Livingston

Friday morning, at 10:15 Guatemala time (around 11am according to my cellphone), we started the long journey to Livingston.

After driving for probably 5 or 6 hours, we arrived in Rio Dulce, a medium sized pueblo on Rio Dulce. We stretched our legs for a few minutes and then piled into a boat and headed for Livingston. It started out as a beautiful, relaxing boat ride, but it wasn't long before a storm came rolling in off the Caribbean. The driver of the boat was in a hurry to get through the storm, so we went really fast, and the rain stung our faces - haha!

Ann-Marita and I were in the front of the boat and we got destroyed! We were bouncing over the wind-whipped waves for about an hour! When we reached our destination, it felt like someone had been repeatedly smacking me in the butt with a shovel for the entire journey!

Anyway, we stopped near Livingston where we were staying for the night. It was basically a few huts along the river complete with thatched roofs and mosquito nets. When we pulled up to the dock, there were a bunch of little girls diving into the water, and after we got settled in our room, Jeremy and I threw on our trunks and headed to the dock. I jumped in where the girls had been diving to discover that the water was only about 4 feet deep! Cut my feet up on the riverbed when I landed ...

The water, it turns out, smelled pretty foul. But, when you ducked under the surface, you could hear what I assumed were dolphins squeaking and squealing to each other! Later, however, our guide informed us that the dolphins aren't around this time of year. So now I'm thinking it was manatees! Evidently they're all over the place in Livingston.

Livingston is a interesting place. It's very small, and it's only reachable by boat. There are lots of people who live outside the city along the river and use boats to travel to and from the city. The population is also a mix of Latino, Maya, and Garifuna peoples. Garifuna people are the descendants of Caribbean slaves and evidently live along much of the Caribbean coast of Central America - especially in Belize. Gotta be honest, it was nice to see some black people again.

There are lots of large sailboats and catamarans in Livingston. I was told it's a fairly popular harbor for people who live on boats and cruise around the Caribbean.

Following a short break, our group boated across the river to Livingston for dinner. One of the frustrations I experience with these tours is how they choose which restaurants to take us to. We went to a restaurant owned by our boat driver's tour company. It was about twice the price it should've been and the food was just ok. But the guides get free dinner when they bring a group there, so that's where we ate.

Erin and Sarah ordered some kind of crazy soup that contained a whole fish, a whole crab, and probably ten whole camarones (shrimp). Sarah couldn't handle eating something with a face, but Erin dug in! I had the fried shrimp - complete, of course, with heads and legs - con papas fritas (french fries).

Shortly after dinner, the power went out ... in all of Livingston. For probably an hour, it continued to turn off and on (mostly off) intermittently. Pretty crazy.

Back at our huts (we occupied three) we had several encounters with wildlife that night. In the hut I shared with Jeremy, I found a tree frog clinging to the inside of our shower curtain!

In one of the ladies' huts, there was a scorpion! They killed it with Courtney's shoe ... not sure who the executioner was though ...

In the other ladies' hut, they were attacked by a giant spider ... supposedly. Evidently, Erin killed it with a metal pole, but the story keeps changing. At first it was a tarantula, then it wasn't a tarantula, but some kind of bigger spider. There are no actual pictures of the spider, but they claim they killed it ... the only thing this story needs is for the ladies to claim that they had a burial at sea - then the parallel to the killing of Osama would be complete :)

It was super hot that night. Even with the cooling effect that the rain had I was still sweating all night :)

Stay tuned for day two of our journey!