Well, we finally made it to Guatemala. We arrived here on Friday, June 28th.
Let me begin, with our trip from Key West. Charlie and I made the 3 day trip by ourselves from Key West to Isla Mujeres. We were blessed with good seas and good weather, just no wind. We have basically motor sailed the whole trip so far. The drone of the motor became unidentifiable at times. Crossing the Yucatan Channel was a trip, though. We were sailing in 7,000+ depths of water. Passing Cuba by only 10 miles...I had no idea that Cuba was so mountainous (north side) and forested. It was sort of surreal to see it, the mysterious Cuba, but exciting all the same. What wind we had was at our nose and then there was the current to deal with which was also on our nose. That is the reason we sailed so close the coast of Cuba, to get into the counter current which helped us somewhat. But, getting closer to Mexico and with the updwelling sea floor + current, we had about 6 hours of the boat tossing to and fro and side to side, very uncomfortable. We were never able to really sleep due to the point of sail and our conversations soon centered on how much we were going to sleep once we reached Mexico and in the AC....needless to say it is hot as hell during the day. We got some relief with our fresh water hose at the stern...where we would perch on those back upper seats and shower. Night time sailing was actually somewhat of a relief. Fortunately, we never saw any other boats or tankers here, until we cleared Cuba.

Isla Mujeres was a wonderful sight to see as we were certainly ready for a good rest. The water out in the channel was the most beautiful color of blue I have ever seen and then coming into Mexico it turned a light turquoise. We could see rock and coral heads and I would yell out to Charlie, "OMG there is coral"...but he would then assure me all was OK, as we were in 20-30' of water. We anchored in the lagoon on the north side of the island for a couple of days while we did our entrance paperwork...with the help of an agent, can't imagine trying to do this on our own, as even with an agent it was crazy....that is a whole story unto itself. We did experience our first squall here. We had just gotten back on board from spending 4 hours doing paperwork, when we noticed that the sky was getting dark....now, we had our Shade Tree awning up covering our whole boat....not good when a storm is approaching. No sooner than we said, we better get this awning down, when we got hit with 20-30 knot winds and blinding rain. Of course, then our anchor pulled up and we were heading for the boat behind us. This was happening to several other boats in the lagoon, they just didn't have a gigantic sail to make everything happen in double time as we did....we learned many lessons from this event! After 45 minutes of Charlie at the helm trying to dodge boats and me at the bow holding down what I could of the awning ( there was damage to several of the tent poles that formed the arch of the awning) with the rain pelting us and making it difficult to see, we got the awning down and the boat under control. But, just as quick as it started, it stopped, no need for a shower that day as we were drenched, but hey all the salt was washed off the boat! We immediately got on the VHF and informed El Milagro Marina we were coming in for a slip!

We spent a total of 7 days in Mexico at a wonderful marina, El Milagro, owned by a Californian, Eric, and his wonderful Mexican staff. The place was very quaint. It was a hotel as well as a marina.We highly recommend it if you are coming to Isla Mujeres. We met so many wonderful people here, some cruising and some just tourist staying at the hotel, again, just too many wonderful things to report from here. The one thing we did that was a bucket list item, was we took a whale shark tour! We left at 8:30 am and had about an hours ride northeast from the Isla, when you could see a congregation of fishing boats (40 or so). As we entered this area, there were "fins to the left and fins to the right" (maybe Jimmy Buffett did this tour)....hell, there were whale sharks everywhere, it was unbelievable. The boat had 2 guides that would take 2 people each into the water at a time (there were 9 people + 3 crew on board). We had on short wetsuits and our snorkeling gear...and into the water and then those beautiful huge creatures were within arms length from us. It was amazing! These plankton eating fish have huge squared off snouts, unlike the v shaped noses of regular sharks, that are open wide as they skim the surface. Covered with white spots, they are 20-30' in length. We were in and out of the water several times during the trip and got to see an amazing number of fish. We were so glad we did this side trip.

Our friend, Dan, joined us in Isla Mujeres and we left the next day for Guatemala. No stopping in Belize. It took us 3 days, again going against the current. Got into Livingston around 9:00am, which was good as there is a sandbar we had to navigate, but it was high tide and we went right over it. We are now in a REAL 3rd world country. We were anchored out and the whole immigration group (6) boarded our boat. It took about 30 minutes and a round of oatmeal cookies and we had our paper work done. We had to dingy into town to retrieve our passports and pay 1300 quetzales ($170 US). If you think Mexico is 3rd world, you ain't seen nothing yet! But having said this, it is really neat, mayan women walking around in their native dress with bowls on their heads carrying laundry, or food or whatever. We hit the ATM and the bank, armed guards let you in and out of the bank, to exchange our $, then back to the boat.

It was then a 17 mile ride up river to our marina, Mario's On the Rio. You can look at their website: www.mariosontherio.com
The first 5 miles or so the river is very narrow and there are 300' cliffs on each side covered with jungle. The vegetation is so lush, bromeliads, palm trees, vines, just fricking jungle. There are mayan palapa huts and people in dugout canoes, there is also, of course, modern fishing boats both large and small. We only passed one other sailboat. The river twists and turns and then opens up into Lake El Golfte and the water turns green from the brown brackish water of Livingston. The trip from Livingston to our marina took about 3 hours motoring at 5 knots. So, we finally made it and as we were entering the marina, I hear my name shouted out by Terry Morris, a woman who I met in a knitting group on the internet over a year ago. Terry has been feeding us very pertinent information since we left Galveston about what to expect and tips along the way. I feel as I know her already before we actually get to meet and hug. The marina is really nice, they have a well that is UV treated, showers, a river water filtered pool and a great bar/restaurant under a large palapa on the river. Lala, the waitress makes great boat drinks! But there is no ice to buy, so that will take some getting use to. I can see we will need to make room in our freezer for our 3 little ice cube trays.