We can't take it any more!

Paradise Fishing Lodge, El Salvador

It is really hot!  It is really humid!  This just isn't much fun any more!

Living on a boat in this heat and humidity, with no air conditioning and not much of anything around, is taking its toll.  Susanne has found a flight for tomorrow (Monday) that will take us back to the land of ice and snow, so we will be back in Edmonton before you know it.

Due to the shortness of our stay on the boat, we have been forced to try and eat everything on board.  Coupled with the extreme lack of interest in physical activity (due to the aforementioned heat and humidity) we are turning into classic couch potatoes - not a good thing.

We have tried to get out a bit, enjoying a couple of short walks out of the marina and down the road, taking in the languid pace of life led by the locals.  We try and do this very early in the morning before the sun starts beating down mercilessly.  We thought this was supposed to be the "rainy" season here, but so far we have only seen a couple of short-lived storms - in the late evening - the rest of the time it is mostly blue skies and sunshine.  There is some breeze occasionally but even this is not very refreshing.  I guess this is the price you pay for staying in an estuary, with the sea breezes blocked by the peninsula.

Yesterday (Saturday) we made a quick trip into Zacatecoluca to make a last-minute purchase of some cockroach-killing products.  Susanne made the disturbing find of one of these charming creatures a couple of days ago, and promptly dispatched it to its maker.  In spite of my assurances to her that it was probably a one-off, solo, bachelor kind of cockroach, she is not completely convinced.

The ride on the chicken bus in and out of Zacate (about 1-1/2 hours each way) was a nice way to remind ourselves of what we really love about life here in El Salvador.  They always just seem to know how to enjoy themselves and are always so very friendly to us.  While in Zacate, we were able to walk around a bit and see some of the town that we somehow missed when we were here a couple of months ago, and took the opportunity to have a last lunch of Pupusas (3 for a dollar - hard to beat the price).

These buses always instill confidence.

Before

After

Back on the boat, we are frantically packing and trying to think of anything we have to do to the boat before leaving it for an extended amount of time.  Fortunately we had done most everything before our last departure and the tasks were small - taking down our Canadian flag, topping up the water in the batteries, running the engine, etc. etc.  One small job that I had left was cleaning up the triducer (a thru-hull depth, temperature and speed log transducer).  I had pulled this out of its hole before we left the boat last time but had not actually cleaned all the crap out of it yet - it is hard to believe just how fast stuff grows on anything below the water line.  As for the rest of the bottom, we have arranged for the marina staff here to keep it cleaned off while we are away, so hopefully it will be all good to go whenever we get back.

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