April 2011

Before moving on, I need to go back and fill in some missing posts from last spring. Our last entry was from Calabash Bight in Honduras. After leaving Calabash on Roatan, we returned to Utila. Our visas were soon to expire, so we needed to stop in at immigration to get 30-day extensions. After getting our extensions, we took a chance that our shipment of a new radar and chart plotter would arrive in the next few days, so we crossed to La Ceiba on the mainland of Honduras to be ready to pick it up at the shipyard. We checked into the Lagoon Marina and found we were the only boat scheduled to be there that week.



View from the dock at Lagoon Marina, La Ceiba

Beautiful Marina - no visitors

We stopped in at the Shipyard to find that our delivery was not yet out of the container, but should be within the next couple of days. The marina offers van service into town with drop-offs in a couple of different locations, one being a fairly nice mall. We took advantage of that on several different days. The trip is one-way only, so each time we needed to flag a taxi for the return trip. The marina is well out of downtown, and not all drivers know exactly where it is, so a couple of times it was an adventure getting back. La Ceiba is a working town with really nothing at all for tourists. There were very few gringos around; those few we saw were at Expats, a well-recommended restaurant catering obviously to the expatriate population.

When our delivery arrived, it was missing a part. We took what did arrive and took advantage of the flat, calm, peaceful creek the marina is on to work on installing the new radome and cabling down the mast. This required about two hours working about halfway up the mast, so it was a perfect place, with virtually no boat motion. We decided we couldn't wait for the last part to arrive and that we would figure out how to retrieve it later. We knew our friends on Angelina were planning to stop in La Ceiba and hoped the package would arrive before they departed. It did, and we were ultimately united with it back at Monkey Bay Marina in Guatemala a couple of weeks later.

We had a very unusual experience while in La Ceiba.  John, the marina manager at Monkey Bay, upon learning we would be in La Ceiba, asked us to pick up a package at a freight company.  We caught a taxi at the mall after riding into town in the marina van.  We gave him the address, and arriving there, it was not apparent where the business was.  We eventually found the nondescript warehouse back from the road.  I provided the package number, and they went off searching.  There was no apparent organization to the mounds of packages.  After about half an hour, they tried to explain to us that they could not find it and were instructing us as to what we should do.  The problem was that we had no idea what they were saying.  Now this is like an Amazing Race episode.  Our taxi driver, still waiting, took over.  We jumped in the taxi, and we're off, totally clueless as to what we were doing.  We actually found it comical that we were the only ones who had no idea what was going on.  By now, we had taken so much of our driver's time that we first needed to pick up his daughter at school.  We then went to the business offices of the shipping company.  He motioned us to go inside.  They spoke English in the office, so we were able to sort it out.  They called the warehouse and provided additional information needed to locate the package.  We then went back to the warehouse, and with additional tracking information, they were able to find the package.  Our taxi driver took us to the marina, and we paid him well.

After five days in La Ceiba, we returned to Utila. I had started some dental work there before going to La Ceiba and needed some follow-up work done. Back at Utila, we once again met up with Mobetah and, with them, spent some time exploring, including moving to an anchorage on the west end of Utila called Diamond Cay.

Mobetah - west end of Utila

We traveled with Mobetah to return to the river. To avoid an overnight voyage, we departed at 3 am so we could arrive at Puerto Cortez on the mainland during daylight hours. Puerto Cortez is a large ship port, but there is a very nice anchorage just off the Navy base. The next day, we continued on and anchored that night at Cabo Tres Puntas, which is in Guatemala and about two hours from the mouth of the Rio Dulce and Livingston.

Mobetah - on Rio Dulce

Our trip up the Rio Dulce was uneventful, with an overnight stay at Texan Bay so we could arrive at Monkey Bay Marina in the morning, well before the afternoon winds. It is tough enough backing into the slip with cross current, but the higher afternoon winds make it virtually impossible.



Ariel - traveling up the Rio Dulce