Some Serious Good Luck

We had some serious good luck on Tuesday.  Here is what happened.  We had made plans to take a bus ride to Zacatecaluca, a small town near here that I have mentioned before.  There are several reasons for going to Zacatecaluca, which is an hour long bus ride, more or less.  You usually have to change buses, and the second bus is always full, so you spend at least one third to one half of the ride standing up, crammed against other people.  There is a direct bus (no need to change buses),  but it actually takes longet because it stops more places.  Anyway, sometimes we go to Zacatecaluca to do some grocery shopping, and we then take a $30 cab home instead of taking the bus.  The other reason to go is to go to the post office.  It is a hassle and an all day affair.  There are no bars there, nor any decent restaurants we have been able to locate, and so we don't go there very often, usually saving up all errands for a trip to San Salvador every two weeks in an $80 dollar cab for all day going here and there.

When mail is sent to me here it is sent care of the hotel I am anchored near.  it is part of what I pay the hotel $14 per week for - use of the facilities, laundry services, food and beer discounts, and the ability to recieve mail at that address.  The only mail that is actually delivered to the hotel, however, are letters and very small packages, like those padded mailing envelopes.  That is because the guy who picks up and delivers the mail for the hotel and the surrpunding area only has a motorcyle, and can't carry packages.  So if a package is sent here, it is left at the PO in Zacatecluca.  They send a notice to the hotel, and then you bring the notice in and claim your mail. paying a small handling fee.  That assumes, of course, that the package does not end up going through customs, whose procedures I already described in another post.

So anyway, we decided to go to the PO because we had some stuff we needed to send by regular mail that could not be handled by email.  We also figured we'd do some light provisioning - not much because as soon as the cameras came in, we were going to Guatemala  as soon as they arrived and they were due any day.  So no need to stock up on food.   When we left the hotel we asked if there were any notices for us from customs or the PO, but they told us no.

When we got to the PO, the clerk recognized us, and told us that coincidentally, we had some mail and the notification slip was on its way to the hotel that very day!  I was expecting a padded mailer full of letters and stuff that I had asked my mail drop to forward to me separtely from the cameras they were also forwarding.  I didnt want all my other mail needlessly hung up in customs with the cameras.  I was really happy that we had made the trip - and even happier when we discovered it was not a padded mailer after all, rather, it was a box containing all the cameras and the other mail.  Since there was a bill of lading with the value of all the camera stuff clearly posted on the box, I am amazed it did not go through customs.  It just goes to show how arbitrary things can be.  The total of this shipment was over $700, and we had to pay duty on a shipment worth only $200.   But I am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when it saves me both time and money.  No trip to customs for hours on end and no duty charges.

We hurried home, did not bother with groceries, bought a nice new backpack and decided to leave for Guatemala on Thursday (today).  As you can see, we haven't gone anywhere.  That is because plans have changed again.

There is a guy here who is taking his boat back north to the US.  Mike and I are going to go with him as far as Chiapas, a sail of about two days under normal conditions.  He has become a good friend, and has no crew as the plans he made fell through.  So he was going to single hand it, and may have to do that after we leave in Chiapas.  Anyway, it sounded like a fun thing to do, and means we can revisit San Cristobal de las Casas in the state of Chiapas (a place we loved), and take Mike over to Yucatan and Quintana Roo to see Chichen Itza, Tulum, and some other ruins.  We 'll head from Mexico to Belize, then Belize to Guatemala.  So I think it is all sort of perfect for everyone involved.  It will be good for us to get some experience sailing a different boat, and we have to leave the country by mid October anyway because our visas will run out and we have already had the one-time-in-country-renewal.  The visa we get here is good for 90 days at a stretch and works in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras.  When we enter Guatemala from Belize, we get to start all over again.

I know my passport number by heart now, just like my social security number or my driver's license number.

So that is it for now.  Our friend (Jason) wants to leave here between the 4th and 6th of October, so we'll see what happens.

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” (Sylvia Plath)