A place in the sun

Estero Jaltepeque, El Salvador

Well, we made it safely back down the estuary to our current location, here on a mooring in Bill and Jean's new mooring field, not far from Bahia del Sol.  After a few moments of panic, the short 3-mile trip was uneventful - we went at high-tide this time and never saw a depth less than 9 feet.  The problem of the day this time was a slipping belt on the alternator.  Even though I had run the engine up to speed as a test shortly after we arrived back in the marina, this problem did not decide to appear until we were ready to leave the dock.  Fortunately I am getting really experienced at the contortions required to loosen and adjust the alternator - a direct result of our previous alternator failure back in Z-town on the way down from Mexico last winter.  In a matter of minutes, I had the belts tightened and we were on our way.  An hour later, we were safely tied up to a lovely, new, very substantial looking, mooring.

This is a great location for us, far enough from the busy resort to be nice and quiet, yet close enough to make it a short dinghy ride if we want to join in the party.  So far, we have been pretty busy since the move.  The day we arrived, we spent the afternoon and evening at an impromptu gathering at the resort, with about a dozen other cruisers - it was interesting to hear about everyone's experiences in getting here and their plans for where they are going when they leave.

The only problem with this location is that we cannot pick up any free Wifi Internet here, so I was forced to find out how to enable our Claro Internet stick instead.  After finding out the secret code (email 4777 with a text message of "30"), we are online from the boat again.  Note: We do have the option of taking the dinghy to the resort to use their Internet if necessary and we have done so, usually in conjunction with having lunch at the restaurant, but this is much more convenient.

 On Saturday, Susanne joined a couple of other ladies for a trip into the nearby town of La Herradura, to visit the cemetery where the "Day of the Dead" celebrations were underway.  Lots of painting of tombstones, complete with a local band for entertainment.

On Sunday, our hosts Bill and Jean took us on a trip up the estuary, past our former home at Paradise marina, to meet a very nice American couple who have made their home here, in a very nice, upscale home on the peninsula side of the estuary.  They have a really nice pool, in which we lazed away the afternoon - I can see how you could get used to life here.

Bill and Jean also live here now.  Their home is on the island side of the estuary and is a little more primitive (there are no public utilities on the island), although their lifestyle does not to seem to suffer any as a result.  Since we left here last June, they have completed a lot of the work on their home, and added the mooring field (currently has 6 moorings) where we now reside.  Bill has lots of plans for further expansion in the future.

Studying charts and entering waypoints

Studying Spanish

Right now, we are trying to decide how much longer we should stay here.  The weather does seem to be moderating some - we have had no rain now for over two days.  Temperatures at night are getting down as low as 25 degrees and it does not seem quite as hot and humid during the day as before.  Could this mean that the rainy (and lightning and thunder) season is coming to an end?  One of the other sailboats left yesterday and another is leaving today, both heading in the same direction we will be going.  It will be interesting to see what they encounter as they head south.  They will be keeping in touch via the Pan-Pacific radio net in the mornings.  At present we are still hoping to see a bit more of El Salvador before we leave, and there is really no reason to hurry as far as I can see.  We are hoping that later this week we can rent a car and have Bill and Jean show us some of their favorite places.  This week is a big deal at the resort - a major fishing derby is underway so there is lots of activity with sport fishing boats coming and going and some serious partying in the evenings; or so we have been told - we have been keeping a low profile, staying mostly on the boat during the day, working on the endless list of boat-maintenance items.

Today, I am running our Honda generator for a while, partly to top up our batteries after a couple of partially cloudy days limiting our solar input, but mostly just to use up the old gas that was in it, to try and avoid the same kind of issues we had with the outboard.  So far, it has been running for over an hour and a half on what I thought was about a thimble-full of gas - these things are really efficient on fuel - a much better solution for charging batteries than running our fuel-guzzling diesel engine.


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