It Was Not An Auspicious Beginning

 

It was not an auspicious beginning. 

 

After driving south for 2 days from Cleveland, and arriving at Tarpon Springs on the west coast of Florida, I was full of optimism. I had a week at my disposal and a plan of how to use it.

 

The launch ramp area was clearly meant for trailered boats, with long parking spaces specifically designated for them. I, on the other hand, had car-topped my sailing canoe and didn't belong in those spaces. Then I noticed a peculiar sign: '7 days parking for guests of boaters'. And who was to know whether I was guest or boater? Or both? I parked there.

 

It had taken me several hours to get my gear stowed in the sailing canoe, as I struggled to fit 7 gallons of fresh water aboard. In mid afternoon I set sail for Anclote Key, a barrier island some 4 miles west of my launch. 

 

I landed at Anclote in time to set up camp and enjoy dinner and a hazy sunset, soon overtaken by clouds. 

 

Clouds? I checked the forecast. A storm front was sweeping eastward across the southern states, expecting to hit the Gulf Coast of Florida in the wee hours of the morning. As it transpired, Anclote's beach made for a good place to camp and wait out the next day's storm.

 

And so, instead of lazily sailing to the horizon, I was holed up on that sand beach, confined to my little 1-1/2 man tent for 24 hours in continuous heavy rain. In those 24 hours I only managed to get outside for 15 minutes during a rare lull in the storm. I kept a large jar of peanut butter and some flat bread handy under my tent fly, as well as a water bottle and a pee bottle. I needed them all.

 

Late February after a knee replacement and a colder than expected winter in Cleveland, I was eager to see a part of the Florida coast I'd overlooked. And take my solo sailing canoe, Chicken of the Sea, along for the ride.

 

Browsing Google maps and the heavily developed west coast of Florida, I didn't expect to see anything that resembled a week-long sailing opportunity. At least not my kind, a camping trip from island to island.

 

West of the developed cities of Tarpon Springs, Dunedin and Clearwater, were the large barrier islands: Honeymoon Beach, Caledesi Island and Anclote Key. State parks all. Day use parks. And except for one spot on the north end of Anclote Key, camping was forbidden.

 

But, as I looked at the map in more detail, I saw these funny looking little dots in the bays between the mainland and the barrier islands, all lined up in a row and roughly equidistant from each other.

 

Nature provides for large barrier islands, but not for tiny islands neatly arrayed in a row. I looked on satellite view. These were islands with greenery and small sand beaches. Maybe 20 of them in all; more than half with what appeared to be good beach landings. And flat ground to camp above the beaches.

 

They were very small, perhaps, 1/4 to 1/3 of an acre. A modest suburban plot. But they were uninhabited, mostly unnamed and occasionally visited for picnics by passing motorboats, as I could see from the satellite view. I could make out the color of the boat's shade canopies, what appeared to be an outrigger canoe and even the beach umbrellas erected by picnickers. You can see this yourself on Google satellite view at its most detailed photo resolution. 

 

There was no information about these islands online. I guessed they were spoil banks, dredgings deposited a long time ago and now grown over with vegetation. And beaches. There is nothing on the islands, including fresh water. I guessed that no one really controlled them. They were mine for the taking. My home for the week. I decided to make the trip and hope for the best.

 

The morning after the storm I awoke to lots of very wet equipment. I hung clothes, towel and my lifejacket on handy bushes to dry in the stiff breeze.

 

Departing mid-morning, I headed out from the protected cove on Anclote Key into a 15 knot downwind breeze from the north west, with all of my 53 sq. ft. sail up. It was a little too much. I reached for my lifejacket...MY LIFEJACKET! I left it to dry back on the beach, and forgot to take it. My 15 minute downwind sail cost me an hour of tough upwind work to reverse. Back to Anclote Key. 

 

With lifejacket and gear in hand, I decided to put a reef in the sail, as well as use my little hand pump to top off my outrigger's inflatable amas. They'd get a hard workout keeping me upright in the open waters ahead.

 

The reefed sail proved the right choice. At 41 sq. ft. of sail area, the boat was moving at perhaps 5 knots, going south at speed. After sailing 4 miles south to clear the southern tip of Anclote Key, there was a gap of some 3 - 4 miles before the next barrier island, the oddly named 3 Rooker Key.

 

With the unobstructed northwest wind pouring through this gap, 2-1/2' waves from the open Gulf of Mexico??(...America?...Canada?....) pushed the canoe from astern. Accelerating on the suge from the waves, we began outrunning them at 6+ knots, the canoe trying to bury its bow in the next wave ahead. I shifted my seat a bit further back and relocated most of the gallon water jugs behind me. It worked, the bow stayed up and I never took solid water aboard.

 

My original plan was to leave Anclote Key and spend most of the week moseying my way south, camping and exploring the little islands, before returning north to my start. But this wind had other ideas, so I just kept flying along, reaching my end point for the trip, a little island just south of the Bellaire bridge, some 25 miles from Anclote Key, in about 4-1/2 hours. I spent the next 5 days moseying my way back, mostly against a gentler version of that northwest wind.

 

Over the course of the return trip, I camped on 3 of the little islands, which offered easy landing beaches, level ground for camping and a reasonable degree of privacy. No one came to challenge my presence, no one bothered me, no one came near except for a few older teens, who, after anchoring their motorboat, waded ashore some distance from me and appeared to make a cooking fire for some fish they had caught. And then they left.

 

My little wide burner stove, which uses butane canisters, did a fine job of heating water for breakfast, and gently boiling the Amish soup mixes I had brought for dinner, one of the only commercial soup mixes I could find that came with little salt. I only had the water I brought along with me to drink and it wouldn't have done me well to develop a fierce thirst from too much salt.

 

Having finished one butane canister, I screwed another one into the stove and...and...nothing. A faulty canister. With 3 days left in the trip. This is where the emergency peanut butter and flatbread rations came in handy for the second time. I'm not much of a fan of peanut butter. After 3 days of it, my dislike approached loathing.

 

By the end of the week I had explored the dazzling white sand beaches of Honeymoon Island and 3 Rooker Key, camped out on one of Honeymoon's beaches and watching a stunning sunset the night that Jupiter, Mercury, Venus & Mars were supposed to be visible to the naked eye on the western horizon. I fell asleep instead.

 

By the following Saturday, I was back at my first campsite on Anclote Key, and, the next morning, an hour's sail in brisk winds brought me back to my Tarpon Springs launch ramp.

 

It was a lovely way to spend a winter week. And it was especially gratifying that a casual glance at an online map would show these little dots and that these little dots would reveal themselves as stepping stones to fine adventure.

How To Make a Mountain

Juan, our erstwhile off-road bicycle trip guide is now our Pacaya volcano climb guide. Juan is like The Man in Jack London's To Build a Fire; "he was quick and alert in the things of life," but unlike The Man, Juan was quick and alert in the significances of these things. Juan told us that he never tired of visiting the Pacaya volcano. One, it was always changing. Out of that came the most compelling appeal of a Pacaya visit: "It was like watching a mountain being made,"says Juan. It was.

Our group started climbing the steep dusty path up, up, up. We stopped for several breaks to catch glimpses of a view and to admire some of the remarkable vegetation.


The forest soon gave way to open terrain and soon we noticed that the "dirt" underfoot has changed character, as well.
The loose lava underfoot had a brittle, crunchy texture. We were told that this lava filled in the former site of a verdant valley. And in fact, the cone that was hikeable only months earlier, now had collapsed into an impressively chaotic pile of scree.

This is what is left of the cone.


Above is the view behind us as we climbed. The immense valley below was home to Guatemala City. We eventually had no choice to walk on fresher lava if we wanted to continue climbing. There was a crude walking path forged for and by tourists. Footing was dicey. The lava was mostly cool. But there were hot spots. They were obvious for the heat that emanated as well as their pale white ashy look. We did not feel we were in any danger, but we were literally walking on an active volcano. We all brushed aside the stray thought that we would not be allowed to do this in the U.S.
We also tried to ignore the occasional acrid scent of burning rubber wafting by. Yes, some of us returned from the trip with loosened shoe soles. I was one of them.
The lava was as sharp as glass shards in places. It crumbled easily in some spots and held as firm as cement in others.
The smoke behind Marty and Mike is from a hot spot.
And where there's smoke, there's...
Fire in the form of fresh, rolling lava; a clumsy molen mass stumbling, hesitating and surging. It was a slow motion gallop of something, an insignificant thing from a distance, but it was liquid rock, rock changing shape and position as simply as us walking up the mountain.
We were witnessing the birth, rebirth, of a mountain.
Marty had joked earlier that we could toast marshmallows, but he was joking. Juan knew otherwise though and surprised us with a bag of fluffy white Guatemalan marshmallows. And a stick.


Just the right spot,
just the right distance,


some hungry climbers,


just the right amount of time;

This is the recipe for a much-appreciated afternoon volcano-side snack!



We made the climb back down and I took these shots to show how steep the path was; like stair steps.


Adios Pacaya!

The Sights and Sounds on Lake Atitlan

This is Lake Atitlan. Mike, our friend (and tour guide) paddled with us across the lake in a couple of our hotel's kayaks. Notice the (lack of) freeboard here... Lake Atitlan is ringed with volcanoes and Mike's backdrop is one of those volcanoes.Here is another paddler we encountered on our lake crossing. His boat was quite literally carved out of a log. All of the local fishermen had such a boat and yes, most paddled standing up in this tippy little craft. Somehow Mike's boat's freeboard issue didn't seem too serious.

This is another very common and very busy Lake Atitlan craft: a shark boat or lancha. Lanchas serve as the public transportation on the lake. They are very efficient, very responsive (just stand and wave on a dock if you want to be picked up) and very inexpensive.

This is the restaurant at our hotel. We ate breakfast here every morning. It was very quiet and peaceful, not to mention beautiful. It has been my goal ever since to turn our front porch into our own version of this idyllic setting. Somehow, though, the piles of snow on the fringes of our porch many months out of the year interfere with this vision!
Below is a very common scene in Guatemala: wild dogs. Though they are not really feral, they seem to be domestic dogs just simply let loose. They were thinnish, but otherwise seemed quite healthy. They did not beg for food, but they were glad (and seemed surprised) for any handout.

No center of population would be complete without graffiti. This may well be the Mayan version of "Heather+ Brandon 4 ever."
Guatemala boasts one of the most intact indigenous populations in all of the world; the Mayans. This alone is enough of a reason to visit. The Mayans are profoundly creative; their textile work is wildly patterned and boldly colored. These petite people are also very hardworking. Everywhere we traveled, the Mayans were busy walking, carrying, hauling. The yound women below are carrying cement blocks to a construction site quite a distance up a hill.


This is a typical lakeside scene above: a concession shack, a little boy, a stray dog sleeping in the shade, a lancha off in the distance.

Here is a tour of our hotel on Lake Atitlan: the Posada Schumann. Above is one sleeping area off our main room and our outdoor patio.
The second floor under the steeply sloped roof (above) slept four more. Another balcony afforded a magnificent lake view. (below)


This is the main building and spectacular grounds of our posada.

This is the view from our (rickety) dock.

Above was my view one morning from our 2nd floor balcony.
This is a view from the trail that leads partially around the lake. This is a house that, during a very heavy spring rain no doubt, slid right off its site into a new canyon. Guatemala has a very serious problem with deforestation and resulting erosion. In fact, the main city on Lake Atitlan, Panajachel (PAHN-ah-ah-CHELL) -no longer has the use of its sewage treatment plant. It now sits in an adjacent canal, useless. "There is no money to fix it," the locals told us. A big pipe now spews sewage into Lake Atitlan near their lancha dock. It's a big, deep lake.


Poinsettias grow "like weeds" next to the trail.

Speaking of the lake trail, the main transportation route between several of the lakeside towns, here is Marty posing on one particularly adventurous section.
Here is the main trail again. Corn was planted everywhere it could and beyond.
This is the main drag in the main town, Panajachel. The tiny three wheeler taxicabs skirted and darted through traffic. There were lots of booths,tables and storefronts bursting with all types of exotically colored items from gaily patterned textiles, scarves, skirts, shoulder bags, rugs, bedspreads, blanket, jewelry, paintings, tablecloths, hotpads, and greeting cards. It was an absolute delight to shop here. The prices were embarrassingly inexpensive and the Mayans were unfailingly polite and graceful. Young women paraded regally by with their headpieces of cheery, folded fabric wares for sale.

The Picture Frame Maker

This is a picture frame studio just outside of Antigua, Guatemala. It was very tiny and staffed (owned?) by a young and very friendly man. He spoke little, or no, English but was very flattered by my interest in his hand carved and gilded small mirror frames.








These are the four snapshot size mirror frames I bought from him. The gold is an especially mellow antique gold.