January 8, 2017
The carpenters were taking the day off and Scott was staying
off his poor, blistered feet, so I decided to take a day of rest, also. I scrubbed the aft deck in the morning while
it was cool and we still had the hose, but mostly I practiced the guitar and
read. It was hot. The floor was still missing from the main
salon, so we had to climb around the boat like monkeys.
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| The Marina Store |
All the major stores were still closed, so we were making do
with three-year-old dry goods and what we could obtain from the marina
store. I was getting tired of cold beans
on tostadas, so we went to Restaurante Baos for dinner. Scott had arrachera and I had chicken breast
stuffed with plaintains and served with what amounted to barbeque sauce over
rice. Restaurante Baos is a pleasant
location and it was nice to get out of the hot boat for an hour.
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| Scott at Restaurante Baos |
The difference between the rich and the poor is striking
here in Chiapas. The patrons and the
employees of the upscale restaurant were noticeably different racial
types. One couple with a baby had even
brought their nanny along to watch the baby while they ate and shared a bottle
of wine. The patrons were generally so
light skinned that we were not immediately pegged as foreigners. It was easy to understand the frustration
that led to the recent looting while sitting in that restaurant. We were definitely dining with the 1%.
January 9, 2017
I got up at 7:00 and spent the morning practicing the guitar
before the carpenters arrived. They were
supposed to come at 9:00, but didn’t arrive until about 10:30. I had plenty of time to chat with my Canadian
friend, Greg, who has both a house and a boat here and a Chilean woman we met
who was looking for an electrician for her boat.
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| Mostly Completed New Floor |
Once the carpenters arrived, I was tied to the boat in case
translation was required, so I spent most of the day restitching the canvas
covers. When my back could take it no
more, I shifted to working on my blog.
It was a long day. Since it was
so difficult to get to the galley with no floor in the main salon, we hadn’t
eaten lunch since we arrived in Chiapas.
The carpenters worked until after 7:30 and we didn’t feel it would be
right to eat when we were keeping them from their dinners. We were pretty ravenous by the time they
finally left.
The floor was finished, though, and looked pretty good
considering it wasn’t made with any of the materials we would have used at
home. It had taken the carpenters at
least a day longer than they had anticipated and, since they did such a nice
job, I paid them for their extra time.
Removing (at least as much work as building) and rebuilding the entire
salon floor and support structure, including a removable floor and sound
deadening subfloor had taken three days.
It cost us 9,000 pesos or about $450, materials included. Anyone needing a carpenter in Marina Chiapas
should definitely look up Santiago Gutierrez.
We were still on short rations, so I had intended to make
rice with hot dogs and stewed tomatoes, but the tomatoes had gone bad, as had
all the sauces aboard. I then decided to
make Kraft macaroni and cheese, but that (use by date of 12/06!) had gone off,
too. That neon orange cheese does not
actually last forever. Our powdered milk
had all turned a strange, brown color, too.
The best I could rustle up was ten-year-old macaroni with hot dogs and
some diced tomatoes from a tetrapak with herbs and spices. It was dull, but filling. By the time we finished dinner, even I was
ready for bed.
January 10, 2017
When I went up to the showers about 7:00, our mechanic was
already at the marina, although he didn’t arrive at the boat until after
8:00. We had hoped he would be done
quickly and we could head into Tapachula to scrounge for food, but that was not
in the cards.
With minor modifications, the “U” that the machinists made
for us worked fine and I breathed a sigh of relief. Getting the engine to start was another issue
altogether. Neither of our battery
chargers were working properly and the solar panels were disconnected. As a result, our one good battery was
low. Poor Marvin tried everything. He borrowed a good charger and brought
another battery. After charging our one
massive 8D and linking it in series with his truck battery and connecting the
solar panels directly to the battery, we finally got juice, but the engine
didn’t start. He worked, without
success, until the sun went down and we lost the solar. We were getting concerned because he was
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| fool's Castle on the Hard in Chiapas |
While we were waiting for Marvin to fix the engine, Abel, a
young man who does canvas work, came to see us about a cover for our
hatch. Fool’s Castle did not have a
dodger, so the hatch was out in the elements and it had leaked badly since what
we called the “soft hatch” was removed to facilitate removing and replacing the
engine. It was this leak that had caused
the floor to rot out and we wanted to correct the problem before our new floor
got damaged. After discussing various
options with Abel, we settled on a cover that would go from the eyebrow ridge
behind the hatch, side to side and down to the lower edge of the hatch. Abel suggested that we use waterproof
material, rather than sunbrella. He said
he could make the cover for 1800 pesos, which was ridiculously cheap. We agreed to go for it, figuring that it
would be worth the price (about $90) if it worked at all. He promised to come back the next afternoon
to do a fitting.
Once again, we had gone all day without eating and were
ravenous by the time Marvin left. We
still had no groceries, so we ate the remainder of the bland pasta from the
night before.
January 11, 2017
I got up at 7:00 so as to be able to clean the main salon
before Marvin arrived and took the floor out again. I managed to get one side done, but it was
pretty awful. Many of the things left
sitting on the console had disintegrated after sitting in the sun for two
years.
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| The Mildew Was Worst Around the Windows |
Our new battery had charged overnight, but Marvin still
couldn’t start the engine right away. He
worked and worked on the engine, but couldn’t get it to start. Finally, he called a friend who came to look
at it after work. He agreed with Scott
that it seemed to be the timing of the injection pump. Marvin promised to come back in the morning
to fix it. He was postponing his to fix our engine.
Abel had stopped by earlier in the afternoon to take more
measurements for our hatch cover.
At the marina, preparations were underway for a massive
wedding that was to happen on the following Saturday. The daughter of one of the marina owners was
getting married. The yard hands were
busy moving all of the boats to one side of the yard so that they could park
cars on the other side. A dance floor
was constructed on the launch ramp. We
would have to clear out for a few nights, since we weren’t technically allowed
to live aboard in the yard.
January 12, 2107
Marvin was supposed to arrive at 8:00 and I got up early to
clean the other half of the main salon before he arrived. He didn’t arrive until 10:00, but I still
hadn’t finished cleaning because the trim around the reflective sunshades over
the windows had turned to a fine black powder that went everywhere when I
touched it. The woodwork behind the
shades was black with mildew which had eaten through the varnish and stained
the wood.
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| Some of the Worst Mildew |
Once again, Marvin spent all day disassembling and
reassembling the injector pump. We were
trapped in the aft cabin where Scott mostly snoozed while I worked on
restitching the canvas. Scott did manage
to rig his fancy new three-stage anti-germicidal water filter and fill both of
our tanks, which we had emptied the previous day. He used power from the solar panels to run
the UV light in the filter. By the end
of the day, Marvin was all but done with the pump, but was lacking some seals
for the fuel lines. He agreed to come
back the next morning. We packed a few
days’ clothing into tote bags and took a collective back into Tapachula where
we moved back into the Hotel Cervantino.
The hotel staff was happy to see us again.
We were happy to have air conditioning again. We bought some beer and ice at the Modelo
store. All of the neighboring OXXOs had
been looted and remained closed, but the Modelo stores were all back in
operation. After relaxing for an hour
with cold beer in our cool room, we went to Taco Tinos for dinner. This time, they were happy to serve us and we
got seven tacos and two sodas for 96 pesos (<$5.) We went to bed fairly early, but I had a
devil of a time getting to sleep on the hard bed. The boat was hot, but the mattress was
comfortable.
January 13, 2017
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| Flowers for the Wedding |
We had breakfast at La Dulcinea and headed out to the boat,
arriving about 10:00. Marvin was already
working on the engine. Wedding
preparations were in full swing.
Truckloads of chairs and tables had been delivered and the workers had
removed a section of the fence and curb around the yard so that the wedding
guests could drive straight in (and avoid the really bad pavement near the
actual entrance.) By the end of the day,
they had even striped the yard like a parking lot. The florists had set up shop between the
office and the restrooms and were arranging truckloads of flowers, which had to
be stored in the office because it was the only place with air conditioning.
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| A Section of the Fence Was Removed |
Marvin finally got the engine running about 11:00 and it
sounded heavenly! Of course, we
wouldn’t be able to put the boat in the water until the wedding paraphernalia
was removed from the launch ramp, but we still had to fix the steering, anyway.
I had spent the morning reading the local newspaper because
I was fascinated by the coverage of the local unrest over gas prices, which
echoed the issues that had sparked the rebellion in Chiapas earlier in the
century. I was also interested in what
they had to say about Trump’s promise to build a wall and make them pay for it. The Mexican government appeared calm, but
determined not to be disrespected and without any intention of paying for a
wall. It was refreshing to read
objective journalism for a change. I
spent most of the afternoon working on restitching the canvas. We were waiting for Santiago to come by to
give us a bid on a few more small carpentry projects and hoping that Abel would
come back with the hatch cover. Santiago
came and went and we waited for Abel until 5:00, but he never showed. Then we grabbed a collective back to
Tapachula.
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| Dining at Huacol |
After refreshing ourselves at the hotel, we walked over to
the big plaza known as El Parque and had dinner at a café on the square. It was a beautiful evening and lots of people
were out. Clowns were putting on a show in the amphitheater. We explored the 6 th
Avenue shopping area a bit after dinner before returning to the hotel. All seemed pretty calm and normal, although
there was a large police presence and we did hear some strange, loud noises
after we returned to the hotel. Scott
retired early, but I stayed up to work on my blog while I had good wifi.
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| Vendor in El Parque |
January 14, 2017
We hadn’t planned on going to the marina on Saturday because
of the 700 guest wedding that was taking place there, but our carpenter needed
the broken window screen frames to use as patterns and wanted a deposit for the
materials for the jobs we had hired him to do. Eight AM found us at La Dulcinea
where we met an interesting family who gave us some insight into the
immigration problems some people were facing.
There were an Italian Canadian man and his Cuban fiancée with her
younger brother. The couple had not
gotten married in Cuba because getting married there involved paying expensive
fees. The woman and her brother had
flown to Guyana, the only place Cubans could fly, and spent nearly two months
making the perilous journey overland from Guyana to Chiapas. Two days before, Obama, in the name of
normalizing relations with Cuba, had retracted the policy of giving Cubans
automatic asylum. The poor woman was
stuck in Mexico. She could no longer get
into the USA and couldn’t get into Canada because she was not yet married to
the Canadian.
Mexico accepts Central American refugees, but requires them
to spend their first year in Chiapas. If they stay out of trouble, they can
then move freely through Mexico. Hearing
this explained to me why the citizens of Chiapas were so upset with the
government over Central American immigration.
They must have felt like the government had dumped all these desperate
people in their already poor state where they were depressing wages. It was like the US government had decided to
send all the Syrian refugees to Arkansas.
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| Collectivo Stop in Tapachula |
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| Riding in a Collectivo |
Pondering this, we took a collectivo to the marina to meet
Santiago. The marina was crawling with
workers, busily arranging flowers and decorating the entire marina with potted
plants and lighted trees for the wedding.
Small sailboats with their sails hoisted were anchored in the turning
basin as decorations. It was a spectacle
of excess which served to highlight the disparity between rich and poor in
Chiapas.
We met with Santiago and then spent a couple of hours hoping
that Abel would turn up with our hatch cover.
I cleaned up the last of the debris from the engine repair and practiced
the guitar while Scott took a nap.
We headed out about 1:00 and took a crowded collectivo (the
first one that passed was full and that is saying a lot when we have seen as
many as 23 people stuffed in) to Home Depot to buy varnishing supplies,
hydraulic fluid, and fasteners to replace the soft hatch. Our errands completed, we returned to the
hotel and relaxed for the remainder of the afternoon. I ducked out to go to the music store to buy
a guitar case and some strings. The
strings cost about the same as at home, but the case I got for about $11 was
very similar to the one I had tried to buy (and fortunately failed) for $60
before we left home.
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| Launch Ramp Being Transformed to Wedding Site |
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| Lasers as Decorations |
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| Procession |
As darkness fell, we left the hotel to go to dinner. There was a religious procession filling 6th
avenue, which was preceded by people throwing firecrackers. Everything was peaceful, but many shops
displayed signs saying, “Exigimos seguridad,” or, “We demand security.” Most stores had repaired their damage and
reopened, but many of the OXXOs remained boarded up and closed. We wondered if they were anticipating more
chaos.
We returned to El Parque and ate dinner at a different
restaurant called Rancho Grill. Scott
had steak and I had chilaquiles with carne asada for 69 pesos (<$3.50.) It was another beautiful, warm evening and we
took a turn around the park to look at the fountains before walking home.
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