Living & Learning Aboard the Good Ship Learnativity

Wonderful Whangarei

Some of you have been asking about Whangarei, the great river town and marina where Learnativity has been moored here in New Zealand since the end of October.  So below are some shots that I’ve taken over that time.  While it is still much too cold for me after coming to find how much I prefer the tropical climes I’ve been in for the past two years, this has been a great spot for Learnativity for while we wait out the all too long hurricane season up in the South Pacific.

For those of you into sailing and boat building, this is where Steve Dashew chose to have his new FPB 64 boats built.

You can get more details here about the Town Basin Marina where we are have been staying all this time and the owners, Brian and Sharron could not be nicer.  Whangarei is one of the marine and boat building centers of the world so there is a great selection of very skilled tradespeople here as well as every kind of part and supplies I’ve ever needed.  Learnativity is on what they call a “pole mooring” where there are sets of telephone poles sticking up from the bottom and I tie lines from my bow and stern on each side up to a set of are four of these.  There are tires which float around each pole where my lines attach and these all goes up and down with the tide swings, which are quite large here, about 2-3meters.  Makes for a very secure and peaceful setup.  To get ashore I just row my dingy about 200meters over to the other side of the river to the dinghy dock at the Town Basin Marina office.  Works great and other than being much too long away from the open ocean and sailing and hot weather, it has been super place to be.

The people are great, there is a very modern and well stocked grocery store “Pak n Save” just across the street from the marina and very good wine store right beside it.  Pretty much everything I’ve needed so far has been within walking distance or a short ride on my bike.  There are regular busses that go to Auckland each day and I’ve taken those several times to get to the Auckland airport and to visit friends there.  However on the last trip I discovered that when you fly Air New Zealand all inland flights to Auckland are free so this last trip I flew direct from Whangarei to Auckland.

Here on the river it feels like a very small and picturesque town with almost a Disneyland look (in a good way) to it at first as they have fixed up the whole riverside walk beside where I am moored.  But as I’ve explored it more and more over the past few months by foot and bicycle I’ve discovered it is quite a large city.  Some of the shots below I took while replacing my wind transducer up at the top of the mast so you can get a good view of the river, and others are from the deck and from ashore.

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LTY Morning Update: Monday April 27, 2009

Location:    anchored @ Hanga Roa, Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
Position:    -27d 08.625' S    -109d 26,087' W
Wind:         8-12 kts N True
Seas:          swell = ~ 1.5m @ 8 secs  N
Weather:    early AM showers and cloud, burning off for another clear day
Sea temp:    78.9F
Air temp:    76.8F 
Humidity:    74%

Had a very good day ashore yesterday afternoon and evening.  Met up with Charlie and Elaine, two of the people I’d been introduced to before getting here. Charlie is an archaeologist/geologist who has been coming here to Easter Island for over 30 years and Elaine is a retired high school teacher who is here for 3 months teaching science in the local schools.  I met up with them at the beautiful hotel Otai and we spent the whole afternoon getting to know each other, talking about Easter Island.  They had a WiFi connection at the hotel so I was able to get connected and start the long process of downloading all my Emails from the past 2 weeks, updated weather reports and otherwise catching up with things online.  It is a very slow connection, I believe there is only one line into the island and being Sunday afternoon my guess is that everyone was online and so it was slow but it was a connection!

Charlie and Elaine are both from Wyoming and I also met up with some of Charlie’s students who are here doing various projects on the island.  Four of us went out for diner to round out a very good day ashore.  The stars here are quite phenomenal.  Both because there is so little light anywhere near here that you get no interference and the stars are all very bright and contrasted against the blackness of the sky, but also because these are very different stars being down here below 27 degrees South of the Equator.  The famous Southern Cross is very visible for example and I need to get out my various star charts and programs to learn a bit more about all these new stars and planets that I get to see from this vantage point.  One of my major and fun areas of learning (one of thousands) on this adventure is understanding the whole set of spatial relationships between the earth, moon, sun and stars. I’m working on learning to use my sextant as part of this and as always I continue to enjoy and be fascinated by the fun combinations of the very very old with the new.  In this case here I am, about as wired up and high tech as it gets with GPS, sat phones, chart plotters and the like and yet balancing that out with celestial navigation, sextants and sight reduction tables.  Fascinating stuff and so much to be learned and understood in the process.

After diner Ruby and I went back to our dingy and headed out to Learnativity which continues to be solidly anchored off Hanga Roa and spent a bit of time when we got back to admire and study the night sky a bit more.  However it wasn’t able to focus on those incredible stars for too long as unfortunately I seemed to pick up some food poisoning from the meal and started to feel strange shortly as I was leaving the restaurant.  As I got back to LTY, my eyesight began to go all crazy, no peripheral vision, seeing lots of purple lines like broken safety glass overlaid on everything I looked at and a very upset stomach.  Got rid of some of it out one end but didn’t vomit and it eased up a little, but then a fever like condition set in, making me very cold and shivering.  So I drank a lot of water, dug out my long unused comforter and went to bed early.  The fever continued all night alternating between cold and hot but I was able to get some sleep and kept drinking lots of water and by 6am the fever had broken and it had all passed and I feel fine again now.  Guess I need to stick to my own cooking! <g>

The anchorage was very rolly last night as the swell is now coming in from the North and the wind is more from the East so it puts us broadside to the swells and the boat rolls back and forth from one side to the other, sometimes heeling us over 30+ degrees.  When you’re laying down it is quite pleasant and like being rocked to sleep but certainly makes moving around a challenge. 

This morning it was a similar weather pattern with light showers and cloudy skies about 4-6am and then it starts to clear off as the sun rises.  So I’m back up in the cockpit, doing this morning update for you and enjoying the sun as it breaks through the remaining clouds.  I’ll head ashore later this morning for more exploring and also to start checking out facilities here.  If possible I’m hoping to find things like a Laundromat, some car batteries to replace my failed starter batteries and ideally a sail maker or even a sewing machine that I can use and try to salvage and resew my large spinnaker sail that blew out shortly after leaving Galapagos.  Fortunately the wind was good and strong the whole way from Galapagos to here so I didn't need or miss the spinnaker too much until the last day.  But it will likely be lower winds and more downwind sailing for the next month on the way to Pitcairn, Mangareva (Gambier) and French Polynesia so I’m very much hoping I’ll be able to find a way to salvage the spinnaker and have that to help keep us sailing in these conditions.

Charlie and Elaine and some of his students are all very intrigued by the notion of traveling by sailboat and so I’m going to bring them out to see Learnativity late this afternoon.  And I’ll be looking into tours and renting vehicles or horses to get out to some of the sites on the other parts of the island. 

I’ll be back to you with an update tomorrow to see how successful I was at finding the various facilities on shore.

Wayne

Where the Rainbow gets its colours

Greetings from the muy bonito y muy pequeño pueblito (beautiful and tiny village) of San Marcos on Lake Atitlán. As I mentioned in the previous postings my “plan” for the month of September was to immerse myself in as intensive a series of learning experiences as possible. I’m about three quarters of the way through and I’m equal parts delighted and exhausted to let you know that I’m exceeding all expectations.

As I noted in one of my previous posts about this upcoming destination the word "Atitlán" is a Mayan word that translates as "the place where the rainbow gets its colors".  and Aldous Huxley famously wrote of it: "Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing."  How can I NOT go??

Ruby and I awoke early on Saturday morning (Sept. 13, 2008) to a stunningly beautiful clear day in Antigua and were soon out at the curb with our luggage awaiting the van that would drive us to the second largest city on Lake Atitlán, Panajachel.  As you can see in the photo Ruby is all set to go and carefully guarding our luggage as i take in the beautiful morning and grab a few more photos.  The van arrived a few minutes later, initially said he couldn’t take a dog with him, but with a bit of Spanish persuasion that she would sit on my lap the whole time he relented and we were off on the 3+ hour drive to Panajachel.  It was a fun drive out of Antiqua as this was the the weekend before the big Sept. 15th celebration of Guatemala’s independence day and we drove through throngs of mostly young children and their parents as they made their way along the streets to marshalling areas where they were setting up as marching bands ready to converge on the city later that morning.

As we left the relatively large city of Antigua behind, we drove through the beautiful countryside with crops of corn planted everywhere on the increasingly mountainous hillsides as we climbed up through the very curvy mountainous roads and worked our way into the lake filled valley that is Lake Atitlán to the largest town of Panajachel on the north coast of the lake.

Panajachel was a bit of a “paradise lost” experience as it is the central landing point and take off spot for all of those like us who come from all parts of the globe to see this famous lake.  So it is overrun with gringo tourists, mostly seems to be Europeans at this time of year at least and for some reason a LOT of people from Israel.  A big student and younger generation backpacking type of crowd but a great diversity beyond that too.  However there was no getting around the stunning beauty of the lake if you looked beyond all the touristica vendors.  Which is just what we did by scouting out a small restaurant nestled into the hillside and overlooking the lake.  Here is a shot of our table which we had just vacated as the afternoon rain storm came in and I was able to watch it while sipping my espresso and watching the mountainous shoreline disappear and then reappear amongst the storm clouds and rain.  All quite beautiful.

Ruby and I were able find a cheap hotel for the night as we decided to stay Saturday night in Panajachel and then catch one of the many “launcha” power boats that would ferry us along the lake side to the small village of San Marcos where we would be staying for week #3 of Spanish immersion.  The hotel in Panajachel was one of those fun “experiences” where we didn’t get too much sleep with all the noise from the partying and general street activity which reverberated through our room on the ground floor.  For reasons I have not been able to get an explanation for it is a popular pastime here in Central America for people, mostly young men it seems, to set off strings of firecrackers at all times of the day and night and for no apparent reason or special occasion.  Mortar attacks would actually be amore apt description as these things are unbelievably loud and you literally feel the percussion when they go off as they rattle the windows and your chest.  It is about the only occasion that I’ve seen Ruby have ANY reaction to a noise and she dislikes them as much as i do. 

However we were up the next morning to another very bright day and I thought some of you would get a kick out of the shower in the room.  These units are quite popular and very practical in that they are on demand water heaters as well.  So when you turn the shower on the wires you see activate a heater element in the shower head and you get hot/warm water a few seconds later.  AS you can see in the photo, the electrical standards here are a bit more lax that we are spoiled with in many other countries, but I’ve yet to get any shocks, though my hair does seem to be a bit curlier than usual? <g>

We grabbed a tuk-tuk (the small 3 wheeled motorcycle powered carts that buzz around most cities here like gnats and take you anywhere and everywhere for a few cents most of the time) to take us and our luggage down the the “launchas” dock.  These fiberglass boats are like the “pangas” I’ve described previously that we have a the marina in El Salvador except these ones have hard tops on them and bench seats inside and run like busses on the lake leaving about every 30 minutes to make the rounds to all the different small lake side villages.  They take us gringos but mostly they are filled with local folks going to work, taking their wares and products with them, going to school and otherwise just getting around.

On the left here you can see Ruby and one of the boys who befriended here as they both help to make sure the launcha driver gets us to the docks properly.  These launcha are typically powered by large outboard motors ranging from 75-250HP and the drivers are very skilled at getting us into the small wooden docks that dot the lakeshore.  As is the custom wtih street busses in the cities, the protocol seems to be that you just stand on the dock and that tells the driver to stop and pick you up.  It is all very informal and worked really well as you can catch one pretty much anytime with only about a 20 minute maximum wait most times of the day.  Costs are about $1-3 to get you pretty much from any one spot to another on the lake so you use these anytime you want to go anywhere outside the village you are in.  The only catch is that they only work in daylight hours and so there isn’t anything available after about 6pm. 

On the right here you can see another shot of one of our launcha rides.  I find the people here to have a great beauty to them.  The women in particular are almost all dressed in the traditional Mayan and local clothes which are elaborately embroidered in vibrant colors with great meaning and stories to the emboidered figures if you take the time to ask them.  And these don’t seem to be worn for us tourists as these are everyday working clothes and not some fancy dress they put on for our sake.  I also get a kick out of the juxtaposition of the different ages and cultures that all mix together.  In this picture on the right for example you can see this young lady with a large stack of the eggs she is taking to sell at the market balanced on her lap and providing a table from which she can dash off a quick SMS text message on her cell phone.  She and her mother beside here explained to me that they were on their way from their home in San Pedro to Panajachel to sell their eggs because they get a better price there.  Cameras never seem to be able to capture such beauty but I hope a little bit of it shines through for you as it does fro me an you get a sense of it coming through some of these photos.  Look at the people in this on on the left here and see what I mean as this beautiful collection of people and generations allow me to join them on their trip along the lake to their next stop. 

As for Ruby and I, we were headed for our next stop, one of the smallest villages on the lakeside called San Marcos.  The ferry/launcha ride took about half an hour as I drank in the splendor of this truly stunning coastline.   Another week, another village and more experiences with language, culture, location and learning coming up! 

Hope you are enjoying the ride vicariously as much as Ruby and I are enjoying bringing it to you.  I’ll be back to you shortly with the experiences in San Marcos.

 

Hasta la vista mes amigos!

Adios Antigua; Hola San Marcos le Laguna!

I am now just finishing the second week of my four week grand learning adventure visiting different cities in Guatemala and El Salvador for some immersion Spanish language learning along with lots of other learning of cultures, customs, food and more.  Here is the latest update as I finish up with week #2 in Antigua and get ready to head off to the very small village of San Marcos on Lake Atitlán several hours north of here.

I started the adventure by spending two weeks in the relatively large town of Antigua, one of the original capitals of Guatemala (they have moved their capital city 4 times due to volcanoes and other disruptions). I enrolled in an immersion Spanish language school there and had a great start to learning Spanish with my instructor Axel, who you can see here holding Ruby on one of our many excursion to the local area.  in this case we are at a local “Finca” which I believe translates most closely to ranch however in this case it was also home to a simply gorgeous botanical garden surrounding an operational coffee plantation and processing plant combined with a coffee museum and a Mayan music museum.   Both the coffee and music museums were excellent for me because the guides spoke very clearly and quite slowly and I suspect used a more “elementary” form of Spanish knowing that we were all learning Spanish.  But it was still very good experience with the language, tracking lots of facts and figures and some out of the ordinary vocabulary. 

You can see our music museum guide here on the right playing the native Mayan marimba which has a beautiful sound.  I had not realized that the sound comes not just from the wooden bars that are struck with the baton as I had thought and as a xylophone does for example, but instead is amplified by either a square or round (in section) hollow tube or gourd which hangs down below each board.  As you can see if you look closely here on the left, there is no physical connection between these two but when struck, the board seems set up the vibrations within the tube to make the lovely sound.  Each board and subsequent “tube” is a different size to create the different notes and many of the ones in the museum used hollowed out and dried gourds (as in squash).  The sound was truly wonderful to my ear and I bought several CD’s at the end so I have example of this and other Mayan music with me from now on.  Music is one of the great joys of my life and having an ever enriched source of different styles and types of music is one of the things I’ve always valued from traveling.  I also acquired several new CD’s of modern Guatemalan musicians and singers, several of them in jazz that I’m enjoying a lot. 

As part of the Spanish language instruction we did several of these excursions into the local area and the school also organized an activity almost every afternoon that was optional and I went on several.  I also got to know several of my fellow students at the school and we met up on several occasions during the afternoons, evenings and weekends, creating more opportunities for learning both more Spanish and more about the local area, culture and food.  One memorable evening for me was when a large rainstorm, which was quite common, canceled our plans to walk the town and instead we quickly found a cafe that we ducked into to stay dry.  There were about 20 of us gathered around the table, ages ranged from 17 up to me, there were about 13 different native languages and countries around the table from almost every continent and we just naturally assumed the rule of “Spanish Only” amongst ourselves and it was truly a phenomenal learning experience in doing so.  There were some who had been there taking Spanish for several months and others like me for whom it was their first week, and everything in between so it all seemed to work out to have yet another great conversation.  I was particularly struck by the fact that our conversation at the table went WAY beyond the typical small talk of a group of otherwise strangers that I find so typical and so unappealing. Learning and living at its best IMHO!

In the afternoons and evenings I worked on several large writing projects I have on the go with Autodesk and was most appreciative that the son of the family I was staying with had a wireless network setup and let me tap into it for a very reasonable fee.  It is not at all common for individuals to have internet connections in their homes so most of the time you have to go to an internet café which is usually pretty easy as they are very popular.  However this does require a different mindset and schedule when it comes to working online and it is easy to be spoiled by having a connection of your very “own” at home and start taking a contiguous connection for granted.  I’ve become quite accustomed to the wide variation in the frequency of a net connection and so it was a big surprise and treat with the deadlines I had for a big article I’m writing for a UK journal to be able to have access to the web right from my room for the two weeks I was in Antigua.  It has been interesting to see how the different cities and cultures operate when it comes to internet connections and so for example in Antigua there was quite a range of options from dedicated internet shops which are solely there to provide computers and internet access, to more “full service” cafés and restaurants that provide internet access, usually wireless, for you while you are eating there.  It varied from one of these to the next whether they included the internet as part of eating there (no extra charge) or if they sold you time on the internet.  Either way it is typically very cheap it seems to me, with rates of anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar per hour.  Compared to the highway robbery that many of the high end hotels in North America and Europe this is a real bargain!

Intermixed with all this Ruby and I would venture out for walks to explore the city in the afternoons and evenings and we covered many many kilometers on these walks.  I don’t usually use any maps as I like to walk about in my typical serendipitous fashion.  In doing so I seem to find an unending number of surprise discoveries that are not in any of the guides or maps such as an interesting garden on the outskirts of town, an old ruin, a beautiful side street, an old church of no special distinction which makes it all the more beautiful to my eyes.  I also find this puts me in touch with “the patina of life” I might call it; a glimpse into the typical lives of the people living in the area as you walk amongst them, catch a quick glimpse in the always open doors and windows of their homes, hear the sounds of life with kids playing, dogs barking, music emanating (often blaring) from every other house and the smells of meals cooking, trucks going by and so on.  This picture on the right was simultaneously beautiful with the great bursts of bougainvillea purple surrounding this small church and the not so small chimney tower which apparently decided a while back that it wanted to see what things looked like from street level.  I was glad to be there AFTER it made it’s leap for freedom!<g>

And so it went each day for the two weeks I was in Antigua.  Axel and I spent every morning together from 8am through noon or more pretty much engaged in non stop conversation in Spanish.  We spent almost no time with any structure or formal exercises and instead spent all the time talking about a great range of subjects as they came up in conversation.  I’m again struck by the power of conversation; the way it wanders very constructively by following a path defined by the two engaged in the conversation, how it is a constant source of serendipitous discovery of ever more interesting and relative topics, etc.  Now don’t get me wrong, the conversations were slow and would have no doubt been tortuous for any other Spanish speaker, but they also seemed to me to go relatively quickly and quite deeply as we truly talked about areas we were most interested in from local culture to world politics, geography, music, science, technology and families.  Throughout these conversations we used up LOTS of paper taking notes, drawing pictures to communicate the idea or meaning we were trying to communicate, etc.  We never reverted to English and only occasionally did I need to call upon Axel’s excellent English for a word or look them up in the Spanish/English dictionary.  Similarly we spent very little time on formal grammar or structure and instead it was a matter of constant correction and some explanation as I worked to put thoughts and sentences together. 

I am sure there may be some academics and language experts who would argue that this is not a very productive or effective way of learning as it is so unstructured and “aimless”.  But isn’t it interesting how similar this is to the way we all learn our first language as children?  To the best of my knowledge, observation and experiences as children and parents we don’t spend ANY time doing language exercise, conjugating verbs or any other structured forms of learning.  Nor is there any dictionary to be consulted nor any “native” language to fall back on.  Instead we have “conversations” we draw lots of pictures, we read books and tell stories, and we do a lot of word association by holding things up or pointing to things within our environment or in pictures and photos.  Throughout the process we have a constant case of “course correction” to find the right words, pronounce them correctly and string them together properly.   And so we DO learn the rules or grammar and build out our vocabulary and learn proper pronunciation (well sometimes).  We just do it all indirectly, informally and to some I suppose very clumsily.   Yet just look at how much and how fast we learn.  And of course for this first language we are literally learning the entire concept of language as well as the first language or in some cases the first two languages, all at the same time and in a remarkably short time at that!  So for me this was an extremely productive and effective method to my way of thinking and learning.

And then, in what seemed like a flash my two weeks in Antigua were up and it was time for Ruby and I to head out on our next adventure to the famous Lake Atitlán for week #3 at a Spanish school in the very small village of San Marcos.   More on this adventure in the next posting.

Thanks for such a great time Antigua! I learned so much more than every expected and will remember for a long time to come.

Learning Spanish, culture, geography and SO much more!

Learning Spanish

So now I’m here in Antigua Guatemala and just finished (Sept. 6, 2008) my first week of what will be four weeks of intensive immersion Spanish language schools.  It has all been going extremely well.  I have my own full time instructor, Axel who I’m with from about 8am to 12:30 each weekday.  This is Axel in the picture looking out over Antigua’s main town square and plaza.

From the first time Axel and I shook hands all we’ve done is talk.  No formal structure, no meaningless grammatical exercises, no text books, not more teacher’s dirty looks! <g>  It is a fantastic way of learning, at least for me as I get to drive the conversations (surprise surprise!) and there is none of that “Today class let’s talk about going to the market” as is so often the case of formal language learning in my experience.  Instead we just talk about whatever I’d like from my family, my job, the sailboat and the grand adventure, music, etc.  So it is all very relevant and I am forced to figure out how to say what I want to say and understand Axel’s responses and questions to me. 

I started with literally NO Spanish (right Skyler) and so it all sounds rather impossible, and to be sure the “conversation” is very halting and slow, but it really does work.  We don’t talk at all in English at all, other than when I need to ask what this word is or that is in Spanish, and even most then most of the time I ask in Spanish as in ¿Cómo decir “sailboat”? (velero) or by describing it in the Spanish words I do know or we’ve just gone over.  We both write down a lot of words on paper so I get to see the spelling and see them visually which is SO important for my way of learning and processing.  Otherwise you use a lot of context to get through it all, some gesturing and pointing, some drawing and of course a LOT of patience on the part of Axel!  But gradually my vocabulary grows, I figure out how to put sentences together and get my point across. It is still very frustrating at times as I struggle to pull up words he has already given me or find more that we haven’t covered, but in just the course of these first 5 days I can already see a HUGE leap forward from where I started, which was of course zero!  And our conversations are surprisingly “deep” and for example on Thursday we had a great discussion about our mutual likes in music and how we both like it when new artist record old songs BUT only when they add new value by making it their own and not just copying the original..  It sure ain’t Look look, see Spot run!

My ear is also getting very good so as I’ve always found, with my French and German for instance, I’m able to understand much more than I can say.  This is also where I finding being immersed in nothing but Spanish speaking people to be of major assistance.  This town is full of other Spanish students like me so I do try to stay off the beaten path and not fall into the comfort zone of speaking English with all of them.  On the other hand, I’ve had some conversations on our morning breaks with some of the other students and they are all very interesting as well.  And back at the host family where I sleep and eat there are two other students staying there; David from Germany and Yisha from Israel and they are most interesting to talk with.  Of course I’m the oldest student, or teacher for that matter,  in sight by a long stretch as most of the students are in their 20’s and here as part of their travels in the area and most are heading home soon for University or work.

Hostess with the Mostess

Taking the host family option, where I have my own bedroom and 3 meals a day Monday through Saturday, has also been a very smart choice.  It is a very modest home, typical of the area with three generations of the family here.  I have the most contact with the oldest lady as she does all the cooking and sits with us for each meal, patiently letting us try out our Spanish and then chatting away to us about anything and everything which is just great for my comprehension as all the words and meaning go flying by.  In the picture here you can see our eating area, Yisha and our host as we sit down for dinner the other night.  Meals are all simple but very tasty and the just what they would have which I like a lot.  As is the custom, lunch is the big meal of the day.

 I have a small but adequate bedroom all to myself that is up one level and just one room by itself that has been added on at some point.  The picture above of is taken from outside my room door of the volcano nearby.  An active one with lava still flowing is just behind it and is a common trip to take but I have not had time to go yet. 

My room is about 3 meters square with two beds and a small desk as you can see in the picture here.  If you click on the picture to get the large version you can see that Ruby is also doing her homework and studying up on her Spanish as well as looking over my shoulder and correcting mine!

¿dónde vas siguiente?  = Where to next?

I’ll be here in Antigua through next week completing my second week of Spanish at the same school and instructor to get what I hope will be a good foundation.  Then next weekend I’m quite excited to be heading further West from here, up a bit higher to Lake Atitlan.  The word "atitlan" is a Mayan word that translates as "the place where the rainbow gets its colors".  and Aldous Huxley famously wrote of it: "Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing."  How can I NOT go??

I will likely spend some of next weekend (Sept. 13, 2008) in the largest town on the lake called Panajachel and then will take the ferry across the lake to the small village of San Marcos La Laguna which is is a village at the edge of Lake Atitlan in the Sololá Department of Guatemala.  The majority of the population are Kaqchikel-speaking indigenous Mayans. San Marcos is the home of the Pyramid centre which is a magnet for meditators and alternative therapy enthusiasts.  however my attraction is to the almost spiritual beauty and tranquility of this very small pueblo which happens to have a Spanish language school recently open there.  Unfortunately they don’t have a host family option there yet but that may be yet more serendipity as I’ve found an incredible Hotel Aaculaax that is on the lake side and has these amazing rooms built into the hillside.  I’m going to be in either the Cascada or the Mirador room and if you check out those links and pictures I think you’ll see why I’m so excited.  These are a bit more expensive than the home stay options I’ve had here in Antigua, but at $235 for the week I’ve decided to treat myself.  I’m worth it right?!  I’ll post pictures and details after I’ve been there for a while to let you know what it is all like.  But based on my research this is a destination that many of you might want to check out further as it seems truly magical. 

After San Marco I’m headed back to El Salvador to another relatively small village called Suchitoto which is about an hour northeast of San Salvador. The name Suchitoto, means flower bird(Pájaro Flor) in nahuat, the language of the main indigenous group that inhabited this region.  Suchitoto is a small colonial town in the department of Cuscatlán, located only an hour north east of the capital city of San Salvador. With cobblestone streets and panoramic views of the surrounding mountains and Lake Suchitlán, Suchitoto has preserved its historical architecture of the late 1800's, and is known as the cultural capital of El Salvador.  This town has been recommended to me by quite a few others I’ve met and they have a Spanish language school there that I’ll be attending.  Will be interesting to see how the Spanish is any different and also to see the differences between the cultures of El Salvador and Guatemala

So that’s the update for now folks!  I’ll do my best to post more between learning Spanish, work and travel.

Hasta la próxima vez mis amigo!

Blissful in Barillas

We are now in Bahía Jiquilisco (hee-kee-LEE-skoh) which is the larger of El Salvador's 2 navigable estuaries, and are tied up to a mooring ball at Barillas Marina Club  Next door is a shipyard for the old shrimper port and miles of mangrove channels - part of a wildlife preserve.  Jiquilisco Bay lies 26 miles SE of Estero de Jaltepeque, 138 miles SE of Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala, 32 miles west of Punta Ampala in the Gulf of Fonseca and about 70 miles NW of Marina Puesta del Sol in Nicaragua.  The marina's heliport is busy during the regular season apparently because Salvadoran club members would rather zoom over the mountains than risk the narrow, twisty highways. Barillas Marina Club's heliport handles VIPs, and security is good. A level grass airstrip (5,576' long, 164' wide) handles fixed wing aircraft. You can bring your own, or the club has 2 for charter. Local members keep their boats in covered sheds near the launch ramp, and 2-story bungalows are for rent.  Bahia Jiquilisco is one of the best cruising grounds on the West Coast of El Salvador. A mangrove sanctuary of ecology and wildlife twist and turn in a kaleidoscope of directions. The occasional remote-fishing village charms the shores and palm fringe beaches. There is plenty to explore.  Best of all, for us at least, Bahia Jiquilisco is away from population areas and is far from the hurricane zone. Though a hurricane has never hit the West Coast of El Salvador, should such a phenomena ever occur, the 12 miles of winding estuary that separate the marina from the sea makes Barillas the perfect hurricane hide-out.  So here we are!

Marina Barillas (pronounced "bah-REEahz")

is a private club, but visiting boaters such as ourselves automatically become members when we rent moorings which are very inexpensive at $11 per day.  Unlike most marinas, Barillas does not have has docks or piers where you tie up, except for the fuel pier, and instead has about 80 mooring balls which are chained to the bottom to an anchor consisting of tractor engine blocks embedded in 2.5-ton concrete blocks.  It is great because you have complete peace of mind as opposed to an anchor about any chance of drifting or coming loose and you are nicely on your own. 

The pilot boat that guided us all the way in through the surf and up the river (you can see him ahead of us in the photo here) also helped us tie up to our mooring ball and then brought the custom, immigration and port officials out to us.  Check in could not have been any easier; after a short exchange of documents aboard Learnativity they took me ashore to complete the paperwork with Immigration, get our passport stamped and check in with the Marina officials.  All this for a grand total of $10 by the way and so a VERY nice change from what we became accustomed to in Mexico which took a day or more to complete and typically a hundred or more dollars.  Like I said, I'm liking this place more and more!

Behind the fountain gardens and pools, you'll see the marina office on the right side of the street. General manager Heriberto Pineda is a former cruiser, and he has a very significant staff, I'd say at least 20+ at any one time from what I've seen so far and they are all super pleasant and helpful.  Heriberto also spent 13 years living in Victoria and Vancouver so we had lots to talk about and he just loved the area and his time there.  Obviously his English is outstanding which is a great asset as my Spanish is still in the pitiful category!

Marina Barillas has more amenities within the huge gated compound than are found in most US marinas.  Security guards and a shore boat constantly patrol the moorings; security is excellent in a comforting sort of way.  You just know that people are always around any time of the day or night looking out for your well being and there to be of any assistance you might need.  At night the security guards take a slow and quiet run through all the boats that are moored and checking all along the mangrove banks to make sure all is well.  As a result of both this great boat baby sitting service and the excellent protection from the sea and weather, a lot of people leave their boats here for months at a time while they either go on extended tours inland or return home, which for most is either the USA or Canada.  It is the "off season" here now and also rainy season so we are among only 12 other boats and of these less than half have their owners aboard which is great for us too in that we only have about 8 other people to share all these great facilities and staff.   

The fuel dock dispenses clean US refined Texaco fuel.  I have not filled up yet but looks like prices here may be considerably higher than the low ones we were spoiled with in Mexico.  I'll find out soon enough but I'm not burning much now, just a gallon or two a day for the generator to keep our batteries charged up and supply all our electrical needs.  An unlimited amount of pure fresh drinking water is supplied from a deep artesian well apparently so I can give the water maker a bit of a rest and fill up the tanks (we hold about 420 gallons of fresh water) quite easily.

It is incredibly peaceful here, partly because it is so remote, the marina is about all there is and the fishing fleet is not active right now for some reason (contract dispute I've heard) and partly because we are on a river so there are no waves or hardly any water movement at all.  Being on a mooring ball means we don't have any squeaky docks or dock lines either and about the only noise we get, other than the sounds of all the birds and crickets, is the sound of the mooring ball bumping into the hull as we lazily turn 180 degrees each time the tidal swing changes the direction of the flow of this river estuary.  Learnativity is therefore floating peacefully in this river sanctuary, doing lazy about turns four times a day as the river rises and falls and changes directions with ocean tides that are otherwise another world away.  If you are not up on deck or watching out the window to see it you never even know this lazy swinging around is happening and you can see it is pretty ideal conditions for boating or anything else for that matter, at least in my opinion.

Basically, everything this region has to offer is supplied through the marina and its transportation services. The club's beautifully manicured grounds are on a former coconut plantation and family farm enclosed in a high concrete wall, so all visitors must pass through a security gate with armed guards.  Barillas Marina Club is remote, 15 miles from the nearest big town and an hour's drive from the international airport at San Salvador, the capital. But the marina's air-conditioned van shuttles up to 8 guests to the colorful market town of Usulutan for every Tuesday and Friday for provisioning and I went in for the first time yesterday to stock up on perishables such as lettuce, tomatoes, bread and the like.  It was a great adventure and I'll tell you more about it in a future posting.

The clubhouse overlooking the moorings has showers, laundry, patio restaurant, satellite TV and free videos after dark. Nearby are a small air conditioned gym and a convenience store with refrigerated groceries (ice cream).  There is wireless throughout the grounds, though it doesn't quite reach out to Learnativity as we seem to be a bit too far away.  You can see the  "palapas" which are thatch covered tables surrounding the swimming pools and each one has it's own power outlet for laptops and other gadgets, a light for night time and are raised up on concrete with comfy chairs and lounges all around.  If you look closely in the photo (click to enlarge) you can see my backpack and laptop all setup in my new "office" where I get to work several hours every day now.  There are about 50 of these palapas all together, spread out all around the pools and bar/BBQ area complete with hammocks strung out between some of the palm trees and all spread out such that you can never see more than about 10 other tables as it is a very large, lush and beautifully maintained area.  Ruby loves out time here as she gets to race around the grassy grounds, her favorite exercise, as well as meeting and greeting everyone who comes by, be it staff or other guests. 

The weather is very tropical with temperatures running about 90-100ºF/32-38ºC and humidity about 60%.  It is rainy season so there are clouds overhead most of the time and they range from scattered billowy white across blue skies to stormy grey and black and a good tropical shower once or twice a day or night seems typical.  We get very good lightning shows many evenings but mostly at a good distance as we don't hear much thunder.  As you can see there is a very inviting set of swimming pools with the upper one being a heated whirlpool.  Ruby and I are there each day for a few hours, me getting some work done with a good (and free!) Internet connection, comfy chairs and surroundings, pool at my side to cool off and Ruby racing about, getting attention from staff and other cruisers who come by and digging away in the dirt.  (taking after her namesake Rugby our first family dog who was an identical colored cockapoo and loved to dig as well).  Mostly though we seem to have this and the pools pretty much to ourselves or sharing it with a few other cruisers and getting to chat with them.   

What's not to like??  Now you can see why this my kind of place and I'm thinking we may stay here for the rest of the month at least to rest up, get some more boat chores done, some regular Autodesk work looked after, have a mailing address to send in some of the accumulating mail and other supplies from back in the USA and perhaps hosting a few of you who have asked about coming for a visit.  It really is a fascinating area historically as well as just a wonderful spot to relax, listen to the birds, swim, read enjoy living in these moments. 

Blissed out in Barillas,

Ruby & Wayne