October 8 - 21, 2005 - Guatemala

We spent 2 wonderful weeks in Antigua, Guatemala, a quaint cobblestone village surrounded by volcanoes. It was wonderful! We stayed 2 days at a lovely bed and breakfast in a suite and then moved to a local family's very humble home for one week while we took intensive private Spanish lessons (4 hours per day for 5 days). After getting used to 6 adults sharing one bathroom which was located across the inner courtyard and hearing chicken buses roaring by an arm's length from our street side bedroom window, it was a pretty good experience. (Note: Chicken buses are the public buses in Mexico and Central America that look like old school buses painted cheerful colors on which locals transport themselves and their belongings including chickens.) We ate all 3 meals with the family and we actually started to understand some Spanish. It was a great deal: $90 per week per person for 7 days lodging, all meals and 20 hours of Spanish lessons. Antigua is filled with young and older travelers studying Spanish, buying colorful Guatemalan handcrafts, and enjoying an eclectic array of restaurants.

For our second week, we moved to a very nice hotel/condo complex, which had 3 hard surfaced tennis courts. Yippee! We were lucky to get this hotel through our RCI (timeshare) just 2 days before we moved in. Apparently, we filled a cancellation which was probably due to the mudslides in the area. Portia took 6 more hours of Spanish tutoring.

On an all day trip to Volcan Pacaya, an active volcano just outside of Guatemala City, we hiked 1.5 hours through lovely jungle terrain to the base of the steaming cinder cone. We thought that was the end of the trek when our guide gave us the option of climbing the cone itself. Not to be labeled “out-of-shape old-folks” by the 3 other members of our hiking group who were all in their mid-20’s, we enthusiastically charged on. After an hour of huffing and puffing straight UP the loose volcanic gravel, struggling to stay within sight of our younger companions, we indeed proved that we were “out-of-shape old-folks.” But, we made it to the top and the view was well worth it. Because the volcanic gravel was so deep and the incline so steep, we had lots of fun “skiing” down the cone using our parallel skiing moves. We “skied” past those 20 + year olds!!

Back in Antigua we played some tennis, ate at many very good restaurants, shopped the color-filled markets, enjoyed the air conditioning in our room and watched HBO and CNN on TV. We didn't go to Lake Atitlan because of the devastating mudslides which had closed most of the roads in that area.

Throughout our stays in El Salvador and Guatemala we have been blessed with free internet connections via our cellphone and laptop computer. We have a GSM (international) cellphone which enables us to install a sim card from the local cellphone companies in foreign countries to get a local phone number and fairly cheap access to the U.S. (10 cents per minute from El Salvador and Guatemala). In El Salvador, this service also provides GPRS which with a little software enables us to connect to the internet wherever we have cellphone service, including on our boat in the middle of the estuary. Tigo, the local cellphone company, has not figured out how to charge for internet access, so, for now, they provide it for free! Some computer savvy cruisers provided us with the software. We carried our laptop to Guatemala and enjoyed our free internet connection there as well. We use a pay-as-you-go cell service where we buy $5, $12, $20 or larger phone cards that add time to our cellphone. Did we tell you that El Salvador uses U.S. Currency? We certainly enjoy not having to do currency conversions in our heads.

We returned to El Salvador for one week during which we worked on numerous boat issues, one of which was spending 3 hours at the San Salvador airport to get our charger/inverter released from customs without having to pay duty or taxes. It was a horrendous experience until we were able to convince Olga, the head of El Salvadoran customs at the airport, to help us. We had arranged for West Marine to ship it via DHL to its DHL office in San Salvador. They mistakenly sent it via FedEx to the DHL address! It got stuck at the airport rather than at the DHL downtown customs location. This charger/inverter, a Xantrax Freedom 30, in combination with the ten new deep cycle golf cart batteries which we purchased in San Salvador are the main components of our upgraded electrical system which we hope will resolve our constant inadequate electrical output problems.