What a difference a
day makes…..
Once again we woke up
to the silence of the river, it wasn’t just that there is no sound, but there
was no movement either. No fishermen, no wind, no waves lapping gently against
the boat, it was perfectly quiet.
Today we were heading
up river towards civilisation and all that it brings, laundry (there I go again)
waste disposal ( it gets a bit smelly after a couple of days on the aft deck,
luxury eh???) and of course internet access - yeaaaa.
We took a leisurely
trip up the river and arrived at the town of Fronteras. Well if I didn’t know better I would
have sworn we’d taken a wrong turn and ended up back in the good old
USA!!!! Boats and jet bikes flying
around the bay, the noise of the traffic over the bridge, the Shell service
station that we have anchored off. The only thing that is missing (no not the
Americans, there are plenty of those) is the trains and their infernal
whistles.
What a culture shock
and only such a short distance from the peace and serenity in El
Golfete.
Our two little
stowaways must wonder where they are. They wake up in paradise and end up in
hell. Actually I am starting to feel really sorry for the little birds. They
have decided this is going to be their family home, they have moved miles from
their ‘patch’ to build a nest and have babies and we have no intention of
letting them. I am tempted to smuggle a nesting box on board, but Roger would
flip! Mother Nature can be cruel sometimes.
Last night the music
(or should I say the bass) boomed out until 01.00hrs, yuk! Now don’t get the
impression I am turning into some kind of hermit or recluse, it’s not that, it
is just that it is not what I expected, having already visited the Guatemalan
town of Livingstone, I expected something similar.
Hopefully we are only
staying here long enough to get our chores done, but who
knows.
What can I say??? The
town of Fronteras has no redeeming features as far as I
can see. It is dirty, noisy, smelly and frenetic. Cars, buses, lorries,
motorbikes and pedestrians all compete for space along the main road that
runs
through the town. It strikes me as a very functional place, serving merely as a
centre of commerce for the area and little else.
Neither Roger nor I
care for the place and I am so glad that we will be visiting inland
Guatemala, rather than have this as
our lasting memory.
We had a spectacular
thunderstorm last night, it went on most of the night, woke us up at about
03.00hrs with tremendous noise from the thunder and lightening. This was one
time I wished we had been in a major anchorage with plenty of other boats,
instead of being out by ourselves, less of a sitting target for lightening
strikes.
Roger and I got up to
close the hatches and secure the tent to keep us as dry as possible. I suggested
to Roger that we should put the chart-plotter in the oven. No I was not
delirious, the oven acts as a faraday cage and protects the electrical equipment
in the event of a lightening strike. He agreed and did so....or so we thought.
However, the next morning you can imagine our surprise when we found the
binoculars case in there and not the chart plotter. Well it was the middle of
the night and dark!!!!!!
