One grey, cool day after another. It would be so nice to feel the warmth of the sun, or to be going somewhere. We’re in one of those “stuck” spaces right now – waiting for nice weather, waiting for a part to be installed, waiting for fish (in Liam’s case), waiting for a decent internet connection. BUT – it is still 20 something degrees (75F), we are still floating in a beautiful bay, we still have books and games and friends to visit. Chris is coming on Tuesday to install our solar panel – and so we will stay here and wait.

On the glorious blue sky, hot and sunny days, it’s easy to feel like we are living blissfully in this tropical paradise, while these grey days must be more introspective – an intentional searching out of the good things. We absorb the strength of the charcoal mountains lining both sides of the river, with wisps of cloud marking the valleys between them. We dinghy up little creeks and breathe in the lush greenness of the plants and vines that crowd right up to water’s edge and even beyond it, reaching out from the banks and hanging overhead. We walk along jungly paths cut through Martin’s property, stopping to see cashew trees and pineapple plants and trees that bear little red seeds, and all sorts of shapes and sizes of etched green leafed plants, and tiny colourful blossoms – and all those hundreds of plants that we call tropical and grow indoors in pots at home – all growing wildly and abundantly here. We glimpse a blue morpho butterfly flitting away from us. We step carefully through mucky, swampy paths along a brand new canal leading to Wolfgang and Bea’s newly purchased piece of property where we climb a gentle rise and picture the thatched roof and wide porch of the house that they will one day build there. We relax into the reading, game-playing quiet life on board.

We practice our Spanish as we visit the tiny tiendas that hide in the coves – where we ask for huevos and queso and pick up tomates and papas and cebellos. And we make meals of what is left in the larder and what we can find in the limited selection in the local tiendas, knowing that an abundance of chicken, pork and produce is an hour away in town, but we are reluctant to make the trip.

And so – we slow ourselves down – way down - and learn to distinguish pearl-grey and charcoal and steel grey and smoky, and we find the occasional glint of silver amid the grey. And at the same time, we learn to just live with it. And we wait.