Barley

As this fine month comes to a close, what could be better than a nice pastel drawing of a barley field. Nothing like fields of crops to make me think of fall, oh I also hear that it's Halloween, so I guess that's an acceptable view of the season as well.

I do love pastels, they are a perfect mix of paints and sketching.

All Good Things...

Must someday come to an end. No, I'm not cancelling the blog. What I am referring to is the free internet signal everyone was mooching off of. I guess the people across the river were tired of paying for everyone else, and yesterday morning they password protected their signal. We now have to pay for our internet, or have none at all. Well, it was acceptable while it lasted. 

BBQ

There is nothing quite like the taste of food that has been properly cooked over an open flame. I don't know what witchcraft it is, but somehow flame cooked food is simply superior. So if you have the chance (lol, not with your weather), get out the grill and get cooking. There is one little problem however...

These stupid grills are impossible to clean! What a way to ruin something nice... :(

Soap

I went to the store today to pick up some things, and I realized something. Soap is crazy expensive here. I don't  know why, it's only regular dish soap. Does it cure cancer? Is it made of gold? No, it is neither of those things. Simply one of those things they do to gouge people.

Thankful

There is someone who I recently started following on Twitter who has started writing about things that make her thankful. With such an uplifting piece, I figured that perhaps I should get a piece of the action. So what am I thankful for after all this time here? 

Hm...

Perhaps...

No...

Ah! This could be it...

???

I don't even...  I'll leave this here. Do you know what these are?

Cookie for whoever can correctly identify this thing. 

More Cake?

Is such a thing even possible? Yes it is.

Today, my parents as they often do, stopped at the bakery and picked up another cake. This time it was a chocolate cake, and boy is it good. I even has a fancy ring of chocolate going around the edge.

Windmill

Like the title says. Not the best,  but I like it. 

Dinner

Tonight we were once again running low on food. Since nobody wanted to run out, and get stuff, it fell on me to come up with an idea and make something. What's in the fridge? Spiced meat, brown sugar, vinegar, ketchup, potatoes... This could work. I know, meatloaf and mashed potatoes with my homemade BBQ sauce. 

A few hours later... 

Small Friend

Here is a regular lizard I see from time to time.

Hiatus

I will be taking a temporary hiatus from he blog for technical reasons. My keyboard is non responsive, so it makes typing very hard. I will post pics when I have them, so check back for that.

13 hours...

This is a record of the 13 wasted hours I spent today. Prepare to be very disappointed.

04:15 *Bang Bang* "What?" "Time to go!" "Already?"

04:33 *Bang Bang* "Are you ready?" "Almost..."

04:44 In the truck, driving towards the border town of El Ceibo. This is going to be very fun.

05: 14 "Oh crap, the road is gone!" Literally, there is a chunk of road missing and you need to avoid it by driving through a ditch.

05: 41 The sun is starting to rise. I love the look of the sky when the light blues starting peeking over the treeline.

06:54 Stopped at a checkpoint outside of San Luis, the guy isn't checking for weapons or drugs, but highly dangerous fruits and vegetables. Luckily we have neither.

Slow, but happening progress

As you may already know, the reason we've been in Guatemala so long is that we are having renovations done on the boat. Labor is cheap and materials are plentiful, so why not have it done? Eh, the workers aren't very fast?! Well, I suppose there must be some trade offs for such low prices... Never the less, we currently have the Flybridge undergoing extensive renovations, and I would estimate that we're about half-way through the procedure.

Currently we are having a wall added to rear section of the bridge so that it's no longer exposed to the elements. After that, we should have some new stairs put in, so that the dogs can go up top. Three months and they've never been there yet.

 A few days ago...

Colour!

One of the cliches about the tropics is that there are beautiful colours everywhere you look. This is true in some areas like the coast of Belize, but in this area, the colours are really similar to what Canada looks like in the summer. One thing in this country that does have colour all the time however, are fruits. It seems no matter where you go, fruits just liven up the atmosphere, and they are beautiful.

Being such good sources of colour, fruits are rather fun to paint, the fruits here really use the colour wheel in all it's glory.

 Tasty

Oh no! Privateers!

I went to town today and tried to fix my internet router, a few days ago it stopped working, and I figured that  perhaps using the internet connection at a different place could do something. Turns out I thought incorrectly. Going to town did nothing, and it looks like I now have a busted router.

One thing I did notice however, was that there was a lot less people there than usual. Usually, the place is packed with barflies throughout the day, but today there was maybe only 15 other people there. That may sound like a lot, but it's not, this place usually has every seat taken. For perhaps the first time ever, I could enjoy the restaurant in peace, without having all the childish antics of the other patrons. I spent a few hours there using their awesome internet, and enjoying the breeze. Ultimately defeated however, I packed up my things and returned to Anarchy.

No more than half an hour after I returned I heard a horn go off. Huh? I look up and I see two large Jolly Roger's passing by the front of the boat. Oh no! Privateers! I go to the front deck to see what's going on, and there are a bunch of people dressed like pirates with swords dancing on the boat. I wish I had my camera with me, because it was so odd. I can't wait for the next pirate raid. Hopefully it'll soon!

Tuna Steak

Let it be known to all, I hate Tuna Steak. Who wants a half cooked steak with tiny bones lying around everywhere? If I want tuna, I'll have it from a can thank you very much. And if I want bones, no, I never want bones. Seriously, outside of sellers being to cheap to de-bone their product, what reason is there for having bones present? To make it easy to murder your enemies? To give people something to chew on? Come on, just get rid of the bones and maybe I'll be interested. Ugh, the thought of fish bones just make me lose my appetite  My Grandpa was the same way, as soon as he found a bone in his fillet, he was done, no matter how good the dish may have been. Well I'm done too.

Sketching is also Hard

Like painting sketching is also very hard. In fact, I think sketching is harder than working with paint, who would have thought? Here is what I've done so far. I'm a little embarrassed, but I know I'll get better later on.

Good Eats

Today was my birthday, so we had to have something special that we don't have every other day. Being in Rio Dulce, we don't have all that much period, so having something special has to be something not too complicated. It's not like lobster we have every other week for a couple of bucks. So after thinking about it, I decided I wanted hamburgers, but with the twist of having homemade BBQ sauce and my moms corn fritters.

For those of you who haven't had my moms corn fritters, imagine something like an apple fritter from Tim Hortons, but smaller and no glaze on the outside. Replace the apple with corn, and you've basically got the same thing. Yet describing it alone isn't good enough, you really have to have one right out of the pot to appreciate it.

Painting is Hard

I recently took and interest in painting, it's a good way to pass the time, and it's a fine skill to boot. Since I'm only learning, I didn't want to buy an actual canvas and paints, so instead I downloaded some software, and started taking the lessons. I'm just at the very start of my journey, but I want to share what I've done so far.

Showdown!

So, tonight brought about the first debate for the presidential election in the United States, and while I'm not an American, it will effect all of us so I decided to listen in.

For the last few months, Republican Mitt Romney seemed to be taking a severe beating from President Obama, but I was surprised by Romney's performance tonight. I should first disclose that I listened to the debate, but I didn't have a video feed to watch their body language and what-not.

In my view, Romney had complete control of the entire debate. He was confident and cool, even when he didn't really make sense. Really, everyone seemed to think that Romney was going to be a second John Kerry, but today he had charisma and dignity. Today was make it or break it for Romney, and I feel confident in saying that he did indeed make it.

I don't know what happened to Obama, but today he just was not there. Perhaps being emperor for four years dulled his combat skills, but who knows? I used to think that this race was already decided, but perhaps Romney gave himself the jump start he needed...

Why?

A month or so ago, we had pizza from the Catamaran hotel and restaurant. You may remember that I hated it, and felt that those people should be ashamed of themselves for selling something so terrible. Now you can all remind yourselves about how bad it was. Note how up above, I mentioned that the pizza at Rio Bravo was good, but I didn't really remember it since we were so tired when we had it. Here we are in October, and we return to Vista Rio.