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| Mercado, Guatemala. |
This year, winter weather along the Central American coast has been extraordinarily volatile for southbound boats. Heavy seas and winds and a strong northwest setting counter current have not let up for more than twelve consecutive hours at a time, since January. Reinforced trade winds continue to pulse through the Central American gaps at the gulfs of Tehuantepec, Fonseca, and Papagayo. These trades have been relentless, originating in thermal Africa, they grow in intensity as they cross the Atlantic and pass through the Caribbean, whipping up strong winds and seas as they rage past Cuba, quickly building to gale or storm force as they continue from the east-northeast and pass through the gaps of Central America. Historically, January and February and the first half of March produce the heaviest weather along the Nicaraguan coast. We've attempted to transit the Nicaraguan coast three times now and have been hammered and shut down on each attempt.
In retrospect, if we had continued south along the coast in early- to mid-December (after departing southern Mexico) we would most likely already be in Panama and probably planning a route to Ecuador, to be undertaken within the next month or two. But we slowed down to explore a couple of places along the way and the weather window closed in the interim. And our plans changed rather abruptly. We now, it seemed, had time to take a closer look at the heart of Central America, which we originally thought we'd sail on by, on a direct route to Panama and then Ecuador. We've spent the last two to three months now, anchored out in remote sections of El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. More important, however, we have no regrets.
These countries are similar in many ways in the rural areas. Their differences are more well defined as we travel through the heavily populated regions, closer to the larger cities in each of these unique countries. The rural villages are consistent across the board, in that they are rather primitive in the same ways. From border to international border we see roadside wood-fired kilns for making adobe brick, or black plastic sheets (rain tarp) stretched across a stick framework, or stick and mud wall construction, or recycled corrugated aluminum over bare wood poles, or concrete blocks and re-bar sticking out the top layer - regardless of the state of construction. All of these building materials provide the platform for a bamboo-framed roof, or palm-thatch roof, or red ceramic-tile roof, or corrugated plastic and aluminum roofs, or a combination of all of the above. Whatever the available material at hand happens to be, that is what's used. Some of the housing consists of three-sided wall construction - an open front and no windows. Some have four walls and a few windows and a door, but almost never will any glass be found in the window openings. And sometimes doors are missing or replaced by a sheet of linen. In almost all instances, in small villages, a separate outhouse and a communal water-well are standard practice. Plumbing is extremely basic. Gravity-feed water tanks deliver the water that is either pumped, by hand, from the local well or collected in small containers at the well and then emptied into larger plastic basins at or near the roof line of the individual homes. Basic, open, outdoor kitchens with wood-fired cook stoves are often located adjacent to a washing basin, for clothing, dishes, pots and pans. Just off the entrance to the single room house. Drying clothes often consists of hanging the pieces on barbed-wire fencing to prevent them from blowing away in the gusts.
Inside these small homes we will invariably find a dim room, perhaps a room with no windows, to protect the residents from the harsh, hot sun. The interiors are typically bare bones, save a couple of religious artifacts hanging on the walls, for instance, the ever popular, peaceful, venerable Guadalupe. A hand-woven hammock strung from structural support post to support post is without doubt the most noticeable and omnipresent furnishing. The hammock is versatile and used for sitting, or swinging in the breeze, or sleeping on a hot afternoon or evening. And if electric happens to reach as far as these rural villages, then a red satellite dish will adorn the rooftop. And the interior will be lit up by a single, bare light bulb, along with the glow and flicker of the TV screen.
It's a close call, but cell phone companies such as Claro, Tigo, Movistar are neck-and-neck with Coca Cola and Pepsi when it comes to seeing hand-painted logos decorating the exterior walls of small huts and sheds and hole-in-the-wall tiendas, everywhere. An otherwise drab, rusty shed cleans up nicely when painted with the distinctive, swirling stripes of red and white with the trademark Coke signature flowing across an exterior wall. It draws thirsty customers. Puts a few extra cents on the table. Proud representatives of these marketing giants, it seems that everyone is an independent agent. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, everyone is in on the act - for one, or for all of these companies; always prepared to sell you minutes of cellular air time, or bottles of Coke or Pepsi. This third-world signage colors the quaint landscape of third-world countries, and it is an inexpensive replacement for the slick billboards that litter the landscape of first-world countries.
Just outside the front door of the rural home, if an actual door exists, can be found pigs without pens, skinny dogs, and a bit further in the distance, roaming horses and mules and cows - all equally skinny, gamey. Iguanas, armadillos (a prized delicacy), lizards and reptiles dot the lush landscape of banana plants, mango trees, palms, teak trees, corn fields and sugar cane. At night the soft orange glow of smoky brush fires illuminate the landscape and resemble lava flows, from the distance.
Men do men things, and women to women things. In rural areas the lines are drawn rather distinctly. Not so much in the cities. In the rural areas men build structures out of wood, concrete, stone, brick, corrugated aluminum. They put up fencing along the boundaries of their fields, cut firewood, fish, herd, machete the crops, burn the fields. In the cities they drive trucks, tuk-tuks, buses, sell hardware, breakdown rocks into gravel using picks and sledge hammers, chain-gang style. Whatever it takes.
And men also stand guard, armed to the teeth, in front of schools, hospitals, food stores, banks, pharmacies, clothing stores, you name it. There's an armed guard with a long barrel shotgun in hand and one finger on the trigger, always. Everywhere. In San Salvador we stopped at a cafe in a quiet neighborhood, late in the afternoon. Not a high-value target by any one's standard. We had a cup of coffee in a friendly place with an interesting ambiance. A little lefty, a little bohemian. And at the entrance to the cafe stood an armed guard with extra rounds of 12-gauge shells strapped across his chest and waist. I mean they serve coffee and fruit smoothies and local bottles of beer for a buck. At night they dance to salsa on a small floor, there's local, amateur artwork on the walls. Every other Friday is local, live jazz night, until 11 p.m. when the cafe shuts down. And that's it; and they are armed. For bear.
The military consists primarily of men (a couple of women can be seen from time to time, but it's basically a guy thing). Naturally, they too are always armed, one finger on the trigger, at all times. I mean they won't go the the head without an automatic in hand. One hand for the weapon, one for themselves.
The difference is in the hardware when it comes to the private sector vs. the military. The private security guards handle single-barrel pump-action shotguns. Ominous looking. They typically stand alone and constantly scan the surroundings of their turf. Hollow handles and long black metal stocks with the paint half scratched off. Always dangling at a forty-five degree angle. Sometimes facing the sky, sometimes the ground. Dealer's choice. The military roam the streets in packs, on the flatbeds of open trucks, and they are equipped with automatic weapons of various types, and flak jackets. And they take the job seriously. Serious hardware, serious facial expression. And there's a reason for all this firepower, both military and private-sector. Obviously there is. The same reason exists in first-world countries too, only in third-world countries they show their cards. First-world countries have bigger fish to fry. And the weapons aren't as obvious; they are not visible to the public. They are usually found in underground silos, or on attack subs, in the deep canyons of the ocean.
But in the end, we're perfectly comfortable with it. Simple as that. Here, in Central America, the arms are always visible to the public and a constant reminder of what you'll need to deal with if you want to mess around in ways you really shouldn't be. The reality, at least for us, is that the neighborhoods seem safer, perhaps because of the armed presence. At least up to a point. Like anywhere, walking around after hours in the wrong place and at the wrong time is, well, risky business. On the islands and remote places we tend to go, people know each other and help each other. We never see armed personnel roaming rural farming and fishing villages unless the military is on their way someplace else.
Rural women cook, butcher, wash clothing, herd the kids. Some farm, some fish, and some occasionally join the navy, army, or work at immigration control or customs. With the exception of women in the military the closest thing you'll see to an armed woman is a woman walking around with a sharp machete (field workers). Some women, and men alike, continue on to complete their education and return to their villages or close by towns to work as doctors and dentists. If you were an obstetrician, you would never have any time off here. Families are large. Ten kids is not uncommon. Rural women will roam the roads with large baskets of food, drink, or crafts balanced on the tops of their heads. They sell their goods to people who congregate along the roads near the smaller villages and towns and bus stops. They may walk for miles to arrive at the closest marketplace, or they may transfer the goods they carry on the tops of their heads, onto the roof of the local, 5:00 a.m. chicken bus, arriving at the big city a few hours after dawn, spending the entire day and evening selling their stuff on the street and returning on the last bus back. A 40-hour work week is an utterly foreign concept here. They work endless hours, for very little reward. Some intricate thing that took them two weeks to make, by hand, might be sold for a few dollars.
The smallest kids can typically be found on the backs of their mothers, wrapped and secured in a woven blanket tied off around the mother's shoulders. With a kid in tow, on her back, and a basket on her head, these women have their hands full. Older (but still very young) kids often help out with anything they can do to supplement the family income. They often help make and sell jewelry, crafts, and food when not in school. In the rural areas the kids help with fishing and farming, cooking preparation and washing clothes. Kids grow up fast here and take on responsibilities very early on.
We left Anna anchored out in the protection of the mangroves at San Lorenzo, for six days. Taking a long bus ride from San Lorenzo, Honduras to San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador, some six hours away by connecting to a luxury bus at the border of Honduras and El Salvador, from a chicken bus in San Lorenzo. We spent a couple days in San Salvador and then continued on to Antigua, Guatemala, another six-hour ride with a transfer in Guatemala City.
Now if you're from the U.S. you're thinking there is no such thing as a luxurious bus ride. And you'd be right if you were thinking about taking a long ride on, say, Greyhound. But buses are the primary mode of travel in Central America, not secondary, and not all buses are created equally. There's the chicken bus - usually very crowded and packed with 2-3 times as many people as should realistically be on that bus. Nevertheless, it's an old converted school bus, auctioned off from the school bus graveyard in the U.S.; a workhorse with a heavy-duty roof rack, built for transporting large baskets of produce, or grain sacks, crude luggage, beater bicycles, old bed frames, occasionally a pig or two, whatever. Inside the bus people are packed in and it's not uncommon to see a chicken in some one's lap, along for the ride. These are typically local buses that make the run from remote villages to the closest city, say, 1 to 3 hours away with frequent stops everywhere along the way. Music blasting to distortion levels. It's a colorful way to go. One guy rides on the roof. One guy collects the fares. One guy drives the bus. Very efficient. Extremely economical. You could cross the country for a dollar.
And then there is the super-deluxe, first-class, express, air-conditioned, fully-reclining leather seat, restroom equipped, overhead movie screen, one meal and two snacks and a soft drink and coffee - served by an attendant, air-suspended, roomy, cushy...bus ride. More reminiscent of a first-class European train, or 747 jumbo jet on the second tier. The King Quality Supreme Ultimate, as it is locally known and advertised, will make you wish the ride was longer than it need be. With the exception of automated, frigid air-conditioning (for which you are offered a blanket and pillow), the ride is perfection across a hostile environment. It's expensive, compared to a chicken bus. But putting things into perspective, it's light years cheaper than a plane ticket or rental car, and way more comfortable unless your plane happens to be a private jet and your ground transportation happens to be a Bentley.
San Salvador is a big, modern city with things we didn't see since leaving the U.S. behind one and a half years ago. The supermercado chain store in San Salvador (actually, all across El Salvador) is called Super Selectos. And it has everything and more than you'd expect from, say, an upscale Safeway. Now this is very unusual. In Mexico and Central America there is a Walmart presence in certain larger cities, but Walmart and Home Depot and the like are not clones of their U.S. counterparts. They just look like they are. They don't all carry the same products or brand names. And if they do carry the same brand name, for instance Kellogg's Special K, it's simply not the same product. The packaging is the same, but the product looks different, and it tastes different; it is different. Different people, with different tastes. So to find familiar items in this part of the world, in addition to some great products that can only be found here, is, well, unusual. San Salvador also has a Galleria-type mall with chain stores such as Radio Shack, Sony, Apple, Dell, and the usual high-end clothing stores. As well as the complete food court spectrum. The medical facilities in San Salvador are numerous. They even have a 'pill hill' neighborhood or colonia. We were surprised to see this level of affluence. When you see medical office after medical office of elective, cosmetic dental or dermatological surgery, you know that for at least a small percentage of the population, survival is not an issue. There's not much of a gray area when it comes to money here. You either have it (and a lot of it), or you don't. End of story.
You don't need to travel far into El Salvador to see the difference in architecture and road conditions compared to that of Honduras, or Nicaragua. If the rural farmers and fishermen in Nicaragua (the poorest country in Central America and one of the poorest in the western hemisphere) typically lived in huts constructed of black plastic sheeting with a stick frame and palm-frond roof, then in Honduras you might see a wooden shed with corrugated aluminum roof. In El Salvador you'll see adobe brick construction and tile-work roofs. And in Guatemala, you'd see stonework, or brightly painted concrete or adobe. Same with the roads. Rough, dusty, dirt roads in Nicaragua. Cobblestone roads in Honduras. Black top in El Salvador. Four-lane super-highways in Guatemala. The level of affluence decreases as you progress south.
The climate in coastal Nicaragua, in January, February, and March is sunny, warm to hot and dry, with low to moderate humidity. The water temperature is luke-cool, refreshing, when you can get in (stinging jellyfish can be a problem at certain times of the day). In Honduras it's about the same. In El Salvador it's a bit cooler, pleasant. And in Guatemala, located between hot, humid Mexico and warm, dry El Salvador, the temperature is chilly at night and refreshing when the sun is beaming down in the late morning and until late in the afternoon. It's an anomaly. If you don't have a jacket, sweater, or fleece you'll be cold! We made the mistake of thinking the temperatures would be similar throughout lowland Central America. Wrong. While wearing a sleeveless tee-shirt and shorts everywhere else in Central America will still leave you sweating at times, the same attire in Guatemala will leave you cold and numb. If you have the right clothes, however, the climate is wonderfully refreshing. In Antigua, the inns and restaurants had no heat. They were simply on the cold side. They supplied thick wool blankets at the inns, and the restaurants would close their shuttered, wooden barn-door windows to keep the cold draft out. But that was it. So for anyone going to Guatemala ...bring a layer of fleece.
Antigua, Guatemala is an old, old city, built by the Spanish 1,700 years ago. There are but a handful of treasures like this around the world. Bruges, Belgium comes to mind. But Antigua is nothing like Bruges. Bruges is medieval, constructed of stone, rather austere, wholly in tact, picture-perfect, a large-scale living museum with a canal system. You expect to cross a moat and enter a kingdom. Antigua by contrast has no water to speak of, except during the rainy season. It is however colorful, light, airy, more fragile - layered decay. It is set deeply into a lush green valley and surrounded on all sides by enormous volcanic mountain ranges. The people who reside in Antigua are indigenous. They are not simply a tourist attraction in costume. They've been there for generations, since the start. In fact the majority of people who live in Guatemala today, are of direct Mayan decent.
The final approach to Antigua consists of a steep descent from high in the surrounding mountains to the floor of the green, green valley below. Modern Guatemala City, a one-hour drive away, with its glass buildings and super-highways and heavy traffic is completely left behind, once the descent into Antigua begins. The super-highway transitions into a two-lane blacktop, and then into a narrow cobblestone road that begins at the outskirts of the city. Immediately the architecture stuns you. It is inspired, and includes layer upon layer of faded, pigmented, exterior and interior walls. There are strict rules respecting the preservation of the original structures. While the interiors of the buildings have undergone renovation, in many instances, it allows modern business to exist within the confines of what could be described as a national treasure. Businesses such as MacDonald's and Citibank and Starbucks and DHL, for example, are all discretely hidden behind the building's exterior facade, with only a small logo permitted on the exterior wall to identify the occupant. If you see a large golden arch, it will be on the interior or exterior of one of the cathedrals, not MacDonald's. The ruins and stone carvings of the monasteries, as well as both the exteriors and interiors of the multiple cathedrals, are spectacularly well-preserved, rich in detail, colorful, majestic. The streets are all intricately cobble-stoned. And the surroundings in many instances reveal open-aired courtyards, open ruins, with trees in the center of the yard in a rich lavender bloom. Columns and cupolas and arches frame these open spaces, and large open-air windows look out to the surrounding landscape: three enormous, towering volcanoes in the near distance.
Inside the city of Antigua is a an extensive marketplace and a town square, and a school and the indigenous people who live here and in the near by mountains come to sell their crafts - spectacularly beautiful, intricate bead work, loom weaving, and complexly-colorful apparel.
In most of Central America a majority of the people that we see from day to day dress in hand-me-down Goodwill rejects. Same applies to the old, yellow, U.S. school buses that wind up on the streets here, 20 or thirty years later, as local, public transportation. But hand-me-downs do not equate to dirty, tattered rags. Hand-washing clothing in outdoor basins is an art form here. You've never seen whiter-whites without the benefits of hot water, a heavy-handed dose of bleach, and a heavy-duty, multiple-cycle, industrial-strength washing machine.
Giant bales of used clothing, clothing that Goodwill couldn't unload in the U.S., are imported to Central America and laid out on the street on top of broken down cardboard boxes and sold by the kilo. Style isn't important here, regardless of what movies like 'The Devil Wears Prada' may have you believe. For the most part, it's tonnage that counts.
But the indigenous women of Guatemala don't need to wear clothing sold by the kilo. They make their own. Long skirts, colorful bands of dyed fabric interspersed with glittery, metallic highlights. Their headwear consists of a subtle wool or silk fabric that flows in soft folds down to their neckline. Sometimes, what appears to be a colorful turban, with a flat, open top, may be seen. This may serve as the foundation for a large, balanced basket. The Mayan women have light-brown oval, sometimes round faces, and long, braided black hair, a small frame with delicate features. And they are as stunning to look at as their intricate, handcrafted work.
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We have stopped trying to second guess or predict the complex weather systems that prevail here, at this time of year, along the Pacific coast from Golfo de Fonseca to northern Costa Rica. When it becomes more favorable for Anna to head further south, we will go. Until then, we will stay. We could choose to bash through the next 150 nautical miles of coast, on our way to Panama via Costa Rica, but we've spent more than our share of time in rough conditions and would very simply rather wait for a more favorable, stable period of weather to arrive, rather than fight the elements before we push off again. And as we've said before, we enjoy 'living' in a foreign place for a while, getting off the beaten track a bit, getting to know it a little. Otherwise, what's the point in coastal cruising. Offshore passages are different. They move us great distances in a condensed amount of time. They get us from point A to point B, hundreds of nautical miles or thousands of nautical miles. Either way, coastal cruising or ocean crossings, it's the experience along the way that counts.
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