Hanging out at the beach on Fantasy Island, the three-star resort with a million rooms, twenty guests, and a ten bucks a night marina.
No cruiser ever minds a hard passing rain shower to clean the boat off.
With our lifestyle there isn’t much call for seasonal clothing, which means 3 small drawers filled with undies, shorts, and tees. That’s the entirety of the kids’ storage. Ali and I have three similar drawers each in our room. So long as we don’t visit family in Minnesota during the winter we’re all set.
Recaulking the kitchen area.
The mama left her clutch of chicks, leaving Ali all by herself to worry about them. Of course the chicks picked up on this pretty quickly and stood outside the boat peeping away until she’d appear.
Ouest and Lowe heading off to sea with a stowaway.
Another stowaway.
They made a valiant effort to get back under sail, but the wind wasn’t giving them much help.
Doesn’t really matter where you live, a lemonade (mango-ade) stand is a part of every kids’ life. These three had a “fort” they had been disappearing to every day, and they’d come back scarfing down unripe mangos, which did not look appealing to me, but they seemed well and pleased with. I imagine it had something to do with them having their own mango tree to whack the fruit off of. They then came up with the mango-ade stand idea, despite our warnings that only about 3 people a day wandered past this spot. Luckily a big group of cruisers had piled into a pickup a couple hours earlier to go check out a bar on the other side of the island. When they got back they were more than willing to leave tips for a cup of juice (which didn’t taste half bad, actually). Ouest only sliced her finger once—she continues to learn the hard way how to use a pocket knife.
It’d been a few wild days outside the reef, so it was nice to see the whitecaps die away out at sea. Time to pack up, say goodbye for now to new friends, and move on. We told the kids the other day that we’d changed plans and were going to head for Guatemala instead of Panama this season, Ouest looked up from her book and said excitedly, “Right now?!” As much fun as they’ve had they still seem ready for something new. Ali and I had been excited about a few things we had planned for Panama, but in the end decided we could use the famed Guatemalan woodwork, and couldn’t pass up seeing the Rio Dulce for ourselves.
14 Comments on “Fantasy Island”
The Rio Dulce is awesome! Have fun.
Hmmm. I always figured that it was your wifes top notch organizational skills that permitted Ouest to be quite the fashionista. I’m always amazed at how many dresses, skirts and adorable tops she has all while living on a boat. The three small drawers picture just makes it all the more impressive
Oh for sure I should still get some credit for my top-notch organization skills. 😉
But when there is no need for more than one sweatshirt and pair of jeans each – it is much easier to fit everything in 3 drawers a piece.
I’ve been to Rio Dulce (by land) several times. The most memorable visit was in 2001 or so when we had run out of cash and visited all three banks to use the ATM. There was no cash to be had inside the bank or at the ATMs and, asking around, discovered the reason why. That morning men on horseback had held up all three banks and taken the cash. We had insufficient funds to pay for more hotel nights and not even enough to buy a bus ticket to get us out of town. We prevailed on the bus driver to let us on the bus without a ticket and to stop in the next town where there was an ATM to get cash.
An adventure for sure! Our arrival was the same, the two ATMs in town were broken and the bank would only exchange $50 or $100 USD. And the locals didn’t want our smaller USDs either. Fun stuff.
a Guatemalan adventure awaits….yay!
got get’m tiger(s)!
blessings
scott
While I, like most of your readers I’m sure, greatly admire the life you and Ali have made for yourselves, Pat, I doubt I’m alone in thinking I’d be happiest if I could be a kid again and live the life of Ouest or Lowe. Well done, Ali and Pat – and I hope the kids inherit Ali’s kind heart for animals.
TJ
I think that is a given, TJ. 🙂
Lowe is turning into a real lady-killer, just like his Dad. You guys need to have some children in Guatemala. Just sayin’ ! 🙂
SV Mahi is there, but we flew to CA to visit family, doctors, dentist, etc. Sorry to have missed you, Ethan would enjoy seeing Lowe and Ouest again.
We are using Jose#1 (opposed to Jose #2), PM me for more info. We are having lots of teak work done while at Tijax. First job is complete- interior cabinets and drawers. We were impressed by the craftsmanship!
Thanks for all the info, Carla. And we look forward to seeing you when you get back.
We camped out at the RAM Marina on the Rio Dulce from 6 to 8 September 2018 when we were driving our Rockwood Embassy motorhome down to Panama. We even got to meet Richard A. Monstein, the “RAM” in RAM Marina while we were there. If you would be interested, we can e-mail you the complete trip log for your reading pleasure [PDF file 7.208 MB].
That is neat. We haven’t gotten over to RAM yet. And sorry too large of file for our internet right now.
We understand about the file size. Enjoy your time in the Rio Dulce.