Posted by Hola Bienvenidos! Welcome back! The Samadhi crew is now back in Guatemala awaiting on the completion of our summer long, major refit. Here is a quick recap of our summer in the PNW. We originally planned to live in one of our rental properties however when we arrived in the PNW and learned of the difficulties in finding a place to rent we felt bad for asking our tenant to move out and told them that they could stay and we would find a place to rent for the summer. Ashley’s mom offered to let hurricane Murphy settle upon her home for the summer. And after many warnings of the affects of Hurricane Murphy she insisted we stay with her. In the end it actually worked out perfectly. The kids got lots of time with Nani. Nani got her fill of time with Ashley and I. And Dave got a renewed appreciation for silence again after we left. We also got to spend quality time with my parents and John (Ashley’s dad).
While in the PNW we did some hiking and set a new family speed record to the top of Mt Si (1 hour 31 minutes). We also spent time Mt biking Tiger Mt, Capital Forest, Swan Creek Park and the trails of Black Diamond. Victoria’s obstacle riding ability has officially surpassed mine and has long passed my comfort level watching. Alexander is now able to ride a full size bike and is benefiting from the modern shifting. The kids also participated in a summer cross country team. They ran in 4 different invitationals and preformed well against kids throughout the state. We also ran a half marathon together as a family. I was a little worried about the kids running out of steam on the last 3 miles to I insisted that they run very slow for the first 10 miles. By time I let them run at their own pace at mile 11 they had plenty of energy left in the tank and ran their fastest miles of the run on the last 2. The organizers of the race were amazed that kids this young wanted to run that distance and I think they were questioning why they did not have an age limit for the half marathon like most all other races. It took me a long time to find a race without a listed minimum age for that distance. Normally it is 15 years. Alexander and Victoria had a blast and were very proud of their accomplishment. They now have 13.1 stickers on their laptops!
Overall we had a good summer. I played a lot of pickleball and made some new pickleball friends. Ashley and I added a little money to the cruising kitty with a few side gigs. Grandparents got some time with the kids and before we knew it it was time to head south again. We had many Amazon deliveries for the boat so it was a test of our loading abilities to get it all in the van but we managed. Our van was grossly overloaded and there was absolutely zero room to add anything else and we had to drive 5900km (3500 miles) over 7 days in that configuration. We did take a detour to spend some time with Team H in Lake Tahoe. As is normally the case we had a blast hiking and exploring the mountains around Lake Tahoe. After an eventful weekend we were back on the road heading south. We crossed into Mexico in McAllen TX and headed down the east coast of Mexico. Our trip thru Mexico was beautiful and otherwise uneventful. We crossed into Guatemala in late morning of the seventh day. Check in took a little longer that we thought so we got a little behind schedule. We ended up driving the last 2 hours in the dark. That is not advisable in Guatemala and the windshield of our van is limousine dark tinted. There are very few street lights along the roads we drove so the last two hours were a little on the stressful side. Once we arrived in the town of Rio Dulce all the stress evaporated and we felt great to be back in our favorite country. It took nearly an hour to unload the van’s contents into our hotel and we all slept deeply knowing tomorrow did not require any further travels.
We are now waiting on the work to Samadhi to be completed and plan to leave for Belize shortly after. We sold our car shortly after arriving recouping most of what we paid for it back in June and after driving it over 15000 miles. In the meantime we are trying to enjoy our surroundings (more on that in the next post). The work was supposed to be completed nearly a month ago but oh well. In this area of the world a timeframe must have a lot more wiggle room that most Americans are used to. We could stress about it (and nothing will change) or we can smile and demonstrate patience and understanding of different cultures for our kids. Ashley and I are choosing the latter.
Sailing Samadhi 