Friday, April 18, 2008

ALWAYS LIKE COMING HOME






One nice thing about cruising is that when you return to a place where you've spent some time and made some friends it's like coming home all over again. We no longer have one place that we call home. If home is where the heart is then our hearts are spread along the Pacific. We just returned to Bahia Del Sol, El Salvador for the second time. We were previously here in 2005 when we spent six months hear. We gently surfed over the bar guarding the entrance guided by the hotel pilot, Roger. Since arriving I have accompanied the pilot for 10 bar crossings, talking the boats over the bar and taking pictures. This is a picture of the Canadian boat, Rogla, surfing smoothly over the bar. There have been rumors of this bar being dangerous but, they are grossly overstated. We've witnessed over 30 bar crossings all without incident. The anchorage here is free and for about $60/month you can use the hotels' pools (2), bar, restaurant, dinghy dock,and other facilities plus a 30% discount on your food and bar tab! We call it cruisers vacation.

While here in BDS we had our bottom repainted in the same yard we used in 2005. We paid $7/ft for haul-out, $20/day for each laborer, and $120 for a gallon of local paint (60% - 68% copper depending on color). We had the same paint applied in 2005 and it was still in good shape. We also replaced our cutlass bearing along with having the engine re-aligned. We had a good experience with the yard folks just as in 2005. There are some minor downsides to this yard: they are limited as to draft, 6 -7 feet is the maximum and the haul-out is tidal dependent with haul-out during the 7 or 8 spring tides per month. While staying aboard during the haul-out we were allowed all the free mangos and coconuts we could eat! A bathroom and shower is avaliable to those staying aboard.
We held off doing any inland travel until we finished the bottom. A few days ago we took the bus to the capitol city of San Salvador and stayed overnight. We got hopelessly lost in the central market area, got an American food fix at Tony Roma's (of course RIBS!) and watched too much CNN in the hotel room. Room prices have risen since 2005 by $10 - $15/ night. We also visited the Guzman archeological muesum . We were going to only stay one night but decided to take the next day's bus to the little town of Suchitoto. The morning bus cost 80 cents and took a little over an hour. Our main reason for going there was to visit the French restaurant that we discovered in 2005. It was still open and the owner remembered us. We had a very memorable meal and lots of great wine. Our return trip to BDS took 5 hours by bus and taxi.