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!!!!!!