The Rio Dulce - Part II
We motored out into El Golfete from our quiet anchorage in the bay north of Isla Grande. We were headed up river to the town of Fronteras, where we would replenish our food supply, and hopefully also find the parts we needed to finish a few important projects on Sea Quill. The ten or so mile trip took a couple of hours, as we motored gently through the calm waters of El Golfete and back into the upper leg of the Rio Dulce. As we neared Fronteras, we began to see fancier and fancier houses, with private docks, shiny motorboats, special areas roped off for swimming, and even, god forbid, jet skis. We could see that we were re-entering "western" civilization, where there are such things as "weekend" homes and "recreational" vehicles.
As the town of Fronteras came into view, we passed one marina after another, each packed to the pontoons with sailboats. We wanted to stay upstream from town, so that we might swim in clean water, so we kept on going until we passed beneath the high bridge. To starboard, beyond the bridge, we saw a swanky marina, with a crescent of sailboats docked around a tall, authentic palapa-style restaurant. From the looks of it, we were pretty certain that El Tortugal Marina was a little too good for us, but we decided to stop and ask about the docking prices anyway, and have a cold beer at the same time.
As we were dropping the anchor, a guy and a girl sculling a wooden tender, did a turnabout and came over to say hello. Their names were Maurits and Mavis, and their boat was Gertruide. He was a tall guy from Europe, she was a petite brunette from America, they were about our own age; for the first time in our trip, we felt like we were meeting our peers, or even -- our doppelgangers!
Maurits and Mavis had their boat at the marina across the river, formerly Suzanna's. The marina wasn't fancy, but the docking fee was pretty cheap, and there was lots of space. After some conversation, they invited us to come across and dock beside them. So before sunset, we pulled up the anchor again, and headed over. When Jen jumped off to secure the docklines, she stepped into a gaping hole; a plank was missing from the rickety old dock.
The next morning, Mauritz and Mavis left to head back down river; they had finished their business in Fronteras, and were in the process of buying a little island in El Golfete. We hoped to catch up with them later, once we finished our own business in town. We began with our laundry: our ritual to celebrate the return to civilization. In the marina, we hung our newly clean skivvies to dry from the stay wires. They fluttered like prayer flags in the sun.
We also started that morning off by scrubbing clean the cabin interior -- not our usual routine. However, the coffee percolator had exploded on the stove while it was coming to a boil, spraying the entire cabin with coffee. Luckily, neither one of us was hurt, but there wasn't an inch of the saloon that wasn't totally java-ed.
Days in Fronteras are witheringly hot -- scalding, steamy -- but almost every evening you can count on a real deluge... where thunder rumbles, lightning cracks, and water pours out of the sky so fast that you fill the tanks and clean the topsides in mere minutes. The heat was so strong, however, that our first priority was to make a sunshade for Sea Quill.
While we were looking for good ideas to steal from other sailboats, we met Geoffrey and Gerry of Katinka, who were also docked at Suzanna's. It turned out that we made some very fun friends; we traded books, borrowed their movies and DVD player, nibbled from Gerry's Italian Basil plants... and had some great laughs. Check out Gerry's blog, clinging to the wreckage, to read her sagely satire of the boating life!
From Suzanna's, we could walk to Fronteras, on the other side of the river, by a foot bridge that spans a bog leading to the high bridge. The foot bridge passes close by a little hut on stilts, with similar huts nearby. All the huts are the same, except that the hut closest to the foot bridge has a fresh, orange paint job, suggesting a certain amount of prosperity. The owners of this particular hut charge passersby, or at least the gringos, 5 quetzales (about 75 cents) each to pass: "a troll fee," as Katinka's Geoffrey coined it. We were happy enough to pay it -- the fare included a roundtrip, after all. But if they were lucky enough to see us coming ahead of time, the neighbors in the upainted huts, farther from the foot bridge, sent their kids running out to meet us, to try to collect the fee for themselves.
In town, we found the heavy duty cable we needed to replace the holey one on the wind generator. Through word of mouth from the very helpful sailing community in the Rio, we found a used sewing machine for Jen, a 30 year old Pfaff. We carted our ailing Yamaha 8 outboard motor, with its mysterious problems, to the Yamaha shop. We brought our 20lb aluminum propane tank to the blacksmith, to have two, custom stern mounts constructed. We even found a second, 20lb aluminum propane tank, so that we could finally toss out the old and rusty 5lb steel tank that was giving us both nightmares about propane leaks and explosions.
Soon we were making progress again on our projects. One sweaty day, we hauled Ulf back up the mast (a few times) to re-wire the wind-generator. It was a tricky job, since we had decided to thread the cables inside of the mast -- something easier said than done. But when we finally finished, our wind-generator was working, quietly pumping new energy into our battery bank!
Jen sewed the sun awning for Sea Quill from some cheap, striped, cotton bed blankets, that she waterproofed with Lanco, a water sealant. The Guatemalan women who run the kitchen at Suzanna's recognized it immediately... "Hey, those are for the bed," they said. It was a temporary solution -- but a necessary one -- it was way too hot to wait for Sunbrella to ship in from the States.
After the sunshade was finished, Jen started on new sofa covers to replace the old, stained ones we inherited with the boat. We sprung for a nice piece of blue tipico, the handwoven, cotton textile that Mayan women weave for their traditional skirts.
Jen made the covers so that they could be easily removed for washing, a "design improvement" from the old ones, which were like wrestling alligators to get off and on. Worse, actually. On a little sailboat, where the sofas are sofa, dining chair, workbench, bookshelf, bed, and alternate walkway -- all in one -- they really get filthy. Covers that can be changed easily are a necessity, unless you don't mind living like a, uh, guy.
We had made some good improvements on Sea Quill. There was a lot more to do, for certain, but we felt like we had accomplished a lot, despite the humid, 90 degree days. We were also more than ready to leave Fronteras, and get back to a quieter, cleaner part of the river.
We said goodbye to the beautiful, tame roadside hawk that lives at Suzanna's. It was a Peeping Tom, above the open air shower stalls. Throughout Fronteras, and elsewhere, we saw lots of exotic birds living in cages: parrots, scarlet macaws, even hawks. The baby birds are taken from nests in the wild to sell cheaply, on the street, or in bars. Buying them only encourages more poaching, but we met a few people who had bought birds from kids who had walked in 'off the street' with them, simply because they worried what would happen to the creatures if they did not buy them. This bird, which is on the endangered species list, lives on chicken cuts from the cook, and is hand-tame to the owners and staff at Suzanna's.
Once we were underway, we radioed Gerry and Geoffrey, who had moved Katinka to another marina, to say "so long" for the next month or so. As we approached their marina, we noticed a rubber dinghy speeding towards our bow, rather than away from it. It was Geoffrey making a daring fresh basil drop-off!
We headed back to El Golfete. Somehow, nearly a month had passed while we were in Fronteras taking care of business, and now we were both ecstatic to leave town for the peace and quiet of the lake.
We found Maurits and Mavis again, who were anchored near the little island they were in the process of buying. In the same bay, we met Mike and Sherrie Payne, who also bought land and opened Texan Bay, a great little marina there. We spent the next couple of days in good company, enjoying the peace and quiet, and exploring Mavis and Maurits' island.
Rosaleo, whose whole extended family has lived in the bay for generations, showed up with Maurits and Mavis' new cayuco (yup, those two are definitely goin' native). The new cayuco is 20 feet long, but it looked a lot smaller as soon as Maurits stepped inside. The cayuco was hand-carved from a single tree trunk by a friend of Rosaleo.
We were having a great time, but we had to get moving: we were heading up to the Guatemalan highlands for a few weeks of much needed, intensive Spanish school. We packed our bags for the cool mountain climate, said goodbye to our friends, and left Sea Quill in the good hands of Mike and Sherrie at Texan Bay.