If we were intelligent we would have started learning Spanish the day we got our boat. Even learning just 3 words a day by now we would have acquired the vocabulary of the average three-year-old (who has mastered about 1,000 words). Let's just say based on the number of Spanish words we currently know we can not even understand what a Spanish speaking three year old is even saying!

Our initial thought was we'll pick up Spanish as we travel through Mexico. Wrong. When we were in the larger tourist cities (Cabo, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco etc) most people seemed to have English skills that were frankly probably better than ours. Smaller villages and towns allowed us the opportunity to practice the basics in Spanish. All in all we left Mexico with a few more Spanish words than 'uno mas cerveza por favor'.

Central America was quite a shock for us coming from Mexico with all their English speaking inhabitants. Here we found that words we had learned in Mexico for an item were another word completely in Central America! Perfect, this was all we needed. The good in this is we tried harder. Regardless of the situation, we found individuals to be very patient and willing to help us through whatever situation we were in. The fact that we were just trying made a big difference. We of course continued to supplement our verbal skills with non verbal gestures - pointing, mimicking, writing, even drawing pictures - just imagine a game of charades.

Now we are in Ecuador and into South America where as we expected it is rare to hear someone speaking English. We continue to wish we had a better grasp on the language and have to remind ourselves that we are are leaps and bounds better in communicating than where we were 6 moths ago. We have also quickly learned that understanding 80% of a conversation can be rewarding until you realize there was some critical information in that 20% that you missed! Oh well, it is part of the adventure right?

We certainly have gained an appreciation for those who are multi lingual; in fact we outright envy them. The kindness and patience of others has been a relief and a wonderful example that there are a lot of wonderful people out there.