It was exciting to clear out of Mexico at long last. For this big passage, we decided to ‘buddy boat,’ meaning we traveled in the company of a couple of other boats.
We made what amounted to a 5-day passage, stopping only briefly in Puerto Chiapas right near the Guatemala border in order to get our ‘zarpe’, the official document that checks us out of the country.
The first leg of our passage took us across the Gulf of Tehuantepec, something I had been dreading since we left California. It takes a couple of days and nights underway, and the Gulf blows a gale most of the year. Because of the geography and the shallow water, when a gale begins in the Tehuantepec, the seas very rapidly build to 15-20 feet, spaced close together so your boat gets slammed. They call it a ‘T-pecker’, and you can’t head further offshore to escape, because the conditions only get worse for hundreds of miles out. Your best insurance is to travel with ‘one foot on the beach,’ even at night, far closer to shore than we normally would, in extremely shallow water. So that’s what we did.
As it turned out, we had an excellent weather window and the passage was a piece of cake. We enjoyed the companionship of our buddy boats, Serena Ray, with John and Rosie, and our mutual friend Linda as crew; and Sea Quest, with John and Veronica and their crew Sam. It’s nice to have someone to chatter on the radio with during those long night watches.
We arrived at about 4 AM outside the entrance to Bahia del Sol, El Salvador. Our destination lay up an estuary, so we anchored just outside and waited for daylight, when a pilot would arrive to guide us over the sand bar into the estuary. The sand bar has a narrow channel through it where the water is just deep enough to pass, but the location of the channel shifts, so you need an experienced, knowledgeable local to guide you. In addition to the shallow water, there are significant breaking waves across the whole area that you have to navigate. I can’t imagine why I was so worried about that silly Tehuantepec, when we had this waiting for us at the other end!
Here is a video clip of what we faced when we began to cross the bar:
Not funny at all. But our pilot was perfect, and Stan surfed us in flawlessly. Our friends were there to greet us at the dock: Lisa Kay, Royal Albatross, Stolen Kiss. After some hugs and a 9 AM shot of tequila, we settled in for a long nap.
I guess everybody loves a day at the beach. This steer probably takes the 84 degree water for granted. Spoiled cow.
In general, El Salvador has a far more impoverished population than Mexico. There’s very little middle class here, nor in Guatemala, Honduras or Nicaragua. The ‘haves’ in each country are a handful of families, the same families that have enjoyed the power and wealth since the Spanish colonial days.
This little girl is carrying firewood home for cooking.
Cattle are everywhere, and it’s common to see them being herded by bicycle.
El Salvador’s brutal civil war ended in 1992, and the people are far more content now, with education and other basic services finally being provided by the government. But the healing will take a long time.
Our estuary itself is beautiful and peaceful, fringed with thick mangroves. We went with John and Rosie one day by dinghy up the estuary a few miles to the village of La Herradura.
We met three enterprising boys in the village, who took care of our dinghy for us, for about 25 cents each, while we provisioned and had lunch. They were greatly amused to see their photos on our little digital cameras, not something they are used to.
John and Rosie shop for produce
We hired a guide and made a three-day tour, along with John, Rosie and Linda, to the Guatemalan city of Antigua and some Mayan ruins.
The Copan ruins are in Honduras, so we spent the night in the small town of Copan, then visited the fascinating site the next morning, learning lots from our local guide about the Mayan civilization.
John and Rosie. Their power boat is a Nordhavn 47.
Linda, a fellow cruiser from Ventura whom we met last year in Mexico, is visiting John and Rosie.
The tuk-tuk, or taxi, we took through town in Copan.
This is cacao, where chocolate comes from. We also saw cashew pods growing in the trees, which I likewise never would have recognized.
Then it was on to Guatemala for a couple of days. Unlike El Salvador, in Guatemala the indigenous somehow escaped wholesale slaughter at the hands of the Spanish, so the population is heavily Mayan, the direct descendants of the society whose ruins we had been studying. When you walk in the street, you can hear the 18 different Mayan dialects they speak.
We counted 13 people riding in the bed of this pickup truck.
The Guatemalan women wear colorful, traditional clothing. The patterns communicate to the other Mayans what village they are from, which dialect they speak, whether they are married or single.
They are known for their hand-made textiles… so shopping was called for!
The colonial city of Antigua, once the capital of Central America, is colorful as well. We could easily have spent a week or longer getting to know this intriguing city.
We allowed far too little time in Guatemala, and will most certainly be back.
Soon after our return from touring, we headed back across the dreaded bar, again with our friends aboard Serena Ray and Sea Quest, to continue south. Stopping for just one night in Nicaragua… we had planned to stay longer, but the marina had a sinister, ghost-town vibe… we made our way over a couple of nights and days to Costa Rica.
Here we are crossing the bar, outbound:
One last thing we did from El Salvador was make a trip to New Zealand, of all the unlikely things. And not for tourism. Stay tuned for big news in our next blog post… in which the Creightons throw a major curve ball!
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