211: Why THIS is the BEST place to go for Hurricane Season; Rio Dulce, Guatemala, L44

So now every serious cruiser should have Rio Del Se on their map and should consider staying there especially if you're going to stay in the Caribbean and want to hide from hurricane season or you want to venture off to the big pond and that is the Panama Canal and Pacific Islands. An ideal place. We've been there for six months and we're gonna tell you the top reasons to go there and also some things that aren't quite so nice. By the way hello. Hi y'all and by the way if you love all of this great content that's just artfully delivered please hit that subscribe button hit the like button share and give us some comments we want to hear from you we want to respond to your comments. So right now let's get on to why we were in Guatemala. Why we want to recommend going to Guatemala for hurricane season. We think it's a great place to go but you have to be very careful because many people go and never leave. Also some people use it as a base to stay during the summertime and then they travel to the Caymans to Jamaica to Belize Honduras and then back but they do all that when it's not hurricane season so it's just a different place to be based at for cruising or it's a great waypoint if you're passing through. So one of the best reasons why it is a great place to be for hurricane season is that it is 20 nautical miles inland from the Caribbean surrounded by mountains so you're in this valley and you are really well protected so that's one of the reasons you never worry about wind you never check weather once you're in there it's pretty amazing that way you just begin to relax. Well and that passage through the windy mountains from Livingston to Rio Dulce is epic. It is like a bucket list for full-time cruisers that is not to be missed. And the boat is also happy in the Rio because the water is fresh everything gets a really good fresh water rinse. You know those outboards we know each one of you does a fresh water flush when you pull it up on the davits right? We just released that video weeks ago. We did but like us it's more of a chance that you don't and the outboard motor really benefits from that too. If you have saltwater toilets you don't have all that scaling and stuff building up in your hoses it is a real break for the boat it sure is. So another reason why we loved being in the Rio is based upon a couple of videos ago when we talked about projects that we completed in the Rio Dulce. It's one of the best places to complete projects because you can get great skilled labor there and the price is so good as well. Yeah check that video out if you haven't watched it that's essential if you're considering coming to Guatemala for hurricane season. Another great feature of the Rio Dulce is the food and restaurants. The prices are amazing and the food quality is really really good. Yeah the restaurants are great they have a lower cost for labor and also Guatemala is an incredibly fertile country and there's also like lots of ranches for cattle to grow livestock. So those raw ingredients that you're going to be having it's going to be cheap it's going to be healthy. Boy I wish we would have that in the Bahamas right? Yeah I mean everybody in the Bahamas basically had dinner for each other because there were no restaurants. Here you can meet people in town it's cheap cheap drinks just a whole different culture when it comes to cuisine. There is a difference in the prices between the local restaurants and the more western restaurants and a huge difference actually and you can get great tacos and burritos and and Guatemalan fare but then you could also get burgers and pizza and all kinds of western products as well. Yeah we love the local places and they're just everywhere. One of the things I really loved about being there especially after being in the Bahamas was the amount of fruits and vegetables that you have access to and the quality of those as well. I can't believe how tasty the papayas and the watermelons and the cantaloupes were but then you realize they just pulled them off of the field and brought them straight into town. So you're going almost from food to market right away. So you're gonna eat healthy stuff really good taste and stuff whether you cook it yourself buy it at a grocery store or fruit stand or whether you go out to dinner. There were two grocery stores when we arrived one was called Dispensa and the other La Torre. Unfortunately Dispensa did close midway through our time there so there is only La Torre and it is a bit on the pricier side but it does stock pretty much everything that you could possibly want. Another aspect of staying on the Rio that we loved was the medical care. So we're on our way to Morales now. This morning I'm headed to an eye doctor. The doctor is Dr. Morales in the town of Morales. How funny is that? Inside in this inner part of the eye we have like a gel liquid that is called the bitches. I just finished with my appointment. It's like hard to see in the light but I had a good appointment and it seems like everything is gonna be okay just needs time to heal. So just love the medical facilities here and the doctors are just amazing. The availability and the price of medical care it was pretty incredible. We started with going to the dentist which was a dinghy ride from our boat and you actually bring the dinghy straight up to the dock and get off and there's the dentist's office. The doctor really caters to cruisers which is wonderful and has a great reputation. If you're like us you probably have catastrophic health care because health care is expensive in the U.S. Just the cost of it and insurance. All right babe. $45 dental cleaning. Yep. How do you feel? Great. Good. Yeah. In the clinic in the middle of the jungle. Yeah literally. But we went ahead and got all of our doctor's appointments and stuff done before we went back to the U.S. Why not save the money and then we got more time to visit with friends and family when we get back. We could get everything done here. We have the best dermatologist that I've ever been to. So we went to see the dermatologist in Guatemala City. We had a full physical with blood work and a meeting with a cardiologist and then I went to see a retinal specialist in the city. So this is a normal OCT. Here we're having and we also had the dentist. So I'll put those prices up so that you can see the cost of each of those visits. Oh and one thing that I've noticed about the doctors in Guatemala is that they really spend time with you to get to know you to ask a lot of those important questions that will aid in their diagnosis. I find in the U.S. that it's all about the money. Time is of the essence. You're paying more and you get less time and you're just on a track in and out of there. Not so much in Guatemala. People just slow down here when they're doing everything and it really helps when it comes to professional medical care. And all of them yes and all of them spoke English. Yes absolutely. Fluently. Yes totally. One of the best things that we discovered when we were in Oh my goodness. It's an amazing country. I was in Guatemala 20 some odd years ago for a friend of mine's wedding and saw Atitlan and Antigua then but for a very short time only about a week and revisiting that and then also getting to Tikal and Flores was truly amazing. So we're gonna have some separate videos on that travel because it's just too much to share in just this short time. I don't know why more people don't come to Guatemala. What I recommend is save these to a little bit later in your trip so that you make sure you get all your boat work done and reward yourself with the inland travel toward the end of your trip. One of the really interesting things about the Rio is that everyone comes and then leaves their boat in a marina and usually does either inland travel or travel back to their home. The reason is that the marinas are really inexpensive. When you're going to the Rio do your research and find out what marina is going to be best for you. Some do allow boat work but some do not. That's an important thing to find out and do they charge an additional fee for workers to come? Do they have a pool? Do they have really strong wi-fi? Some of the marinas we were in had a great wi-fi and others did not. These are really important things to ask and to consider. There are like 40 marinas there and each one of them's gonna have its own culture, its own family. Probably not a bad idea to try a few of them unless you know some people that you can really trust point you in the right direction from the get-go. The cost for the marinas was pretty much standardized across all of the marinas. It was about twelve dollars a day for catamaran about half that for a monohull and then water is free but then you have to pay in addition to that for electricity but everything else is included like wi-fi and the pool if you have a pool. We were very grateful for the people at Catamaran Marina. While we were gone they really looked after our boat. There were several major tropical storms that came through the marina while we were gone and they were great about walking around and just adjusting everyone's fenders and keeping an eye on on the boats. As a matter of fact once our boat let its line go and was sitting perpendicular to the dock instead of parallel to the dock and thankfully they were able to quickly resolve that so they really take good care of your boat while you're there. A lot of people just leave their boat down there year round and just fly in and fly out because it's so cheap and then they know people are always going to be looking out after it. They have really everything they need there so why go anywhere else and complicate things. One thing that really impressed us was the amount of humanitarian support and aid that was given by the cruising community to the locals. It was just really everywhere you turned someone was helping the locals and working in conjunction with the locals not just giving to them but working alongside them. It was amazing. You could pretty much get involved with something every day of the week and there are small things that make a huge difference in people's lives especially if they're starting with nothing. Simple things like an old solar panel that's on your boat and a burnt out AGM battery could really mean enough power to power some a medical device for somebody who doesn't have power who's a local or a light bulb or charge a phone and there's lots of basic things you know supplying water food and shelter and then just local engineering projects that the cruisers are involved with and it is almost like a race to see who can do the most good things isn't it? It's crazy and the longer you're down there you're thinking well maybe I'm not going to get involved I don't have anything to give but you'll find something or team up with somebody down there who's become your new best friend and you'll get involved it just they just kind of suck you into it and it's it's wonderful. You develop a love for the sweet Guatemalan people they're just wonderful and you know you really do want to help them. Yes the Guatemalan people are so kind and so helpful and loving and wow the generosity is pretty amazing and we did fall in love with the people from our travels but then also in the Rio Dulce area. Similar to Georgetown Bahamas there is a very robust and vibrant cruiser community. A lot of that is because the cruisers stay in the area year round and they want to stay connected and it's really important on the Rio to stay connected there is a daily cruisers net. Each day is just carefree and predictable. The cruiser net is also an incredible resource for all things about Guatemala, about the Rio, for travel, for help, for emergencies. Everyone there wants to help you and they will go out of their way to make sure you have the information that you need or find it if they don't have it which is just a great thing if you're new to the Rio. The Facebook page is incredibly helpful with a whole list of local resources from doctors to people who fix things or give massages. There's so much information on the Facebook group alone that you can have all of your questions answered just by doing a search in that. I mean they've got a system down pat down there and that's probably a fundamental reason why a lot of people come back just have a great community. They also have swap meets and opportunities to sell things. There's a Facebook page for sell buy or give away and that works really well too. We sold many things on that. Treasures from the bilge. You'll only understand that if you listen to the cruisers net in the morning. One of the things that we were really concerned about when we were planning to go to Guatemala was the safety aspect and we did a lot of research to determine what was truth and what was exaggerated. And we had a lot of people say don't go. There's too much crime. There's too much pollution. You're gonna get hurt. You're gonna get robbed. As a matter of fact we spent two and a half months on anchor in the bay and we were told you better move every couple of nights. Be really unpredictable. It's super safe and the cruisers net is a reason why we know it's safe. First thing on the agenda before they talk about anything else is security. And the locals also do not want anything to interfere with the cruising community that's coming down because they bring tons of money and business and listen all it takes is one instance to provide a bad reputation for 10 years. But you also have to be smart right? When you leave your boat you lock it. Yeah. At night you raise your dinghy and your davits. So there are some basic things that you can do to prevent or ward off crime that could happen and we did that and never had an incident. The Rio Dulce is so beautiful. One of the things that we loved about being there was just the beauty of the river and the mountains. It's natural. It's really natural. You're living in the jungle so you're hearing howler monkeys every morning and birds and it's also sweltering like the jungle. But I think one of the things that I loved was how many different places we could go just around the Rio and there were some cruisers that were great about organizing trips which we benefited from. Thank you Ana. Places like Agua Calientes which is a hot waterfall that has cold springs. We did a trip to Frutas del Mundo which was a place where organic farm and they also sell seedlings for trees and plants so you can buy them. It's like a nursery also. Yeah we tried 30 different fruits on that day. It was amazing. They had lunch there. It was pretty incredible. We hiked up to the Shaman Tower which is a beautiful hike up to a tower that overlooks the Rio Dulce. We sailed up to Lago Isabel which is just a beautiful beautiful sail and the lake is gorgeous and there's not many people there. We often went on the pipeline walk to just get some exercise which is very hilly. We visited Kiriagua which is the most famous site for the Mayan steles. It's the best steles that exist in the world now. So lots of things to do on the Rio. Things that you don't want to miss while you're there and that's just the local trips let alone the extended trips that we also did. Would type of cruisers that are coming down here. Everybody's wearing a t-shirt. It's very relaxed and casual here and you don't see the big fancy yachts and big sailboats and that type of thing that you see in the Bahamas or southern Florida. This is just not their kind of place. It's more down-to-earth people. I just like the unpolished casual comfortable aspect of everything down here including the boats and the people and the marinas and the town just so raw and it's just crazy and you feel like you're gonna go run over on this main street and you're like man if I can survive that I can survive anything. I think one of the things that we loved as well was learning Spanish. No one speaks English or very few people speak English. We were highly motivated to learn Spanish because we were using it all the time and it was actually helpful. When I first got down there I was thinking I can get out of learning Spanish. I was kind of relying on her language abilities but I felt totally lost not being able to say just basic things. Now I'm speaking some Spanish. All right let's flip the script here and talk about some of the downsides of being on the Rio for five months. There aren't very many but there are a few that we want to mention. And these are not reasons not to come. We just want you to be aware of them. Yes so the first one is that the river is dirty. It is brown because it's muddy. Yeah right it's not the Bahamas. It's sweet water but it is not clear water and there's also a lot of raw sewage that is being dumped into the river so you're probably not going to want to swim in it and you probably wouldn't want to put your head underwater anyway if you did. The other surprise that we had from our previous video of our arrival was the presence of mayflies and they I have to say literally changed our lives. Yep this is getting old really fast. It's so disgusting. So let's talk about the first night that we're there. The first night that we were there it was the worst because we didn't know about it and you can go back and look at our old video on what actually happened. What's inconvenience to you is also a sign that the ecosystem in the Rio Dulce is very healthy. Mayflies means everything's really balanced and plentiful. These mayflies when they're wet they smell like dead fish so every day we're doing this and then we have to clean because it smells like dead fish everything that's left over. Anyway downside of Rio Dulce. Mayflies are a very important part of that unique ecosystem. Definitely. Unfortunately it really affected how we lived our life in the sense that once it became dark we could not turn any white lights on and even had to reduce red light because they are attracted to it. So for about two hours hour and a half every night you had to really close down the boat and shut the doors and windows and sort of live like a hermit. I'd highly recommend definitely getting some red lights on the boat. Get some air conditioning working on your boat and we used them for a few hours every single night and it made all of the difference and we never used air conditioning at all in the Bahamas and we were never in southern Florida during the summertime. We were always up in New England never had a reason to use it until we came down to Guatemala. It's serious the heat down here and you need to be ready for it and let me tell you mayflies it's false advertising it's not just May. Down in the Rio it's every month some months are worse than others but the presence of them is non-stop. So one of the other downsides to the Rio Dulce is the distance from Guatemala City. It is a long way and depending on the traffic you could spend anywhere from a minimum of six hours on the bus all the way to we've heard 24 hours with a bad accident because there's only one road that goes from the Rio to Guatemala City. Now the bus is really cheap it's super comfortable it cost us $16 a piece for this seven hour ride and it was air conditioned with USB plugs but a bit of an issue if you didn't know what was going to happen with traffic. They also had a great place to stop midway through it's a great local cafeteria the food's cheap it's really good it's packed but ride never seemed really inconvenient or too long. We thought it was just an extension of the Guatemalan experience until we flew back and we're spoiled forever. Yeah we'll show you a video on that thanks Ted and Gail. And it took 35 minutes instead of six hours. Here's a little version of that. When we were in the Bahamas we always swam and snorkeled and loved being in the water so that didn't happen in the Rio so we had to be a lot more intentional about our exercise and workout. There are opportunities but you do have to get in your dinghy and go. Walking in town is a little rough because of all the traffic and the uneven side. Walking the bridge. There's no sidewalks it's very uneven concrete but you can walk up on top of the bridge. This is our health club this is what we do to get the heart rate up. You don't know what you're missing out on you got to meet us down near Ridge also. It's a glorious disaster is what it is and we love it and we're gonna miss that that main street going through Frontera and you can get everything there but you better watch getting run over by a truck. So those were some of the downsides to the Rio but by far the Rio is just such an amazing place it was really hard to say goodbye to the Rio and to the friends that we had made there. We miss it we want you guys to go and we want to enjoy it through your fresh eyes. We hope this video helped you we hope that you're able to get to Guatemala if you have the opportunity by boat we think it would be life-changing like it was for us. And then also if you don't have a boat we hope that this has really helped fill you in so you feel like you have been there and experienced it. Yeah or you can fly there and experience it by land which is equally amazing. Yeah you got to do it. And we want to say thank you so much to our patrons who support us both with encouragement and financially. Thank you so much thank you to our viewers and anyone who has gotten this far in the video thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next week see you guys we love you