Thursday, January 24, 2008

Maybe today…

It’s been a frustrating week of trying to get things through Guatemalan customs and to the boat. Apparently it does no good to mark parcels “yacht in transit” here. We got stuck in customs. The smaller package of forwarded mail (including our Panama courtesy flag and a prescription) was ransomed and delivered on Tuesday. Despite having paid the customs and storage for the transmission, DHL still doesn’t know if they will be able to deliver it today. As it turns out, going to the city to pick up the package wouldn’t have worked for DHL because it’s addressed to the marina. Dayana of the marina office is helping us with this, but she’s having trouble too. Now DHL says they “hope” they will be able to deliver it this afternoon.

Meanwhile, the mechanic is standing by and I’ve alerted the agent (the guy who will help us clear out of the country) that we hope to leave Sunday. And I’ve put more money in the checking account because it looks like we’ll need it.

In all my free time, I’m studying Spanish--not that I’ll ever know enough to deal with local customs in a place like this—and planning our Caribbean routes. I’m also trying to find a place for us to stay in Panama while we have the boat out of the water. I’ve discovered that I can connect to the Internet if I take my laptop up into the cockpit. (My Hawkings antenna broke.) It’s fairly comfortable with the breeze here as long as I can stay out of the sun. I heard from KetelUp that they met a lot of Baja Ha-Ha boats at Marina Chahué, so maybe we’ll get some cruiser company here before we leave.

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