Perspective and perseverance

Estero Jaltepeque, El Salvador

Since we are semi-permanently stuck here in El Salvador, and nothing was about to happen re visas during the weekend, there was only one thing we could do...

Road Trip!

With our old friends Bill and Jean and our new friends Jeff and Judy (another cruising couple), we rented a mini-van and did a whirl-wind trip to the far NE corner of the country, to a town called Perquin.  We stayed overnight at a cool hotel called Perkin Lenca, the brainchild of a former aid worker from the USA who was here during the bloody civil war in the 80s.

San Miguel (Chaparrastique) volcano.
This is the one that covered our boat in ash a few weeks ago.

In the evening, we were treated to an impressive vertical rainbow, with the pot of gold firmly entrenched in Honduras.

One of the main sites to see in this area is the hill village of El Mozote.  On December 11, 1981, government soldiers terrorized and executed all of the residents; men, women and at least 131 children, as suspected supporters of the local guerrillas.  There is a memorial wall with plaques with the names of those who had died and a rose garden planted over the collective grave of the massacred children.  Hearing one of the local women describe the events that took place does tend to make our troubles seem petty in comparison.

At the town of Perquin we visited the Museo de la Revolucion Salvadorena, which charts the causes and progress of the armed struggle, primarily through pictures taken during the war.  It is a somber, stirring place to visit.

On the drive back to Bahia, we ran into a progression of vehicles travelling to a political rally.  The election is scheduled for February 2nd.

As for our petty problem with petty bureaucrats, on Monday we called once again to find out the status of our visa extension - they still had no idea how much longer it would take.  After some discussion, it became apparent that the latest holdup seems to be with our request for the maximum 90-day extension.  When we explained that we did not need the full 90-days any more, since our engine problem has been rectified, they perked right up.  They said they could have our passports ready as soon as the next day or the day after - they assured us they would call when they were ready.

With renewed hope for seeing our long-lost passports, we did a major re-provisioning run into San Salvador with Jean and couple of other cruisers on Wednesday (Jean still had the rental van we had used for our weekend trip).  We hit all of the high points, Vidri (hardware store), Fruend (another hardware store), Galarias mall (for the Claro phone kiosk), Super Selectos (grocery store) and finally PriceSmart (think Costco).  We had a long drawn-out lunch at a new "Hawaiian" restaurant.  We got back to Bahia del Sol after dark and proceeded to haul our booty back to the boat in our overloaded dinghy - we had not even thought to turn on the anchor light as we had no idea it would be such a long day.

Then a miracle happened!  Yesterday (Thursday) we received a call from immigration saying that our passports were ready for pickup.  Once again, we conscripted Jean to drive us the hour and a half to San Salvador, where our passports, complete with brand new visa extensions, were waiting for us.  They gave us 60 days, of which over 3 weeks have already gone by.  We are now legal again!

Now comes the tough question of when we actually get out of here.  The delays have now put us into the peak of the Papagayo gap wind season, which is what we hoping to avoid.  In order to postpone any decision, we are going to a "Superbowl" party at Lou and Lynn's on Sunday - being the huge football fans that we are (not), we couldn't possibly miss it.

{GMST}13|18.396|N|88|54.0948|W|Estuary Mooring, El Salvador|Estuary Mooring, El Salvador{GEND}
{GMST}13|57.21|N|88|9.399|W|Perquin, El Salvador|Perquin, El Salvador{GEND}

Selected, Inspected and Neglected

Estero Jaltepeque, El Salvador

Yesterday, Wednesday,  we got a bit of a surprise - a call, via VHF, from the manager of the resort to tell us that two gentlemen were here from immigration, eager to talk to us.  What, we wondered, could this possibly mean?

We launched the dinghy and motored quickly over to the marina, where we had a long meeting with the immigration officials, doing an "investigation" into our case.  After taking copious notes, they insisted that they had to see the boat and the alleged broken part, along with an invoice for its replacement.  As luck would have it, we were experiencing some unusually strong winds in the estuary at this moment.  Undaunted, I loaded them into our tiny dinghy for the wet and wild ride to Sine Timore (Susanne wisely stayed high and dry at the resort's bar).  These guys were extremely excited with the trip up the estuary and were constantly taking pictures and videos with their cameras - I don't think they knew such a great place existed in their country.

Once on the boat, they took pictures of the old water pump (fortunately I had not yet thrown it out) and the invoice for the new pump, then spent the rest of the time posing for pictures on the bowsprit.  All in all, they were very nice about the whole thing, but this whole affair is getting a little silly now.

After we made the return trip to the marina, they had us sign the lengthy forms they had been filling out, and took our pictures, with the boats in the marina as a backdrop.  They assured us that all of this is just normal procedure for a tourist visa extension and that we should be able to pick up our passports about 3 working days after they submit their paperwork tomorrow (on Thursday).  This would mean the earliest we will see our passports will be next Monday.  The resort manager has assured us that he will call them to make sure they are ready before we bother making the trip into the city.

As regards the weather, we have been experiencing some brisk mid-day winds here in the estuary for the last few days, just the edge of the infamous Papagayo winds that are blowing further south, over Lake Nicaragua, this time of year.  These winds are the next big challenge for us along this coast and right now, they seem to be blowing quite strong every day.

Maybe our being delayed here is not the worst thing that could be happening to us right now.

Passports? We don't need no stinking passports!

Estero Jaltepeque, El Salvador

The 2nd deadline for the return of our passports, with the tourist visa extensions, has come and gone.  This time we got smart.  Instead of travelling into San Salvador to the immigration office, at great trouble and expense, we had the manger of the Bahia del Sol resort check on their status via phone.  Sure enough, in spite of the hope of getting them last week, and the worst-case delivery date promised as of today (Jan 21, 2014), they are not yet ready.  They are really busy, so they say, and they might be ready this week.  You have really got to love governments in action!

Meanwhile, we have been watching an increasing number of boats coming and going from the estuary.  The marina has been very busy - unusual for this time of year I think.  Most of our friends have now moved on to points further south, leaving us to hope that someday we will catch up with them again.

Our friends David and Caroline on Aztec leaving us behind

That boat on the left is a Mason 44, sort of a big brother to Sine Timore

In spite of the fact that we really like it here, we are really ready to make our exit.  With that in mind, we have been slowly getting the boat ready as well.  One of the biggest challenges seems to be in finding safe places to stow everything where it will not all end up on the floor as soon as we hit the open water again.

On the weekend, we had a bit of break from the monotony of endless perfect summer days.  All of the cruisers currently here in the estuary gathered at Lou and Lynn's house for some NFL playoff games on Sunday.  American football is not really a passion of ours, but any excuse for a party is always welcome.

On the boat maintenance front, most things appear to be under control.  The batteries are working well and the little bit that I have run the engine, the new water pump appears to be happy.  I did an oil and filter change and lubricated and adjusted the throttle and gearshift connections - it is as ready as it will ever be. The outboard motor started acting up this week, stalling and sputtering a lot, so I did my standard service routine on it.  With my 50/50 record of success with this motor, it was a bit of a risk, but everything worked OK this time.

One of the problems with delaying our exit is our provisioning.  When we were in town to supposedly pick up our visas, we took the opportunity to buy most everything we thought we would need for the upcoming passages.  Of course, now that we have sat here for a couple more weeks, we have been using up our supplies and will have to do it all over again before we leave.  Not the end of the world - just an observation.

As you can tell from these random thoughts, not much exciting is happening for us right now.  Maybe next week?

Realities of cruising

Estero Jaltepeque, El Salvador

New Years has come and gone and things were just going too well to last.

For New Years eve, we had some company over to the boat in the evening, then stayed up really late to watch the fireworks along the estuary.  A very spectacular display, with every hotel and resort and quite a few of the private residences trying to outdo each other with pyrotechnics.  There were some sort of fireworks going off continuously from about 6 PM until 2 AM, with a concentrated effort from about 15 minutes to midnight until 15 minutes after - at that point there were at least a dozen venues simultaneously competing for our attention.  We just sat on the deck of the boat and took it all in - no point in going to bed with all of the noise all around anyway.

Bird on a wire?

A couple of days later, it was time to tackle the water pump issue on our engine.  We took our dinghy up the estuary to Paradise Fishing Lodge, where we had kept the boat last summer.  We lucked out and John (the owner) and his wife were in residence.  With their help (they have a diesel repair business in Delaware) we were able to order a new water pump and anticipated delivery within a couple of days - they had someone coming down with other parts so they just added ours to the list.  Everything was looking up at this point.

Unfortunately, the east coast of the USA was hit with some severe winter weather about then.  This resulted in flight cancellations and delays that meant our part was not going to arrive as quickly as we had anticipated.  Based on this information, and the fact that our 90-day tourist visas were about to expire, we decided that we were not likely to be able to leave while these visas were still valid - this can cause quite an issue when trying to check out of the country.  So, we elected to apply for a 90-day visa extension.

To renew a visa, without leaving the country, requires a passport, a letter explaining why we want to stay (engine problems on the boat) endorsed by some trusted local person (the manager at the Bahia del Sol resort), delivered in person to the immigration office in San Salvador, along with a 3-page visa application form filled in for each person.  Assisted by our friends Bill and Jean, we travelled to San Salvador and handed in our applications.  Of course, they wanted more information, namely our boat registration to prove we had a boat and bank statements to prove we were solvent.  We returned to the estuary and, via the internet, gathered the required info, along with anything else we could think of, and returned to the office the next day.  This time, they accepted the application and gave us a date and time, two days later (3:30 PM on Friday the 10th of January) to return and retrieve our passports with the new visas.  We returned on the Friday, arriving at the office at about 3PM and were told we had to wait until 3:30 - we were OK with that.  At about 3:40, a very nice lady who spoke very good English, came and told us that the applications were being "processed" and would likely be ready next week sometime.  They gave us a temporary card which said we could pick up our passports on the 21st of the month.  Needless to say we were somewhat disappointed.

Meanwhile, sitting on a mooring in the estuary has proven to us that our house batteries are really not any good any more.  I have been swapping out batteries until we were down to only 2 that were holding any amount of charge.  Since we had to travel in and out of San Salvador for the visas, we took the opportunity to buy some very reasonably priced replacements.  With this in mind, the rental vehicle that Bill and Jean got was a roomy van.  In addition, we used the frequent trips into the city to do some serious re-provisioning, plus another trip to the nearby town of La Libertad to visit the local fish market.

 

On the same Friday, 10th of January, that we made our last trip into San Salvador, our new water pump arrived and we were able to pick it up on the way.  Things were looking up again.

This weekend, I spent the majority of my time swapping out the water pump.  This turned out to be a much more difficult job than I anticipated, primarily due to recalcitrant frozen bolts and one embarrassing session of looking for close to 3 hours for a unique nut that I dropped into the bilge.  As of yesterday, the new water pump is installed and I ran the engine for more than an hour without any apparent leaks.

New pump in place and all plumbing reconnected

So, at this point in time, the boat is fully functional again and we could leave any time except that now we have no passports, so we can't leave the country.  Yesterday, Sunday, was the day our visas were to expire, so it was a smart move to get them extended, but sitting here watching our friends getting ready to leave, it is frustrating to just sit here unable to even say when we could get underway.

On the plus side, we are sitting in a place that is as close to paradise as we could ever imagine, and if we wanted, we could now stay legally for another 3 months.

{GMST}13|18.396|N|88|54.0948|W|Estuary Mooring, El Salvador|Estuary Mooring, El Salvador{GEND}