The Latest
22 June 2008 | Bahia del Sol, El Salvador
by the beachwalkers
"under the boardwalk"
Cruisers are leaving the bahia like rats fleeing a sinking ship. We should be one of them. At least Raven is mostly ready to go, but wait, we forgot about another inland trip, this time actually 'in' El Salvador. So another week it will be, just when I was almost ready to venture back out over the bar, the sand bar with the 12 foot waves that is, and for all the horrifying unknown events that make all those 'great' sailing stories. Fun! - not. I forgot to tell you we also had Raven's bottom cleaned and replaced the piece of the $3,000 prop that fell off (?!) along with the zinc - special thanks to Santos for getting the broken 1/8" screw out - or we would have had to haul Raven out of the water. Ya think the screw would be a little larger, no?
We leave the 'compound' every once in a while and walk across the peninsula to the Pacific Ocean. On yesterday's excursion we took a left at the water instead of a right (last time). We walked past a gang of stray bony dogs shade-ing under a washed up tree trunk. They did not attack us thankfully-ha,ha. Maybe because we didn't have any food - put we are pretty plump ourselves. We both thought we should take one home though-maybe because they didn't attack us. We walked to the boca- the mouth of the estuary, to a small local beach town. We hung out in hammocks under some shade- very tall palm frond roofed structures that reach out over the water at high tide- to have a soda to cool ourselves. 2 very cute local girls came over and tried to talk to us but since our Mexican Spanish is OK and our Latina American Spanish horrible, it was a very short conversation.
June 20th is 'Teacher's Day' in El Salvador. 500+ people descended upon our usually quiet hotel/living room. I stayed at the boat all day to avoid the crowd (and wallow in my depression) while Scott ventured into the 'bar': the only place for him to sit was at the bar (yeah, yeah) while he got on line. It's nice that there is such a holiday to celebrate the educator's endeavors. Scott celebrated with a few beers. He's so nice.
We had the occasional 'cooler' (86oF perhaps) morning and the pool was cooler too (when it is cloudy the day before). The gazillions of 'tiny flying vampires' (mosquitoes) continue to bite us starting at 4:30pm. We hear their Blood Banks are full by 9 pm but we are usually all settled in to hanging out on the boat by then.
Less rain lately. I have firmly decided that I would rather be hot then moldy. Don't you just hate it when you get moldy?!
The new laptop continues to frustrate us but it is working semi-properly so it is use able for now until we can get professional help from HP, maybe in Panama, or before.