After all the excitement of getting into the river it's time to make our way slowly up river to find our new home, which is to be Marina Tortugal about 20miles from the river mouth, close to the small town of Fronteras.   Just the bridge and power cables to limbo under on the way.  Actually there's plenty of room, but it never looks like it and is always a good time to let Lindy helm whilst Barry goes below to put his head under a pillow!
	Tortugal turned out to be an excellent choice.  Just as well as we'd be leaving Samarang here when we went back to Europe.   It's a really well run marina where they do everything they say they will do and everything possible to make your stay faultless.  That includes cleaning, dehumidifying, battery checking, etc when you're not there.  A lot of this is down to having excellent staff who are all prepared to go the extra mile.  A special mention goes to Byron the dock manager who makes even the difficult things seem easy.
A bit about Guatemala and Fronteras, it’s the poorest country in Central America with little education available for the poor and not much help on the horizon.  It also has the highest proportion of indigenous people of any Latin American country.  In spite of the fact that they have been roundly persecuted over the years, but none the less the result does seem to be a race of tiny attractive people who almost exude friendliness.  Fronteras really is a like a frontier town – cowboy boots and Stetsons for the guys, traditional garb for the girls and almost no-one over 5 feet tall.  There also seem to be babies everywhere (they’re even smaller of course) - the birth rate is high, the mothers young, but the children do seem well looked after, either by the mother or by someone in the extended family.  One reason for the cowboy garb is that there are actually rather a lot of cows.  These are mostly seen aboard huge two story transporters crawling along Fronteras's narrow main street.  Always worth jinking down an alley when one of them passes - these cows are never constipated!

 

Well that's enough of Central America for a while,  Samarang was safely put to bed and we were off to the UK to see family and friends and for some serious shopping!