December 23, 2014
My goal for the day was to head into Tapachula to find corn
husks for making tamales and to pick up salad fixings and ingredients for
cookie baking. Our little party that had
originally looked like five or six people had grown to thirteen and would now
include a gift exchange. Sailors are
some of the most welcoming people on the planet. With the arrival of each new boat, it was as
if unexpected family members had dropped in for the holidays. If there are two boats in an anchorage or
marina, no one need worry about being alone for the holidays.
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| The Chedraui in Tapachule |
I had already determined that Walmart was out of corn husks,
so I stayed on the collectivo well into Tapachula until I came to the Chedraui
shopping center. Going to a shopping
mall on December 23rd was madness.
The place was mobbed. I did,
however, manage to get everything I needed for Christmas dinner, although I was
unable to buy eggs. They were out of
packages of a dozen and I couldn’t carry, store, or use a two and a half dozen
flat. Every gringo in Tapachula (and I
was surprised how many there were) was in that store. I found that odd, since I never saw any in
the Walmart. They weren’t sailors, so I
wondered who they were and what in the world they were doing in Tapachula.
I had no trouble flagging down a collective going my way,
but it was a challenge to wedge myself and my shopping bags (Thanks heavens I
only had two!) into that van. It was
completely stuffed and everyone was bearing as many parcels as he or she could
carry. I was the fifth person squeezed
into the front row and was pressed so hard against the door that I couldn’t get
my hand into my pocket to pull out my bus fare.
I had to wait until we stopped and the door was opened. Fortunately, people began to get off once we
cleared the city limits. By the time we
got to the fishing port, there were only three of us left, myself and two women
going deep into Playa Linda. The van
driver didn’t feel like driving to Playa Linda because it was a busy day and he
could make much more money making runs to and from Tapachula. He flagged down a taxi and paid him to take
us to our destinations while he headed back to town. I didn’t mind the extra service one bit. The driver let me off right in front of the
boatyard instead of a quarter mile away along the side of the road.
Back at the boat, Scott was finishing up cleaning the oil
mess out of the bilge and disposing of the carcass of the old air
conditioner. Once he put the floor back
in, I made guacamole and chips, which tided us over until I finished preparing
a dinner of spicy chicken wings and salad.
After dinner, I slathered myself with bug repellent and went up to the
bench outside the office to work on my blog post.
December 24, 2014
Christmas Eve and Christmas are usually not holidays for
me. I only celebrate them for other
people and usually spend them cooking fiendishly. I looked forward to attending a potluck where
I only had to produce a couple of dishes.
I decided to give myself a day off from boat repairs. Unfortunately, my bladder awoke me at
6:00. I decided to get up and use the
extra time to run all the way to what passed for a town in Playa Linda. Knowing that I would need to cover about
14km, I alternated running and walking every five minutes. The sidewalk, upon which I had been running
for the past week, was still under construction. Someone had planted palm trees along it since
the last time I had been there. Many of
them were in need of staking, so I had to push them out of the way as I passed. They would be very attractive in a few
years. Playa Linda was making a real
effort to improve its appearance. Even
the road was being repaved.
Playa Linda straggles along the beach for about three miles
from the Navy Base to the downtown at the end of the road. The beach side of the road is mostly large
villas and hotels, most of which appear to be abandoned. The inland side of the road is poorer, but
more populated. Small homes and
businesses line the road. The sidewalk
seemed to have had limited success in exercising eminent domain. Some walls and buildings had been demolished
to make way for the path, but others jutted all the way out to the road,
causing the pavement to narrow or halt altogether. The gaps became more and more frequent as I
drew nearer to the town. This was a
shame, as the town generally grew busier and more prosperous in that direction
and a continuous promenade would have been useful. Roadside restaurants sported swimming pools
and some of the hotels along the beach were still operating. At the end of the road, there was a small
town, mostly consisting of palapa restaurants on the beach. The beach was wide and sandy, but not
particularly attractive. It was deserted
at 7:30 in the morning. The place
reminded me very much of El Salvador.
Nothing was modern and everything appeared improvised with whatever
materials were at hand. Still, it was
interesting to explore the town and see the villas interspersed with
enterprises such as a tortilleria, a field of squash and a turkey farm.
After running and walking for a couple of hours, I was tired
and rested for a bit before showering and briefly using the internet. My main mission for the day was to bake
cookies for Christmas. I adapted a
recipe for coconut lemon meltaways to local ingredients and made them with
limes, instead. Fortunately, I had coconut
oil and a pound of almond flour squirreled away in the boat and coconut and
agave syrup were readily available. Our
cranky old oven actually lit for me (usually, Scott has to help me) and the
cookies were completed before noon.
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| Cargo Tricycle with Sound System |
Cars with loudspeakers on top are a popular advertising medium in Mexico where no one is concerned with noise pollution. The convenience store and restaurant at the marina had decided to do some advertising but, rather than use a car, they mounted their sound system on a cargo tricycle. The employee pedaling the tricycle returned to the store for lunch and to use the restroom, treating us to frequent high volume advertisements for Punto Modelo y Restaurant Baos. I came to know that ad by heart. Scott spent the day relaxing, so I elected to do the
same. I was deadly bored. Dinner was spicy pork that I had originally
bought to use in tamales, but decided against at the last minute. We retired early.
December 25, Christmas, 2014
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| Clean(er) Engine Room |
We received the use of a hundred foot garden hose for
Christmas. Breakfast was put on hold
until Scott had finished cleaning the oily mess out of the engine room. Finally, it looked like the white painted
space I had prepared before we installed the engine back in October of 2013
instead of an oily morass. We were
almost out of water in our tanks, so it was nice to have the hose to use for
dishwashing. A hundred feet of garden
hose stretched across an asphalt lot on a 90 degree day makes for jolly solar
hot water. I cleaned up the dishes from
the night before and then made paleo banana pancakes and bacon for breakfast.
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| Tamale Ingredients |
After breakfast, I started work on the tamales for Christmas
dinner. As we were on the hard, with
limited dishwashing facilities, I opted to start my filling with packaged chilorio,
a type of spicy, shredded meat usually used for making tacos. For the pork ones, I added garlic, onions and
chile arbol. For the chicken ones, I
added garlic, onions and Oaxaca cheese.
Once the fillings were prepared, I started on the dough. My bag of masa did not include the tamale
recipe found on the ones sold during the holidays, so I had to find a recipe on
the internet. It was a different recipe
than the one I usually used and included sour cream (which had to be imported
from California.) I made about three
dozen tamales, tying them up in their corn husk wrappers with strips of corn
husk and steaming them in two batches in our recently purchased tamale
pot. I put the finished tamales in a
Styrofoam cooler to keep warm. Coolers
make great warmers and things don’t cool rapidly in 90 degree heat. I finished the tamales by 15:00 and had time
to make a big salad before we left for the party at 16:00.
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| Mary Ann in Gallant Fox |
Nearly everyone in the marina came to the party and there
were fifteen of us for dinner. We had
people from the USA, Canada, Germany, Denmark and Australia. Gary and Mary Ann hosted the party on their
Malo 39, Gallant Fox, a lovely Swedish yacht with air conditioning. Gary cooked a turkey and made stuffing and
cranberry chutney. Brad and Joanne from
Loukia brought mashed potatoes and veggies.
Others contributed salads and cakes.
Birgit made a tasty almond pudding with strawberries and a tart berry
sauce. Bruno brought wine. There was more than enough food and the wine
flowed freely. It was a delightful party
with great people. Birgit was especially
excited because they had sailed all the way from Seattle and it was the first
time they had met other cruisers. We
retired, glowing with good cheer and thankful to be part of the worldwide sailing
community.
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| Peanut Butter from the Gift Exchange |
December 26 and 27, 2014
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| Our Dishwashing Setup |
We received no indication from our parts supplier that our
parts had been sent before or after Christmas.
We assumed that no progress would be made until Monday, the 29th. The marina repossessed the hose before we
even awoke on the 26th, so I couldn’t wash the boat that day. We spent the day being completely lazy and
munching on leftovers. Finally, after
dark, the hose was returned and I washed the dust and grime off the foredeck
and cabin top.
Saturday, the marina still needed the hose. I got up and ran about four miles through
Playa Linda. On my way in, I found a
beautiful artificial lei by the side of the road. Having nowhere else to put it, I put it
around my neck and kept running. It was
annoying, but too pretty to throw away.
Once into Playa Linda, I was chased by a dog until a young woman and her
little girl called him off. I ran into
them again on my return and the little girl approached me. She was about five or six and had bangs and
big, black eyes. I figured she must have
been attracted by the lei. Her mother
told me she wanted to give me a kiss. I
bent down, we exchanged pecks on the cheek, and I gave her my lei, saying,
“Feliz Navidad.” It was a sweet moment
and left me feeling good all day.
In the afternoon, we were heading for the road to catch a
collectivo to town when Memo pulled alongside and offered us a ride. He let us off at the Walmart shopping center
where we returned the can of bondo we hadn’t used and picked up enough
perishables to hold us until we left.
Scott stopped at a barbershop and got a haircut and much needed
moustache trim. The hose was available
when we got home, so we were able to do dishes but, knowing that we would have
it all day Sunday, I didn’t try to wash the rest of the boat in the dark.
December 28, 2014
With empty water tanks and a dirty boat, our lives had come
to be controlled by our access to the water hose. I got up early to wash the aft section of the
boat before it got too hot. The boat was
very dirty and this took a couple of hours, leaving me dripping with
sweat. I rested and hid from the sun
until after lunch, when I headed back out to scrub the aft deck with teak
cleaner in preparation for oiling the deck.
Oiling could not commence until the teak was good and dry, so I returned
below to wait for the teak to dry. Two
different kinds of wasps were trying to nest behind our headliner and we chased
them off with fly swatters and insect repellent, hoping that our next return to
the boat would not find it swarmed with bees.
Scott and I had both been stung since we arrived.
I had been unable to sleep the night before due to the
heat. I lay down to take a nap and ended
up sleeping all afternoon. By the time I
awoke, it was 17:15 and I barely had time to scrub the foredeck with teak
cleaner before it got too dark to see. I
made dinner, but then I was wide awake.
I went up to the office to use the internet and enjoy the cool air. To do this, I had to douse myself with insect
repellent to keep off the mosquitos and noseeums. During the day, I had to put it on my feet to
keep the ants from biting. While washing
the boat, I had flushed out a three inch long grasshopper. I was starting to feel like I was losing the
battle against the insects.
December 29, 2014
I wanted to run, but got up and started to oil the teak on
the aft deck, instead, before it got hot.
I worked until 11:00 or so and then had to retire inside to cool
off. I did a bit more after lunch and
then finished up in the late afternoon when a breeze came up. It was 94 degrees outside. Scott didn’t start working on the air
conditioner until about 17:00. He was
not morning person enough to do anything before it got hot, so his window of
opportunity to accomplish things was very short. He had managed to contact our parts supplier
and determine that the engine parts would not arrive until January 2, two days
after we had left. Scott got the air
conditioner plumbed and connected the wires, but there was a fault in the
wiring somewhere and it did not work.
Tracing that fault would have to wait.
December 30, 2014
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| Vicious Guard Dog |
At 4:00, I had to make a trip down the ladder and across the
yard to the restroom. The marina had
adopted a dog since we left last May and she did not like me. She was chummy with all the marina employees
and would allow Scott to scratch her head, but she wouldn’t allow me to get
anywhere near her without a growl. It
seemed that she only liked men, which made sense since there were no women
working at the marina. She was a good
guard dog and barked ferociously at me as I crossed the yard. Usually, she just eyed me suspiciously, but
there was another dog present, so she put on a good show.
I spent the morning oiling the teak on the foredeck. We had left a partial gallon of teak oil in a
lazarette when we left the boat earlier in the year. In the blistering heat, it had separated and
formed a solid mass around the bottom and sides. We left it in the sun to melt and shook it
and I was able to recover much of the oil.
The jelly like stuff hovering under the liquid oil actually worked well,
because it was easier to work into the cracks than the liquid. The solid part, however, had turned to rubber
and did not melt in the sun as I had hoped.
Eventually, I had to give up on what remained and open the new can I had
brought with me from Puerto Vallarta.
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| Cruise Ship in at Puerto Chiapas |
In the afternoon, Scott discovered that his flight had been
changed from late afternoon to 11:00 in the morning. He scurried around the boat, packing and stowing
loose sails and lines. I removed the
mosquito netting, hoping to keep it from getting all moldy from the
condensation on the windows. We hoped
that the boat would stay drier with 50 fewer gallons of oily water in the
bilge, but could not be certain how well it would be closed up after the engine
work was completed in our absence. The
air conditioner repair was put on hold until the next visit.
We tried to go to Restaurant Baos for a farewell dinner but,
after we got cleaned up and walked over there, we discovered they were having a
private party. We returned to the boat
and had soggy leftover fried chicken, beans and the remainder of the salad
fixings for dinner. After three weeks of
heat and boredom, we were ready to leave Chiapas. I couldn’t help but feel that, given that we
made zero progress on the engine work, our time would have been better spent in
my pretty apartment in La Cruz.
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