It was bound to happen. Armando, our pet Black Bellied Whistling Duck FLIES!
We have been noticing that Armando’s flight feathers are growing and that when he stretched his wings out that he had more white feathers. He was making small flights from the land to the water. That was all of two feet. But yesterday he FLEW! He went from his roast to the middle of the river and back and then took off again and circled the marina. He was very proud of himself…whistling and whistling.
We do hear others of his kind whistle to him as they fly over and now we are afraid that he will join them and fly away. We will be sad if that happens, but he should be with his own kind.
He is an incredible flier, quite fast and beautiful when in flight. Good on you Armando!
Living on a boat is a constant battle for space. When three avid readers live on a 38' sailboat the amount of books on board is incredible. We try to read the same things, but that doesn't always work.
Because good books are hard to find we tend to hog books if we see one that we think we may want to read. Each of us has our storage areas and they are full. If Michael finishes a book and either Cynthia or I want to read it later it moves to our space. Sometimes the boat lists to the starboard or the port depending on who is the slower reader.
Amazon has an e-reader device called the Kindle. The Kindle can hold up to 1,000 books. Plus Amazon keeps a copy for you so if your Kindle gets full you can remove a book and download a new book. You can change the size of the font and it includes a dictionary. It is for use only in the USA and uses the Whispernet for downloading. After a lot of wishing and hoping someone here on the river found that you could download the books to your computer and transfer the books to your Kindle.
After months of agonizing about would it really work a fellow boater brought one down. Low and behold it worked like a charm.
I am happy to say the I am now the proud owner of a Kindle and have started to download my books. Problem is I really should finishing reading the stack of books on my side of the boat before I start new ones on the Kindle. Okay just as soon as I finish the new Kindle book I just started. Really....I promise.
I swore that I would never join a social networking website. “Never ,say never. “ I am hooked on Facebook. It all started out so very innocently. MK asked her mom, Beth to join and then came the fateful email to me.
“Would you like to be friends with Beth?” I thought we were friends. Actually, I think it asked if I wanted to view her photos. Of course, I want to see her photos. Well if you want that then you must sign up for an account.
The next thing I know I am signing up to be friends with friends. We are sharing photos, videos, our neophyte questions and mutual friends. We are posting on walls and creating groups. We are joining groups. We are constantly IMing or emailing each other. I thought a Blog was hard enough to keep up.
To add insult to injury I keep going in my profile to add that I am married and Michael is the name of my husband. Even when I save the changes his name doesn’t show up. After several frustrating tries, Cynthia says, “That’s because he doesn’t have an account.” Duh! I can fix that. First get him his own email account. Now open a Facebook account. Send him a message to add me as a friend. He accepts me. Go back to my profile and add his name. Get the message that he must confirm that we are in a relationship! Since I have all his account info I confirm for him that we are in a relationship. See how easy that was.
I am afraid that Facebook is starting to eat into my day. I haven’t dusted in days and all I can think about is who can I search for on Facebook.
This is getting silly, but I am enjoying it. Thanks for the invite, Beth!
First let me tell you that the photo is NOT of Cynthia's braces. They look like hers, but I don't think that she would want a photo of her mouth being used.
She finally got the braces put on and yes they are green! She is dealing with the feeling of loose teeth and a soft diet for the first 6 days. She had some swelling and pain for a couple of days and even ran a little low grade fever. Now she is doing just fine.
The last time one of our kids needed braces you didn't get a choice of color. Now you can have hot pink, lime ricky, black (for the goths) orange or a rainbow of color. The price is right here in Guatemala and we are pleased with all the aspects of her Orthodontic care.
Stay tuned for progress reports. She may even let me photo the movement of her teeth. I will work up my courage to ask her.
Roger and Carole on Androsian were given the game Cranium by their daughter. So of course now that there are a few more people in the marnia we have been playing once a week. I should mention that it is the Canadian version of Cranium so they have an advantage. If you know what a "TimBit" is then you must be Canadian. It very nearly cost me the game as I was clueless!
So the next time we played we demanded that Roger and Carole be split up so that each team had a Canadian. One of the things that you have to do is draw and have your team guess what it is that you are drawing. Unfortunately Roger destroyed his drawing so I can't share it with you. It was a lovely tree with what appeared to be stick men with anchors attached to them or were they tails? No matter, our team did not guess correctly.
What he was drawing was a "Sock Monkey". Well, Roger did not know what a Sock Monkey was...Carole and I originally thought that it was a Sock Puppet. No, it is the all to familiar monkey made from the Rockford Red Heel Sock.
Google them and you can get free instructions on their construction.
No we are not talking about great sex here...we are talking EARTHQUAKE! Yes, we felt the earth move up here on the Rio Dulce. We are fine and so is the marina. Marco, Mirna, and Kathy had it the worst as they were on land. The beds were dancing and stuff was trying to jump off the selves in the store. The pool had waves big enough to empty a good foot and a half of water. We were luck no structural damage.
We talked to our friends at Hotel Kangaroo and they live on the third floor. Their king sized bed was moving and the house was swaying and the stairs moved 4 inches. Lots of little houses are down or leaning at crazy angles.
Placencia had quite a bit of damage as well. The photos of Honduras are scary. Fortunately it appears that there was not a great loss of life.
School completed and a day to ourselves and armed with our new command of the language we decide that we will do the tourist thing. We decide against doing ruins at Yax Ha and will go to the Archeological Museum. The lady who runs the hotel hears our discussion and promptly offers her services to get us a launcha to the island where the museum is located. We agree on a price and a time. Our guide is a young man named Jose, who is enthusiastic and is happy that we speak a little Spanish. So as we head to a different Island Carole and I are concerned that we are not going where we thought we were going. Some discussion ensues and yes he is taking us to the Museo de Arqueológico funny it’s not on the island that we thought it was…we get there and it is a ZOO! Jose insists that it is the right place and he will let us off and we will cross a bridge and he will meet us on the other side.
As we approach the entrance we notice that the price for Nationals is Q10 and Internationals is Q20. We attempt to convince the gatekeeper that we are Nationals. Guess our Spanish isn’t that good. The first things that you see are wild boars sleeping under picnic tables in the open. Please don’t touch them as they are aggressive. We move along by some Amazon Parrots and a Macaw, more boars and then I see it…an old swinging bridge over the water.
The sign says maximum 15 people, no running or jumping. They don’t need to worry I am not sure that I will even get across it! I hate planks, but I think that I hate swinging bridges even more. Carole heads off first. The boards are old, dry, and have large spaces, but good news…the bridge has floats and right now it is touching the water. I take a step and making it across happy that Jose will pick us up on the other side. Yes, there is Jose and he is ready to take us on a tour of the Zoo and explain all the animals.
All is going well until I spy a sign that clearly states that we must cross another bridge. This swinging bridge is over the tops of the trees. I inform Carole and Jose that I will wait with the Puma and hope for a picture while they continue on. Jose tells me that I will miss the monkeys and the jaguar. I tell Jose that I have seen both and I will be waiting on this side for their return. I would rather do TEN FOOT SEAS in a 38 Foot boat than do a swing bridge. Carole did admit later that it was a little scary when crossing the last bridge.
As we are returning to the island of Flores we ask Jose about the other island and the “radio museo”. Oh yes he can take us there, but we had not negotiated that with the lady at the hotel. Okay there must be some deal here that we were not aware of…so take us back to the hotel and it is off to lunch.
As we are walking deciding on a restaurant we are approached by several launcha drivers asking if we want to go to the Radio Museo. Carole is not keen on looking at a bunch of old radios so we ask our waiter if that is all there is…just radios? No he assures us it has Maya artifacts. We must go!
We go and boy are we glad that we did. The gentleman, Luis, who runs the Peten radio stations, runs the museum and boy what a museum. The size of a bedroom it is chock-a-block full of artifacts and yes old radios. No touching, No photos. There is a group of Guatemalan men being toured and we just join in. How could you not we are only a foot away from them. But here is the amazing part. Luis takes a figurine that is a flute made 400 years before Christ and he plays it! He moves to the large trumpet shells and plays them. Now he opens a case and takes out a jade figurine and while he is placing it in my hands tells the group that it was carved 2,000 years before Christ was born! I am terrified that I will drop it. And so it was as we moved around, touch this, hold that. How amazing, how fantastic! Thank you, Luis.
Now it is time to get ready to go back home to the river. What a great week Carole and I had. And if you are wondering…NO I am not fluent! But at least I know what I need to work on.
We have been noticing that Armando’s flight feathers are growing and that when he stretched his wings out that he had more white feathers. He was making small flights from the land to the water. That was all of two feet. But yesterday he FLEW! He went from his roast to the middle of the river and back and then took off again and circled the marina. He was very proud of himself…whistling and whistling.
