Dispatches from Leilani - Provisioning

Leilani, finally at anchor in Shell Bay in the Rio.  

Catching up  

As we write this, we are back in the USA -Tucson, Arizona, to be specific. Leilani is in Rio Dulce, Guatemala safely tied to a wonderful dock offered by our lovely and generous friends, Jane and Jim.

Briefly, in early March we left the “Rio” and made our way to Sapadillo Lagoon on the coast of Belize for several weeks waiting for a weather window to head to the next stop, Roatan, Honduras. Our plan was to spend about a month there and stage for our ultimate destination, Panama.

After weather patterns conspired to thwart our travel plans for Panama, we decided to return to the best hurricane hole of the entire Caribbean, Rio Dulce. We then decided that with the time available before the end of hurricane season, to fly to the USA several weeks ago to see friends and family in Arizona, California, Illinois, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.

     

Until now it has been a challenge to connect to dependable internet and to submit more frequent blog postings. Now it is time to catch up with you.

Here we post an excerpt from one of many short dispatches sent to family over the months. We expect to post more of these in the following weeks.

We hope you enjoy some of the flavor of our "life aquatic".

An Egg and Chicken Lesson 

  

Rio Dulce, Guatemala (Spring, 2019)

Boats are meant to move, and after sitting on the hard for months, and then tied to the dock until now, we have been so eager to go- ANYWHERE. Although trip was only few hundred feet, it is a big deal to move Leilani off the dock from Nana Juana Marina and anchor in Shell Bay today! Free at last.

But that was not the best thing. The best thing was that we started to provision for our passage to Honduras! That translates to – it must be getting real.

One more trip to the crazy town of Fronteras for provisioning.  

Watch your step!

Shopping in Rio Dulce is always a bit different than shopping virtually anywhere we have ever been. We actually enjoy most of the challenge of putting the dinghy in the water, zooming over to the dock at Bruno’s Restaurant, tying up, and making our way onto the chaos of Fronteras - the road that is a town.

Restocking the local grocery store after all the cruisers deplete their stocks is not so easy in Fronteras.  

It takes three men to hold back the palette from sliding off the tail lift.

Some of the best pork and beef can be found the local meat market in Fronteras.  

Just tell them how you want to cook the meat, and they cut off a slab for you.  

The owner befriended us as he shared stories of his travels to the United States.

Casa Guatemala usually has items that the local grocery store doesn’t carry, like greek yoghurt, an assortment of cheeses, smoked sausages, and spinach.  Even better, Casa Guatemala comes straight to your boat on a lancha.  

Casa Guatemala is a non-profit organization that supports the local orphanage.

If you are really ambitious, you can go to Guatemala City to provision,
 about a 6-8 hour journey by bus each way.

We have made lists, good detailed lists, and on this day, we began to shop for various items. As we began to cross them off, some items came with a story.

Eggs and chicken offered one such story. When we visited our very tiny egg and chicken store (or was it the chicken and egg store?). Instead of us greeting the usual egg lady, a man was standing and smiling at the counter. We quickly discovered the egg lady was still there as the man (her husband) delighted in telling us he was just filling in. In broken English mixed with rapid-fire Spanish, he was excited, first, to tell us that he used to live in New Jersey, and secondly, that we could help him practice his English!

We began our language lessons with negotiating for two dozen eggs (for about $3). “How do you say, dos dozenas, in English?” the man asked. We said “two dozen” and then we all practiced by repeating “two dozen” several times. Good practice. 

We continued with the Spanish and English lessons now to order chicken. The local beer in Guatemala is Gallo, which our helpful man clarified for us in buying chicken, “No, you don’t want Gallo, that is rooster. You want Gallina. How do you say Gallina in English?”. Bud explained, “Hen, la Gallina is the hen.”

Can you identify the gallos and gallinas?

The questions and answers continued. “How many?” “Una Gallina”. One chicken.

“OK. Do you want the amarillo or el blanco?”, the man asked.

Did you know chicken comes in either yellow or white in Guatemala? We had learned that the yellow chickens tend to be much better quality and better flavor.

“We want the amarillo -the yellow. And we also want four leg quarters – cuatro piernas y muslos.”

Egg and chicken lessons while shopping is just another example of the joy we find in travel. Yes, it all took a bit longer to buy the chicken and eggs, but it was a memorable departure from routine shopping. We interacted with real people and had fun as we learned from one another.

We have to go now to make some more progress on that very long list.