Final report from Rio Dulce

Tuesday, June 25, 2002

015-40.200 N
089-0.000 W

Ahoy from BlueJacket in Fronteras which is on the Rio Dulce in Guatemala! The last few days have been non-stop work. Prepping a boat for 5+ months of storage is a lot of work. What's really scary is that my work list keeps growing, despite completing items. But most of the major work is done, and now it's down to the final projects. The boat is in great shape & I have great faith in the folks at Tortugal marina to look after it. What's really nice too is that the fresh water has killed off all of the salt water growth, not that there was much to begin with.

After checking out the other marinas in the area, I'm confident that this is the best location for BlueJacket as far as overall security and protection from the weather is concerned. This is a very well built and constructed facility and they're doing lots of work on it to upgrade an already well built facility. 

Here's my take on some of the other major facilities in the area: Suzanna's is falling apart. It might be the best protected facility, but the docks wobble when you walk on them & I think that a very strong blow could collapse them. Bruno's is good if you want to be near town, but that brings lots of wakes and security issues along with it. Mario's seems good and has a pool, but there seems to be lots of issues with their rotational management. There have also been lots of reports of billing issues & them not doing the work that was promised. There's a new marina across from Mario's named Monkey Bay which seems to be very good in terms of protection with finger piers and pylons. The later would seem to be a good option too.

The town of Fronteras is really something. I guess that name means frontier, and man is it an interesting place. Where else can you walk down THE street and be able to walk into a feed store and buy saddles and baby chicks? The grocery store stocks basic necessities and not much else. The meat and dairy cases are slightly below room temperature. But then again you can always go over to the orphanage and they'll be glad to kill some chickens and sell them to you.

From what we've heard, the average daily wage here is $3.50. No typo. There are definitely gringo prices and local prices. I know that at times we're getting ripped off, but things are so cheap here that I don't mind the gringo inflated prices.

Tomorrow we'll take a van to Guatemala city, which is a 4.5+ hour ride. Then on Monday we'll fly back to Boston. It'll be nice to be back home & I feel very good about where the boat is.

I hope that you've enjoyed the posts on where we've been. It's been quite a trip, covering about 2100 miles since last September, covering Grenada, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. I must admit that I never thought that I'd be cruising through Central America. Places like Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala or Colombia just weren't high on my list of places to go, but it's been wonderful. Lots of great people, beautiful sights and wonderful experiences. It'll be interesting to see what next year brings.

And with this I leave you with the words of Mark Twain:

"Years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the things that you did do.
So throw off the bow lines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the tradewinds in your sails.
Explore.
Dream.
Discover."

Good words to live by.

Log ID: 268