We arrived in Marina Chiapas located on the Mexico-Guatemala border. We didn’t know what to expect but we were surprised to see it’s a clean, modern and very well maintained marina run by a friendly guy named Memo. There is a beautiful open-air waterfront restaurant, store (tortlla’s and beer), and a nice pool with a swim-up bar with very few people around. There appeared be to several open slips. We plan to keep the boat in the water while we prepare it for storm season and then try dry storage for the first time. There are pros and cons to both storing the boat in the water vs. on land in the hot sun. We are on the list to have it hauled out and placed in dry storage.
We’re here in Chiapas now what? Since we have Riley we’ve elected not to proceed South of the Mexican border this year. Requirements for bringing Riley to Central American countries seemed daunting. So we’ll lay the boat up here for the storm season and call it a year. That means we have a lot of work to do before we leave. But first some fun!
Some fellow cruisers arranged a day land tour with tamales, chocolate, pre-Mayan ruins, and shopping on the schedule. We departed early and had a breakfast of different flavors of tamales. The place making the tamales does it entirely from scratch with fresh banana leaves for wrapping. Like everything in Mexico the facility is ‘open air’ and here all the cooking is done over fires right next to the tables. This is a very popular tamale factory and there is a steady stream of customers picking up orders. In the can-do and make-do spirit of Mexico, a very small car pulls up FULL to the roof with fire wood. –The daily delivery!
Next stop was a place called Izapa ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izapa ) Izapa is a pre-Columbian site occupied for thousands of years between 1500 BC to 1200 AD. It includes Mayan ball courts and pyramids and is only partly excavated. There are many obelisks and alters and also small biting ants as we discovered while standing near a striking obelisk (we were standing on top of the ants home)! Planted on the grounds was a rich variety of tropical fruit. Orchids grew on the trees hanging from the branches upside down (which explains why the orchid at home is always attempting to grow down – not up).
After Izapa we explored the culture of chocolate near where it was invented. Cacao trees produce cocoa pods full of seeds, which, when dried, husked and roasted the seeds are ground into a paste on stone slabs (photo above). (HOW did they ever figure this out?!!) From there a special swirling stick is used to foam a mixture of chocolate, vanilla, peanuts and sugar into warm water for a delicious drink. They served us the drink with fresh rolls to dip. We had so much fun on that tour that we arranged a trip to the local volcano (Volcan Tacana – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volc%C3%A1n_Tacan%C3%A1 ) This trip wasn’t so much to the volcano which is over 13000 feet, as up to the villages and coffee plantations on the slopes. We started with a breakfast of seasoned eggs grilled outdoors on banana leaves at a restaurant in the trees on the jungle floor so popular with the locals that there is sometimes a waiting line. We quickly learned bug spray was necessary. The bugs don’t seem to bother the locals for some reason.
We followed a road up the mountainside through miles and miles of coffee farms and visited a colonial coffee plantation founded by German immigrants. We continued up to the town of Union Juarez where we walked out onto huge concrete hands overlooking the Guatemalan border. Still further up we drove along a ridge of the volcano with cliffs covered in jungle on either side. Any further and the road becomes dirt and we would truly have been on the route to the summit of Volcan Tacana! Eventually we had to get back to the boat and get some work done.
We’re working on putting Island Summers away for the season. After experiencing a lightning storm a few nights ago while sailing we decided we don’t want to be in this area during storm season (especially in a sailboat with a tall metal mast that acts as a big lightning rod)! The marina worker who will oversee our boat while we are gone told us he sits in a chair all night long watching the lightning and babysitting the boats (and I’m sure he gets a little shut-eye, too).
It’s always a lot of work to prep the boat for storage and its even a slower process in the hot sun. For our last post of the season we’ll describe what we went through to get our chores done this year.
This is also the time we say goodbye to fellow sailors that are either heading further South towards Panama or leaving their boats here in the marina and heading back home. You meet wonderfrul people that you travel with for a period of time and then you part ways. Unless your paths cross you may never see them again (sad). We all try to do our best to stay in touch with group texts on WhatsApp.
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