New carburetor.

  Puerto Barrios, Guatemala
Thursday, May 10, 2007

Geraldine woke up in the middle of the night and could not fall back asleep. When Michael arose, he found her staring at the ceiling with a look of utter frustration on her face. She was exhausted. Michael simply packed up his book and a lawn chair and headed outside to give Geraldine some peace to rest. It was sometime around 1:00pm before Geraldine had enough energy to get off the sofa and face the real world outside. We showered up at the marina and decided that we would take in our non-functional camera to get looked at. We had spotted a few shops around the market on our last trip to town. On our way to town, we walked passed Sandino's place and asked if everything was on schedule for the new carburetor to arrive from Antigua. Unfortunately, the carburetor was late getting on a bus and would not be in Puerto Barrios until after nightfall. We made arrangements for Sandino to be at the van at 7:00am the following morning to start work on installing the new carburetor. With no set time to be back from town we walked out to the main street and caught a taxi to the market. The taxi system in Puerto Barrios is great. The taxi's take as many people as they can fit in the car and even pull over during the ride to pick up extra people. It was a most unusual experience, but we liked the adventure.
 
We had read that Puerto Barrios was a rough and tumble port town with as many brothels as bars and had been warned that the people were anything but friendly. Our experience was wonderful. The people we met while walking or sharing a taxi were all smiles and pleasant to us. The market in town was less busy that some others we have been to and again the shop vendors were friendly and cheery.
 
While in town we checked with two shops about repairing our camera. To our dismay, the shops were not equipped with repair facilities, however they were all willing to ship our camera to Guatemala City for repair. Thanks, but no thanks. We will take our chances of finding a repair shop along the way. We had nothing but time in town so we walked the market and the side streets wandering around with no real purpose. It was enjoyable. Michael was still feeling the effects a hangover from the party on Jeff's boat and he had been begging to get some McDonald's. We have not been to many fast food places on this trip and this one in the middle of no-where seemed to be calling him. Geraldine finally agreed. We jumped into a cab and negotiated a flat rate to McDonald's and back to the road leading to the marina. The price was right and we jumped at the chance. Michael satisfied his craving for a Big Mac, while Geraldine stuck to her favourite McChicken. We both knew we would regret eating the slop from McDonalds, but at this point in time, the cravings outweighed the known adverse effects of the food. Back at 'Nilla, we ate like there were not any more burgers on earth. There was a mess of hands flailing around the pile of food grabbing at the burgers, fries and ketchup packages. Seconds later, the carnage was over and the crumpled foil wrappers and paper bags were all that remained. We sat a bit bewildered by our eating frenzy before we decided to drop in a movie and spend the evening laid back on the bed. After all, there is no better way to digest McDonald's than flat on your back doing nothing.
 
Geraldine was wide awake again, staring at the ceiling after a second night of no sleep when Michael woke up on the morning of May 11, 2007. Today was new carburetor day! We

'Nilla at Sandino's shop.

were up around 6:00am to make sure that we had time for breakfast and to get cleaned up before the repair guys showed up. 7:00am came and went with no visitors. 8:00am passed quietly as well. Michael was just about to go over to Sandino's at 8:30am when one of his young workers showed up. With carburetor in hand, we were very pleased to finally see the work getting underway. The new carburetor matched the same bolt pattern, however there were a number of parts that did not fit on so easily. The carburetor was installed and removed nearly 10 times during the morning to tweak this part or trim that part in order to get it all to fit. Everyone that had a hand in the repairs was extremely frustrated with the time it was taking. 'Nilla was finally turned over around 11:30am and she purred like a jungle cat. A few minor adjustments were made to the idle and then the gas pedal was reconnected. We drove the van in a partially completed state from our Marina storage area to Sandino's shop for the finishing touches.

'Nilla's new carburetor.

This process took another hour or so. We were then passed back the keys to 'Nilla to take her for a test drive. This was a bit difficult as the front console was still lying on the floor and the passenger seat needed to be reinstalled. Another 20 minutes of our own labour and then, finally, we were ready for the 'test drive'. The gas pedal was a bit sticky and 'Nilla jumped when Michael put down his foot with a little pressure. It was a jerky start to the test drive as we now had to get used to a new "sweet" spots on the pedal. The van drove like a dream aside from that. We raced up and back along the main street and there was no sputtering, delays or chugging in 'Nilla's performance. The fuel problem had finally been solved. Yeah! With success at last, we were relieved that we no longer had to worry about whether the van would even make the driving distance of the next town.
 
It was another piping hot day and we had little to do. With the repair done, we planned to cross the border into Honduras the following day. This meant that we needed to eat most of the food in the fridge that is not allowed across most borders, which are generally fruits, vegetables, meats, eggs and dairy. Michael whipped up some 'everything but the kitchen sink' type meals from the bits and pieces in the refrigerator. The meals were actually palatable. The afternoon heat was magnified after cooking in the van and it used all the strength we could muster to pull out the bed to take an afternoon siesta. There was really no sleeping happening as it was much too hot, so we decided to watch the Spiderman III movie that we had picked up from a street vendor a few days back. When we started the movie we realized that some guy in the theatre was actually taping the movie from a camera at his seat. Wow, our first experience with piracy. Let it be known, that pirated movies are the worst we have ever seen. The camera captured people standing up, the shoulder of the guy in front of the videographer and even the sounds of shuffling feet and crowd laughter. It was a horrible quality video as the camera man was not centered in the theatre so the picture looked as if it moved from the left side way over to the right side. The images on the screen were slightly stretched and distorted. We could have saved ourselves the $2 and the headache of watching this crappy video if we had realized that Spiderman III was just now being released into theatres. We figured the movie was older that that. Oops! For the record, we do not condone piracy and after seeing a movie for ourselves, we caution anyone from buying them if not for the sheer garbage quality. We lounged around the entire afternoon and evening in Puerto Barrios as there was not much else to do. Bedtime was early as we were expecting to get up early the next morning to hit the Honduran border.