Guatemala - Rio Dulce, It’s Raining

The Political unrest has faded, and all roads are open and markets stocked per normal. We had no impact here apart from no fresh produce for 2 weeks. 

Bacon, fresh bread and butter for lunch…Yum.

We decided our Signwriting was looking a bit tired and faded, and having found Andy Signs in our local Fronteras town with good references, had them come remove, measure, make, and apply our new signage, both to the bows and stern.

Removing the old signage.

Andy and his partner at work

New signage in a darker grey than before

Benjamin, our daily helper has been cleaning decks, and stainless steel.

Furlers are looking new and gleaming

Meshugga is slowly beginning to come together, with Flybridge gel coated painted and decks clean. For Benjamin, it’s now hull cleaning and polishing between the constant rain. 

The brown paper on the aft Flybridge roof window is because Nicholas broke the window when removing all the windows a couple of weeks ago for the Gelcoat painting. 

This is the new window installed and he’s not yet removed the protective covering.

Nicholas is disconnecting and balancing all the Lithium batteries, so he’s working in the Generator locker upfront. He’s also building a new ‘battery box’ as he’s installing another 16 lithium batteries and the current ‘box’ is not large enough.

Halloween / Samhein. 

The Rio put on a day for adults and kids to visit various marinas to Trick or Treat

Catamaran Marina offered to put on sweet treat and ice creams for the kids, and Painkillers for the adults. We had quite a crowd both from our Marina and all the dinghies. 😂

Many of our Catamaran Marina cruisers dressed up.

Meagan and Michael of Tanagara 

Jennifer, aka Christmas Tree, not Statue of Liberty as I thought. 

Ilka and I

Ruth and I on ice-cream duty, doing seconds and thirds for the kids

Aboard, my machine bread making is going well. Second rise just prior to baking.

Today, between rain showers, we made it to a local Lawyer, to get documents and letters Notarized so that my sister-in-law, Penny, in Cape Town can collect our Renewed Drivers Licenses. We had applied for them whilst in Cape Town, but due to a backlog, (and the only Drivers Licence printing machine in South Africa broke down🤣), hence they were not ready for us to collect prior to flying back to Guatemala. Now I’m hoping that the Drivers Licence Department will accept the scanned documents- otherwise I have to DHL them to South Africa. 

It’s been pouring with rain the past 10 days due to Tropical Storm Pillar in the Pacific Ocean, and a System i94 in the Caribbean Sea just off Nicaraguan coast, ie abeam us. The expectation is still for more rain for another week, and the river rising with all the run-off.  Right now our river water is definitely ‘brown’.

A plus, is that temperatures have ‘plummeted’ from 100F / 38C to a cool 80F / 26C and although we have little solar incoming due to the heavy cloud cover, we also don’t need to run the aircon. Further, with Nicholas having many solar panels and batteries disconnected, it seems the ideal time to be using shore power (which is hugely expensive here in Guatemala at US 52c/KWH).

My makeshift Tarpaulin Tent over the Generator locker so that Nicholas can continue with his Battery stuff and servicing the Generator.