Back on the Rio
Sunday, April 26th, 2009 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joyfinderheroHere I am again in Rio Dulce.
Lots is the same -- the beautiful river, the part about living close to nature. Wearing T- or tank-top and shorts, day after day. Never wanting jewelry or even a skirt.
Lots is different -- this time we're in a bungalow on stilts right at the water's edge, protected from direct sun by the jungle overhead; this time we're on an island, so everything is a dinghy ride away (even the restaurant so close that even I could hit it with a softball). This time one of the grandkids is with me; we're all studying Spanish a couple of hours a day; we're doing a little tourist stuff.
One difference has surprised me -- my Dear Husband and I are getting almost no private conversation. A 10-year-old goes to be at pretty much the same time we do, and has been up before us nearly half the time. The best we've managed is a cup of coffee at 6 am. Next week I think we might revise the Spanish schedule so she's in class at a time when we're not, so we can have a couple of hours to do more than 'utility' conversations.
Another surprise is that we are indeed entering the home stretch on this major refit of sailboat project. Looks like at the end of the coming week we'll start up Second Summit's diesel, for the first time in over a year, and motor a couple of miles upriver, taking her from the carpentry shop (where all the interior work has been done while she lay at dockside) to the yard where she can be hauled out for hull work. She might be out for a month, but not longer than that -- there isn't all that much to do, and all the hull materials have arrived and are waiting.
Having a grandchild around does present a couple of challenges. This week the carnival has been in town, and here in Guatemala it is Almost Exactly the Same as the carnival of my Connecticut childhood in 1960 -- a Ferris Wheel, a Tilt-a-Whirl, Bumper Cars, Merry-Go-Rounds, a midway full of games of "chance" (some of them quite evidently rigged) offering dimestore prizes, pizza, cotton candy, hot dogs, sodas, too much noise and lots of crowds. Only one 'new' ride, the Zipper -- a derivative of a Ferris Wheel with caged cars that can turn upside down in both directions. No new midway games -- except the old milk-bottle ringtoss has been replaced with Coca-Cola ringtoss. Several new kinds of candy, though, apparently locally produced in several fruit-and-sugar flavors.
All that was no problem, though I wouldn't necessarily have chosen to go without a kid who wanted to. But then ... she got on the Tilt-A-Whirl and then asked me to go with her. She looked forlorn, small, scared ... and so I did. (She'd had her eye on the Tilt-A-Whirl all week; I didn't have the heart to refuse). This might have been a mistake, as my neck has been a bit sore and crampy all day. But it's a small thing.
Mostly she's being a delight, alternating between 10-going-on-25 and 10-going-on-6, just as you would expect. Today when we toured the Castillo de San Felipe (1595-1736 Spanish fort at the foot of Lake Izabal, built to defend the lakeside warehouses from river pirates), she kept better track of where we'd been than the grownups.
She understands far more Spanish than she can say, feeling shy about making mistakes. Me, I can say far more than I can understand, which occasionally gets me into trouble. But I can just about read a newspaper now -- yippee!
We're here two more weeks, then I take 10-year-old grandkid home and, a week later, come back with 8-year-old grandkid, this one's younger sister. And more of the same.
Lots is the same -- the beautiful river, the part about living close to nature. Wearing T- or tank-top and shorts, day after day. Never wanting jewelry or even a skirt.
Lots is different -- this time we're in a bungalow on stilts right at the water's edge, protected from direct sun by the jungle overhead; this time we're on an island, so everything is a dinghy ride away (even the restaurant so close that even I could hit it with a softball). This time one of the grandkids is with me; we're all studying Spanish a couple of hours a day; we're doing a little tourist stuff.
One difference has surprised me -- my Dear Husband and I are getting almost no private conversation. A 10-year-old goes to be at pretty much the same time we do, and has been up before us nearly half the time. The best we've managed is a cup of coffee at 6 am. Next week I think we might revise the Spanish schedule so she's in class at a time when we're not, so we can have a couple of hours to do more than 'utility' conversations.
Another surprise is that we are indeed entering the home stretch on this major refit of sailboat project. Looks like at the end of the coming week we'll start up Second Summit's diesel, for the first time in over a year, and motor a couple of miles upriver, taking her from the carpentry shop (where all the interior work has been done while she lay at dockside) to the yard where she can be hauled out for hull work. She might be out for a month, but not longer than that -- there isn't all that much to do, and all the hull materials have arrived and are waiting.
Having a grandchild around does present a couple of challenges. This week the carnival has been in town, and here in Guatemala it is Almost Exactly the Same as the carnival of my Connecticut childhood in 1960 -- a Ferris Wheel, a Tilt-a-Whirl, Bumper Cars, Merry-Go-Rounds, a midway full of games of "chance" (some of them quite evidently rigged) offering dimestore prizes, pizza, cotton candy, hot dogs, sodas, too much noise and lots of crowds. Only one 'new' ride, the Zipper -- a derivative of a Ferris Wheel with caged cars that can turn upside down in both directions. No new midway games -- except the old milk-bottle ringtoss has been replaced with Coca-Cola ringtoss. Several new kinds of candy, though, apparently locally produced in several fruit-and-sugar flavors.
All that was no problem, though I wouldn't necessarily have chosen to go without a kid who wanted to. But then ... she got on the Tilt-A-Whirl and then asked me to go with her. She looked forlorn, small, scared ... and so I did. (She'd had her eye on the Tilt-A-Whirl all week; I didn't have the heart to refuse). This might have been a mistake, as my neck has been a bit sore and crampy all day. But it's a small thing.
Mostly she's being a delight, alternating between 10-going-on-25 and 10-going-on-6, just as you would expect. Today when we toured the Castillo de San Felipe (1595-1736 Spanish fort at the foot of Lake Izabal, built to defend the lakeside warehouses from river pirates), she kept better track of where we'd been than the grownups.
She understands far more Spanish than she can say, feeling shy about making mistakes. Me, I can say far more than I can understand, which occasionally gets me into trouble. But I can just about read a newspaper now -- yippee!
We're here two more weeks, then I take 10-year-old grandkid home and, a week later, come back with 8-year-old grandkid, this one's younger sister. And more of the same.