On the way home from Tikal we found another off the beaten path place to punish our rental car with.

Las Conchas is a series of beautiful waterfalls that during the dry season people can jump off the top of. Unfortunately we showed up at the height of rainy season (though we’ve hardly had any rain to deal with at all) and the water was running too deep and strong. It was nicer to look at, but jumping into the currents was out of the question. There was still one good swimming hole area, though. And there was nobody but us and one local family there.

Back at home the heat is pretty oppressive and is leaving us spending a lot of time indoors. We recently got a junior edition of Trivial Pursuit, which has been fun, but it’s truly amazing to us how many questions revolve around television, movies, video games, and social media. And they spread them across multiple categories somehow. Our kids are so far removed from that stuff that we have to skip probably a third of the questions in the game because there is no way anyone in the family has ever been exposed to a possible answer. I’m happy to say they answer the other questions really well.

I’ve long said that the most valuable thing I ever learned in high school was how to type properly. I can’t imagine how many thousands of hours I’ve saved myself by spending an hour a day for a semester of high school taking timed typing tests on an electric typewriter.

When we got back to the boat one of our refrigerators wasn’t working. This was a major blow to us. If there was something broken we’d be looking at a long delay trying to get parts down here. And frankly, we’ve come to rely on having both fridges. We just replaced the old AC system last year with a new DC system retrofitted to use our old holding plates, and life aboard last season was greatly improved by that upgrade.

Anyway, I e-mailed Rich, the cruiser-owner of the company and he quickly got back to me with a couple ideas. The symptoms were pointing to a refrigerant leak on the low pressure side, so I attempted to add the right amount, twice, but it wouldn’t cool past 70 degrees. We exchanged more e-mails and he mentioned that “the sensing bulb must be firmly strapped to the outlet line of the holding plate.” I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I took a closer look inside and sent him this picture. That’s it! Apparently I had skipped this instruction when installing last year. That silver bulb was in the wrong spot. Still dubious that this could be the problem (since the fridge worked fine last season) I strapped it down, topped the coolant off just right, and fired it up. And wouldn’t you know it, we achieved the most incredibly rare feat on a boat—an easy fix. It’s comical how happy this sort of thing can make you when you live on a boat in a far off country. Nothing is ever this easy.

While we’ve been gone we’ve had a lot of teak work done. Jose and his crew have been the absolute best, doing great work, on time, at incredibly reasonable rates, and doing it so well that even in the midst of the work they leave no trace behind at the end of each day. Here’s a couple shots of broken teak that we’ve had them replace. That back hatch had really begun to fall apart. They tore it all down, rebuilt, rebedded it to the fiberglass underneath, and it all fits flush and perfect again. Another thing you probably wouldn’t notice looking at the picture, but they also filled 400! teak bungs. Most of them required pulling the old screw out, filling with epoxy, then setting a new screw in just a tiny bit deeper. Our teak decks are nearing the end of their lives (getting thin), but the job these guys have done for us this season has definitely bought us more time. To give you an idea on cost (I’ll do a full post at some point soon on the work we’ve had done and the cost), they did the 400 bungs for $1 each (materials and labor). Anybody who has ever done even ten bungs like that before can appreciate how insanely cheap that is. And a nice side benefit to having it be rainy season here is that I can confidently confirm that there isn’t a leak anywhere on the boat.

Tarp city. Having a boat here at this time of year there is simply no way you could survive without covers for shade as well as just to keep some of the rain off.

They’ve got everything in actual glass bottles down here, from Coke, to tea, to Gatorade. Shame we can’t/won’t still use glass everywhere else. Bottled water is still a major plastic problem, but 9 times out of ten you can get your water bottles refilled for free from the 5-gallon jugs that every restaurant/food stall/bar uses.