After several long days of prepping "Tashmoo" to leave her in the sweltering jungle heat we are finally on our way home. We left "Tashmoo" with several heavy-duty reflective tarps covering her and all ports have reflective foil in place to help keep her cool. There is also a dehumidifier running below deck running 24/7. Yesterday (Friday) at noon we piled our bags and our sweaty bodies into the Tortugal water launcha and headed down river to Fronteras. We were trying a new bus line to get us to the city. It turned out that the Maya del Oro bus was an excellent choice. We arrived in Guatemala City in a little over 5 hours with only several stops along the way! Once at the city bus station we hired a very friendly cab driver to take us to our hotel, Casa Blanca.
Saturday morning we woke early and had a great breakfast at the hotel at 6:00am. At 7:00 we left for the airport. Did you know you couldn't bring extra guitar strings on a plane? I was bringing our guitar home and there was an extra set of strings in the case. Security would not let us bring the extra strings. Apparently you can strangle someone with spare strings. It must not be illegal to remove the strings already on a guitar and strangle someone because those are okay... After some discussion, security agreed to let us replace the old strings with the new strings. There we stood for 10 minutes while security watched as we replaced the strings. The old strings where a little rusty and needed to be replaced anyway. Two hours later we took off on our air bound voyage north, to Miami Florida then on to Boston. In Miami we claimed our bags, cleared Customs, and rechecked our bags. We had a two plus hour layover so we decided to grab some lunch. Yup, we're back in the states. A bottle of water $2.99! When we were waiting for the bus in Rio Dulce I paid 1Q (12 cents) for a water... Cindy got a small $10 salad and I got a tiny pizza, $20. We've decided when we get home we're going to make signs saying "We'll Work For Food"....
I do have a couple of leads for jobs. I'm hoping one works out to go back to Juniper.
Anyway, unless we do something really cool this summer, I don't imagine we'll be writing many blog updates for the next couple of months. We plan on heading back to Guatemala in September but who knows, it could be later, it could be sooner. Thanks for reading about our travels this year, check back to see if anything new is going on, and thanks "so much" to those of you that added comments!
PS: Congratulations to Manoel and Andrea for their successful summit of Mount McKinley! You guys are awesome! Can't wait for New Zealand!
PPS: WE'RE FREEZING!
PPPS: Heather is a geek...
Fair Winds
John & Cindy
S/V Tashmoo
sailtashmoo att yahoo dot com
Copyright © 2006-2009
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Comments [7]
Shinny interior...
N15.39.010 /W089.00.111
It's so hot here! It's been close to 100 degrees with 100% humidity for two weeks now. Fortunately we have plenty to do on the inside of "Tashmoo" to keep us busy. The air conditioner is cranking away keeping the below deck temp around 80. It actually feels cold sometimes!
We're varnishing our interior and it looks awesome! The galley and forward cabin are complete. There is an old saying "there are no secrets on a boat". This is because you live in such close quarters you don't have any privacy. Since the inside of the boat is totally apart for our varnishing project there is about ¾ less space. I can hear Cindy think...
We hope to complete the main salon before we head back to Mass. I can't believe we're heading back next week! We're excited to see everyone back home. As of now, neither one of us have jobs so we will have plenty of free time to visit and plan our Australia and New Zealand trip. I'm really hoping I can find some work though.
Tortugal is doing well. The showers are awesome, movie night is great, beers are cold and the Internet is still slow... Someone mentioned he was streaming music from the Internet on his boat. No wonder Cindy can't use Skype here!
Congratulations to Krystal on all A's, that's so awesome!
Congratulations to AJ and Calvin on their huge accomplishments - graduation!
Sorry for the crappy blog update...
See you soon. Literally!!!
Fair Winds
John & Cindy
S/V Tashmoo
sailtashmoo att yahoo dot com
Copyright © 2006-2009
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N15.39.010 /W089.00.111
We're okay. Last night just after 2:00am we were sleeping soundly with the air conditioning on inside Tashmoo. We were awoken by the whole boat shaking like a severe mast pump or vibration. Seconds later the power went out. I jumped out of bed and looked outside. There was lightning to the east. It's been super hot here and the humidity has been 100% so there was an eerie haze across the water and over the other boats. Then another vibration came. All the boats were moving around but the wind was dead calm. Cindy asked what it was? I said I think we just had an earthquake either that or a volcano erupted! One of the guards came walking down the dock carrying a shotgun and a flashlight. The moonlight lit the marina and river just enough to see. There is a young woman sleeping above the Ranchedo, which is on pilings about 15 feet above the water. I saw her up, it must have shook her very strongly. The power has been out since the quake and we've heard it was a 7.1 quake centered not far from here in Honduras. There is now a tsunami warning in the Caribbean. No real damage here at Tortugal but homes around us are damaged. Anyway we're fine.
Fair Winds
John & Cindy
S/V Tashmoo
sailtashmoo att yahoo dot com
Copyright © 2006-2009
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