El Dia de los Muertos

The Day of the Dead is celebrated on November 2. It is a really major holiday here in Mexico, complete with decorations, as shown above. Graves are decorated and some families bring food to the cemetery to share a meal with deceased family members, as in Costa Rica where all burial plots are above ground. The cemetery shown above was in readiness for El Dia de los Muertos when we left. In El Salvador, Alice found special bread in the bakery to commemorate the day (see El Salvador 2 slideshow). One government office we were in had a display of photos of dead relatives, flowers, food, and candles. Roadside memorials were decked out with orange and black Halloween decorations, too!

Guatemala did not want to be forgotten!

We had spent time in Guatemala in January and about went broke in the process, so we knew we had no plans to stop in transit unless we had an emergency, just thought we would enjoy the volcano landscape as we cruised by. However, the Guatemalan Navy decided they would stop us! We left El Salvador at 1 PM on October 31. The next morning we noticed a fair-sized Navy ship approaching from the west. They moved past us and then launched a small craft replete with men in full combat gear and black masks, toting automatic weapons, which pulled up beside us. Bill stepped out and spoke to them in English. It was apparent they wanted to board us, so we waited while they manuevered to allow one man to jump onto our swim step (above). Lt. Cordoba, a handsome young man who was fluent in English, examined our papers and spoke to us briefly about the reason why they stop boats- drugs, of course. He did not really inspect the boat, our honest faces allaying any fears that we were drugrunners!! Just another one of those 'interesting experiences' that have contributed to our adventure...

Back to Bahia del Sol~ One Last Visit in El Salvador

As it turned out, the hardest place to enter was the one place we wanted to revisit! The breaking bar outside of the estuary where Marina Bahia del Sol is located was calm the morning we were escorted safely in (above). Our number one priority was to pick up some tourist brochures and other supplies for our friends Bill and Jean who are busy promoting tourism to El Salvador. They will be coordinating a boat rally south from Puerto Vallarta next spring. Two big boxes later we had accomplished that task. We enjoyed visiting with local gringos we had met in January, among them Jan Turner, a Canadian who has built her home on Isla Cordoncillo, near the marina. Alice brought her a shoebox of school supplies for her English/Computer classes she teaches the island youngsters. She also hustled and made three new baby quilts for Jan to give to families in need (above).

We also contacted Elizabeth Scoville (sister-in-law to a friend of Alice's in Indio) and her family in the capital city. We enjoyed getting to know them in January and wanted to invite them to the boat. Her husband was working in the U.S., but she came with her mother, son and daughter. Bill took them out for a cool dinghy ride- above. After dinner, Alice rode back to San Salvador with them. We went shopping the next day and ate a delicious lunch mom Dora had prepared. Then we all rode the 1 1/2 hours back to the boat, after which they went to the beach. They even came down one more time before we left~ dear, dear people!

The day of our departure the bar was NOT nice to us, greeting us with a few 6-8 foot waves that made it feel like we were 'surfing the big ones'. Just one week after we left a terrible Pacific storm inundated tiny El Salvador, causing massive mudslides and flooding which took the lives of some 200 people...