Me, Santos and Josh at one of the many palapa stops..CB too (he’s taking the photo)

The best part about traveling is meeting local people. However, this is often difficult due to language barriers. When we arrived in El Salvador, Santos (owner of Santo’s Marina, who speaks very good English) came out to our boat while anchored in the estuary to see if we needed anything…at the time, we did not. When our friend Josh (s/v La Gitana) arrived Santos offered him the same assistance. Josh ended up taking his dinghy up into the jungle (jungla) with Santos to see parts often untraveled by cruisers. Santos is starting up a Jungla tour where he takes tourists up into the estuaries of the Rio Lempa on his sailboat. Josh got to see the route. At one of the stops there was a tree that hung over the river and Santos told Josh that was where people climbed up and jumped from the tree. This looked like a perfect place for a rope swing. So a few days later we took two dinghys up into the jungle to construct the rope swing.

The rope swing injection team…boat #1: Sachi (on the bow), Santos and Josh (el capitan)…we are in boat #2

It is currently Semana Santa, the week before Easter when the Latin Americans head to the beach for the week. This means rural little beach towns like Bahia Sur are swamped with city folks, jet skis and boats. Lots of celebrations are going on and the jungle estuaries and its little palapa restaurants are packed. We first stopped at a floating palapa at the head of the river…this was pretty cool.

This bar was just built…and packed to the gills

We didn’t stay long…just long enough to get some coldies to go. The next stop was a palapa bar on a fairly large island. There was a small village here. The lots here are long and skinny. If you have waterfront property often there is a palapa bar on the water and the family owning it lives further back on the land. The bars become gathering places for family, friends and during this week tourists. They have some of the coldest beer I have ever tasted.

Seriously COLD beers await us!!!

The next stop was where we would incorporate rope swinging into El Salvadorian life style. The palapa bar here was very rustic with wood burning stoves and board walks everywhere. It was built over the mangrove roots and I’m pretty sure an Ewok or two were hiding out somewhere nearby.

Look closely…I think you can see the Ewok…this was, by the way, the best damn grilled fish I have ever had. Served to you whole (but gutted) with salad, rice and homemade tortillas.

We got more coldies and chose our fish that they would grill for us. In the mean time the rope swing was tied up on the overhanging tree. Everyone got into it and we had locals and tourists helping and giving much advice. Josh had some extra poly-pro line and Santos had an old water skiing handle.

This dude was trying to help untangle the mess of poly-pro while muttering under his breath about what a waste it was to tie it to a tree…here, this stuff is like gold for fishing.

Propper knot tying etiquette was practiced…as for the stability of the tree…eeeeaaahhhh

The initial idea was to make it so you could swing out from the dock on the rope. The problem was, the tree was a farther distance away from the dock than the height where the rope was tied….

Many plans were hatched, but in the end, you simply had to climb the tree and roll out over the water.

We continued on from there to a hostel in a small river village. They had a bar and kitchen and served the most amazing crab soup. We continued on up the river letting Josh push through branches and estuary muck….then CB and I realized we were running out of gas. So instead of making it to the mouth of Rio Lempa to check out the surfing situation….we took a shortcut back that would hopefully get us back to the boat without having to row :-) I should say without CB having to row.

In the end we made it back just past dark with lightening striking in the distance. It was a great day with amazing sights and fun times!

Free range horse having a gallop on one of the side tributary islets

River Lempa sunset on the way back….you really can’t capture the beauty of this place….but I gave it a try:-)

While we were at the restaurant several of the local kids attempted the rope swing but always chickened out in the end. On our way back we were rewarded by this little dude hootin’ and hollerin’ at us as we past giving us a big thumbs up as he swung back and forth over the water…we later heard that the rope was stolen…probably the guy mumbling about how good a fishing line it would make…oh well, hope he catches a lot of fish:-)

People always ask us what it’s like sailing across an ocean. The answer can range from mind numbingly boring to fucking terrifying. :) We like it somewhere in the middle.

I think the video below is a pretty fair example of an average to above average day.

I cannot remember exactly, but I believe these were taken somewhere between Turtle Bay and Mag Bay on the Pacific side of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico.

You might want to watch it on youtube. The video size and my site are fighting and I do not feel like changing either. http://youtu.be/OrVfjMx8GgE

Liv, I am not trying to one up you. :P

Holy crap…I missed it by a day. On May 11th last year CB and I cut our dock lines and set sail. We have travelled around 3500 miles up and around Vancouver island with M/V Andante and S/V Hello World, we set sail….errr motor from Port Angeles with Mikey Bamboo and headed to San Francisco sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge, traveled the coast of California and held out our worst storm yet at anchor off Santa Cruz Island in 50 knots of wind and we spent some time in San Diego visiting with family before heading across our second border into Mexico. 6 months of this year at float were spent in Mexico checking out all the amazing towns and keeping the economy stable by eating more than our fair share of street tacos. We first started on the Baja Sur Penninsula and then crossed to the mainland (Bay of Banderas…PV to all you land based folks) with Jason & Julia from S/V Danika…who were hijacked for that crossing :-) We upped our surfing skills at Punta de Mita where we surfed usually two times per day for almost a month. In late February we set off to explore the Gold Coast of Mexico and made numerous stops…Barra de Navidad, Z-waaaat and Puerto Escondido being some of the highlights. We checked out of Mexico in Hualtuco and crossed the treacherous Tehuanapec zone (we basically motored), got attacked by bees off Guatemala (I’m still recovering mentally from that ;-)) and floated across a very tame bar into Bahia Del Sur, El Salvador, and notched up our 3rd country of this trip. We are spending the summer in El Salvador then will continue our travels south to Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama beofre crossing to the Galapagos and then on to the next adventure…CROSSING THE PACIFIC to the south pacific islands.

We have sailed far less than we thought, used way more diesel than expected…but it has all been worth it. This adventure is so amazing and it will only get better and better as we travel on. We have met amazing cruisers that have become fast friends. We have also had to say goodbye to many of those friends…knowing we may never see them again. That has become the hardest part of cruising. You make such quick and solid friendships out here and when the seasons change you loose those friendships to different plans and directions of travel. We sailed down most of the Pacific coast and Mexico mainland with Brad & Joanne on S/V Loukia…we thought we would be going the same way, until Panama, but they got an opportunity to work for the summer and headed back to Canada…we miss them terribly. Erlin on S/V Ventured is from Seattle and we met up with him in Ensenada…we spent 6 months cruising with him and he is now in Chiapis, Mexico where he will leave his boat for the summer…we may see him again if he crosses to the South Paciific next year…hint hint hint! S/V Unleashed left with us from Seattle…same dock…they are now back in the states for the summer while their boat gets a facelift in Mazatlan. We had to say goodbye to them in Tenacatita Mexico.There are so many others that we met and then went our seperate ways…we wish you all safe travels where ever you may be. On the other hand people do catch up to you from your past…two boats we knew from earlier travels will be coming into Bahia Del Sur in the next week and we will have fun reuniting with them. This is the circle of cruising!

We may come up with a numbers blog soon…but that sounds like a lot of work :-)