - before and after we finally managed to collapse the old damaged building to make way for new construction.

In another volunteer effort, multi-year visitors to the Rio Dulce, Mike and Karen on "Rhea of Hope", told us about an area of the Guatemalan highlands where a multi-year drought had led to some cases of starvation. Although local government aid was reaching the citizenry in the local villages in the cash economy, there were a couple of villages of indigenous Quiche who only seldom visited the larger towns, and thus had not been receiving aid.

Lisa helped "Rhea of Hope" and others, including ringleader "Rusty", with a multi-week project to deliver aid to these indigenous villages of Marimba and Chaguiton. She and the packing crew repackaged basic staples from bulk containers and another crew trucked the supplies to the villages. $US450 per week in donations from contributions by cruisers in the Rio Dulce fed about 80 families in these two villages for the last couple of months of 2001.

Mike and Karen hoped to help keep the aid flowing for six months until the crops reached maturity, though many cruisers were departing the area in November. We never heard how they fared, but while we were involved, we enjoyed being able to contribute to charitable efforts at the "front lines" of aid.

Along with these projects, we had had plenty of boat maintenance work including replacing the batteries, varnishing, painting the toe-rail, sewing, repairing the SSB radio, working on the engine, replacing the outboard and doing the break-in maintenance, and fixing various leaks. We also managed to read about 10 books apiece and take in two or three happy hours a week, mostly at the Cayuco Club. It was a busy time.

One of the more unusual adventures was the pushcaro ride. Six of us accompanied Sam of "Morgan Lynn" on a ride through the lush Guatemalan countryside on a railroad ride on locally built wooded push cars. Sam gave us a great tour from the market in Morales to the next town west along the railroad - Nuevo York, where we had lunch. As we rode down the tracks with Sam honking horns and ringing bells, all the locals waved and waved. Sam explained that gringos riding pushcaros are sort of a local version of a mobile zoo. All the local kids who don't see much of the world, can come to the tracks and have a good look at us. What a fun trip!!

We enjoyed our stay in Guatemala, despite being nervous about a rash of dinghy thefts and a couple of incidents of attempted boardings against boats anchored alone on the Rio.  We fortunately did not have any problems ourselves. We decided to move on at the end of November 2001.

So far on our cruise (Seven months out of Tampa), we had met the crews of the following boats:

M.E, "ADL (anti-destination league)"
Rick, "Ananda"
Michelle & Keith, "Antares III"
Gayla & Steve, "Ariel"
Joyce & Roger, "Austerity"
Doann & Wayne, "Bali Hai"
Mel & Harry, "Bigfoot"
Michelle & Christian, "Breezin"
Mary & Carl, "Camryka"
Betty, Tim, & family, "Catfish II"
Stephanie & Jerry, "Chez Nous"
Shirley, "Chelsea B"
Chris, "Colonel's Lady"
Judith & Don, "Daisy D"
Bill, "Diana B"
Alison & Mike, "Dreamer"
Bob, "DX Bound"
M.A. & Laurent, "El Gato"
Jeanie & Frank, "Elizabeth"
Doris & Stan, "Eos"
Margret & Ulli, "Filia"
Lou & Walt, "Hazel Belle" - reported sunk on the Mexican coast early 2002.
Yvonne, Chris & Urs, "Hey di Hei"
Mike & family, "Infini"
Claudia, "Kamiros"
Terry & Les, "Karma II"
Lori & Joe, "Liberi"
Lyette & Tom, "Mesqua Ukee"
Stu, "Mixto Listo"
Sam, "Morgan Lynn"
John, "Mongoose"
Reiner, "Muli"
Christine & Brian, "Mustang"
Steve & dog Nuvia, "My Jo"
Randy, "Nightmare"
Alice & Bill, "Nora"
Jennifer & Kent, "October"
Bea & Carel, "Obsession"
Marsha & Gene, "Pangaea"
Nelly & Tom, "Pilar"
Diane & Daryl, "Pure Miracle"
Joann & Brian, "Renu"
Karen & Mike, "Rhea of Hope"
Pam & David, "Rio"
Judy & Bob, "Sanctuary"
Mecca & George, "Sailabout"
Ginger & Doug, "Sakoose"
Jim, "Sea Mist"
Stacy & Dave, "Soggy Paws"
Irwin & dog Peewee, "Speck"
Debi & Paul, "Sun Runner"
Jean & Bill, "Sunset Run"
Kaz & Mark, "That"
Ann & Jerry, "Twenda"
Tom, "Whisper II"
Nancy & Paul, "Xtazy"
Elizabeth & Matt, "Zaya"