Hola!
We flew back to El Salvador last week landing in San Salvador at 7 AM after an overnighter from San Francisco . Our plans are to spend the next two months sailing along the coasts of El Salvador , Nicaragua , and Costa Rica and into Panama . El Salvador and Nicaragua are uninviting coasts with few shelters, but Costa Rica is supposed to be very nice and Panama is rumored to be a cruising paradise. Our insurance company does not want us visiting Nicaragua anyway. If all goes well we will leave the boat on the Pacific side of the canal in late June and return next October for a canal transit. June through September are the rainy months down here so we’ll try to avoid them.
El Salvador customs was easy and we realized we should have smuggled many more boat items into the country while we had the chance. We got a rental car for two days to help us move our gear and do some shopping for supplies before we headed to the boat.
We rented the car entirely in Spanish which is a good trick for two people who don’t speak Spanish (just sign here, contract in Spanish, gracias), but the rental was a lot easier than the job of returning the car. The El Salvadorans do everything a little differently. The airline terminal here is an international terminal (probably because there are no other airports in El Salvador ) and NO ONE is allowed inside without a ticket. When we arrived everybody meeting the planes (friends, limos, cabs, etc) was required to wait outside the terminal. However the car rental desk was inside the terminal. Two days later we try to return the car we see the problem. The car rental return is inside the terminal, but we can’t go inside the terminal. At this point Budget has an employee inside the terminal handing papers to an employee outside the terminal past the security guards at the door so we can pay our bill. Very amusing. Fun also was the bus trip back to the marina. The trip took a little longer than anticipated because we had to catch three different buses. I kept asking (in my not too good Spanish) when the bus would arrive. Always the answer is “ten minutes, ten minutes”. Always. Only later did I realize that I am probably the only person in the entire country wearing a watch. The buses were not there in “ten minutes”. Tempus does not fugit in Latin America .
The boat survived the winter very well tied to a mooring in the river, and everything seems to work. Our only mishap was the discovery that a colony of bats had taken up residence in our sails over the winter. We didn’t actually see any bats, but the quantity of bat guano was sufficient evidence. At first we thought we had mice, but there was no evidence of mice below decks or in the lockers, and of course we were out in the middle of a river. One of the other cruisers thought that they had very small mice here that were capable of walking on water (Jesus mice?) but I was skeptical. Then we found that bats are common, and we are not the first sailors with this problem. Fortunately bats do not eat sails as the mice would have, and we are none the worse for the wear.
It is still hot here (surprise?) but the humidity is reasonable. Sleeping is a little uncomfortable, and we do little work in the middle of the day. I have reached some compromises with Andrea regarding the quantities of beer necessary to stay hydrated in this heat. We crossed a major threshold when she noted that beer was probably better for me than Coca Cola anyway J. Then shortly into a day that started at 5 AM with me hauling Andrea up the mast early (before the sun and breezes made the trip uncomfortable) and lugging 50 gallons of drinking water to the boat plus 40 gallons of fuel, she suggested that we had earned a cold beer for all our work. I agreed wholeheartedly, grabbed two beers, and quickly drank mine before I pointed out that it was only 9 AM . Breakfast beer and my wife had suggested it. No wonder I love her!!
It has taken us several days to get everything put back together, and now we are waiting patiently for the huge surf at the river entrance to calm down enough to let us get out of the river and back into the ocean. We’ve got a good boat but it can’t handle the 20 foot rollers (remnants of a storm in New Zealand ?) that have been out there the past few days. We are not the only ones waiting. There are at least a dozen other boats here so we spend time talking about plans and enjoying the marina hospitality. The river is pretty and peaceful, especially with the boats floating at anchor and the stunning sunsets, while the surf pounds the beaches on the outside. The next leg of the trip will probably take us 3 to 4 days of offshore sailing to reach Costa Rica so we are resting, preparing and waiting. We expect to be able to cross the bar on Wednesday morning (April 29).
