Taming the Pirates

After weeks of jungle living and boat bound bliss, we decided it was time for some solid ground, and we are all happy to trade anchor alarms for some city traffic.

Now is not the time for sailing as it is officially hurricane season and Intle Breeze is safely in a Marina in Rio Dulce, this allows us the next 5 months to do some land exploring.  The rest of June and July will be spent exploring Guatemala and most likely we will move to and frow between Intle Breeze and various parts of Guatemala and of course some much-needed boat jobs when the guilt sets in.

First stop is Guatemala City, we decided to explore with one of our buddy boats, Sailing Vessel Happinez and now that we are land based for a while we will call them Marion and Evert. They are flying off to the Netherlands for Hurricane season, and we decided to take a few days away from our boat to explore the city with them. Kind of like a sailor’s field trip where we have less salt and more shampoo. 😂

After a 6-hour taxi drive that in fact was very comfortable, we finally arrived at our Airbnb in Guatemala City, and I can tell you it was with great excitement that we entered civilization, 😂 it truly felt weird as it has been a long time since any of us have been in a city and seen anything taller than our masts. We have been living so remote for such a long time. The site of high-rise buildings, shopping malls, outstanding restaurants and fantastic wine, has created a buzz of excitement with us, we really have had zero choices of good restaurants for some time, so this truly becomes a treat.

First stop a fantastic little wine bar where we had some amazing cheese and a beautiful bottle of red wine.  Thereafter straight to what seemed to be the best Italian ever…….I say “ever” very loosely keeping in mind we have been truly deprived of variety, taking that into account I would certainly still say that this truly was an awesome Italian restaurant, now imagine, we are in Guatemala City getting this level of food came as a welcome surprise.

Operation De-Salt

There was one problem though we realized that we looked like castaways, sun-bleached and borderline feral. Four scruffy pirates trying hard to blend in with the slick and manicured city crowd, in fact, almost one step away from being handed someone’s spare change. 😂

Next morning Eric and Evert are very excited to get rid of the unruly pirate look and headed to the barber for a haircut, head massage and shave. Marion and I were hot on their heels and into the salon to tame our own birds’ nests.

Out at sea we all sort of blend together, barefoot, braless with crazy hair, on land it certainly is a different game. A bottle of wine and a hairdo and we almost fit into city life.

Now that we are all looking wonderfully polished, we can enjoy a tasting menu at Sublime Restaurant, where we enjoyed a 12 course dinner in one of Latin Americas top 50 restaurants, we had a wonderful experience, of the finer of Guatemalan cuisine. From boat life to bougee……. who would have thought we still have a pallet for good food. 😜

City Surprises

Over the next few days, we walked thousands of steps and many kilometres, exploring what the city has to offer. Besides the fact that we found some great food, the most impressive had to be the incredible Mayan Museum with impeccably preserved artefacts and ancient statues going back more than 2000 years was quite humbling, the history and the sheer scale of it was truly an incredible surprise as to just how beautiful maintained and preserved everything was.

After a fantastic few days of lots of laughs and fun and naturally an overindulgence of good wine, it is with full hearts that our Guatemala City tour came to an end, and we wave goodbye to Marion and Evert as they head back to the Netherlands.

Eric and I are not yet ready hang up our adventure boots, so we made the last-minute decision to continue our trip and head to the beautiful colonial town of Antigua nestled between volcanoes and markets…………More on that in the next story.