We are fine here on the Rio Dulce

Just checking in to say that Soggy Paws and all the other boats here on the Rio are doing fine.

For the most part, the weather here is same-o same-o... some rain overnight and hardly any wind. It was a little cooler than normal out early this morning.

You guys with TV's probably know more about what's happening in Mexico and Belize than we do. We don't get the Weather Channel on the marina's satellite TV and the only CNN channel we get is CNN Asia, which frankly doesn't give a rats ass about a hurricane in Mexico. It finally made a little news last night... coverage was about 5 minutes at the top of the hour.

Our friends on Memory Rose are back from the States finally, so we have planned an inland expedition with them to the Guatemalan Highlands. We leave on Thursday.

I have to confess that we've opted NOT to take the 'chicken bus'. I don't mind the chickens, but the Guatemalan practice of cramming twice as many people on the bus as will fit, and stopping for anyone who waves the bus down, and driving like maniacs, makes the normally 5 hour trip into a 7 hour nightmare. We bought reserved seats on the 'gringo bus'... an air conditioned express bus. Dave booked us early so we have the front row seats, so we can see something as we travel the route. The gringo
bus from here to Guat City only cost $6.50, and then another $5.25 to go on to Antigua on a smaller bus.

We don't have our trip fully planned yet, but we'll go to Antigua and do a volcano hike, and then on to the Lake Atitlan area, making sure to see the Sunday market at Chichicastenango. Then we'll move on to Quetzaltenango and do some more hiking and/or horseback riding. We've downloaded the latest Lonely Planet guide to Guatemala (available chapter-by-chapter in PDF form for about $3 a chapter, so we have all the latest G2 on where to go and where to stay.

I have convinced Dave that we HAVE to take a computer along. So stay tuned. We'll try to do some updates on our travels while we're out and about.