Going Places Where Most People Don't

From the cobblestone streets to the surrounding volcanoes, Antigua has an amazing amount of charm.

As I said before, we are currently in Fronteras. This  area is called Rio Dulce. It’s on the Rio Dulce between El Golfete and Lago de Izabal. The area is quite popular amongst cruisers. It being a hurricane free area in the midst of the hurricane latitudes. The rivers and waterways are a lifeline here. Where boats of all makes and sizes are used for fishing, transportation, delivery, commerce and even recreation. There are many marinas in this area. They mostly cater to the boaters who have migrated here from all over the world. Some come for a short visit and continue on their way. Others come and stay just for the hurricane season, and still others have come and never made it any further for what ever reason. The services here are great for boaters. Especially compared to everywhere we went to in Belize. Because of that we will stay here for at least a month getting things fixed on Stray Catz. Parts are an issue, but labor isn’t. The daily wage here for general labor is about $15 US.  The only challenge is no one seems to understand me and I can’t figure out what they’re saying. 🙂 So during the repair process of Stray Catz, the three of us are going to head into the heart of Guatemala and take some Spanish language lessons in hopes of narrowing the communication gap. Kylan has been invaluable as a translator even with his limited Spanish.

On the way between Cayo Quemado and Fronteras we let Kylan do a little wake boarding due to the lack of wind and how hot it was.

As far as repairs go, Stray Catz looks somewhat naked at the moment because we took all the sails off to be repaired. Nothing major wrong, but after the gale in the Yucatan Channel there are some small tears and worn stitching that needs updated. We also lost an alternator during that storm and our windlass went out later. Those too are off the boat.  One other important item we’re working on is a chart plotter. It would be nice once again to know where we are going. Or maybe not?

Any body headed to Guatemala that can bring a chart plotter with them?

Just a quick update to let everyone know where we are. We arrived in Guatemala on Mon 2/10 checked in and headed up the Rio Dulce (sweet river) Quite an experience since I have no charts for this area and there are no aids to navigation on the river. Lots of cruising boats come up here though, so how hard can it be.
Most of the river is 50′ or deeper right up to the shore so I got a little over-confident. We were all admiring the country side when the next thing you know we’re in the middle of two fisherman’s gaggle of crab traps. They use old plastic oil jugs for floats to mark their locations. Not overly visible from the helm of Stray Catz. I didn’t realize I had left the channel, or for that matter there even was a channel, so I was surprised by this

I tried to steer through the maze of traps without getting trapped myself or worse snagging a trap line around the prop. We didn’t snag a line around the prop, but we did snag a couple of them around the rudder and started dragging them with us up the river. I’m sure this was funny to any other observer as this fisherman in his dugout canoe started chasing us yelling something in Spanish that none of us understood, but we just wanted to let this poor guy get his traps back. In just a few moments the traps dropped off the boat and we were back in the channel and on our way again.
We stopped in Cayo Quemado for the night and now we’re in Fronteras. I’ll add more later with some pictures.