Livingston I presume....? (January 19 - 20 2010)

Gill had woken up today and announced that enough was enough - for too long she had lived with smelly pillows, damp rooms, mildewed bathrooms and no hot water. She insisted on the best available in Rio Dulce like it or not!! So we get there, and long story short, we end up in the cheapest place we have stayed in all trip – less than £5 a night including private bathroom – but even though there are hot and cold taps in the bathroom, the important one never did work…..

All the guide books say that Rip Dulce town was a bit of a dump – but maybe we’ve been on the road too long as we like it here! Yes it’s scruffy, but people are kind and it has a good vibe. It’s original name is Fronteras and it does have a bit of a “frontier“ feel as you walk down the one main street. We have felt this a lot in eastern Guatemala, in stark contrast to the Mayan highlands where there is an edge. So we check into our little gem of a hotel the Paraiso Tropical, just up the hill from the river and under the 3.5km bridge. The local Mr Fixit, Captain Caesar, stopped us as we were walking there and offered us a private boat jungle tour of the local river area and off we went. We were expecting the area to be the back of beyond, and yes it is fairly remote, but we have been amazed at the amount of money sitting on slipways in the form of huge gin palaces worth millions. Little hotels and private houses are tucked away up little inlets and apart from the jungle foliage, you could be in Cornwall. We were then taken to a place on the lake for swimming which we were informed was “very clean” – Ant’s view was yes it must be, they are all doing their laundry in it! And yes, there were all the locals, bathing and doing the laundry – suds everywhere! The afternoon was rounded off with us all being taken to a restaurant on the river – only accessible by boat, where we indulged in a sundowner of huge glasses of not very good wine – quantity over quality ruled the day! But it got our creative juices going and the four of us conceived of and developed a new tv series – “Backpacker Wars” (Channel Four take note…..) where teams of backpacker children are pitted against teams of backpacker pensioners……

There is huge romance about going somewhere by river boat and which is only accessible by water, The stretch of water between Rio Dulce town and the sea is Rio Dulce proper (linking the Caribbean to Lago Izaba)l. The little water taxi speed boats make the journey to the river mouth in an hour, ours did some wending and took two, which gave us all the more time to admire the jaw dropping jungle clad banks and cliffs, cormorants drying their wings, whole egrets, acres of water lilies, kids in small dugouts coming alongside selling shells. As salt water got closer huge flocks of pelicans swooned around us and then we could say those immortal words – ‘Livingston I presume?’

Livingston was a charming, colourful little Caribbean town, and not the tatty little place as described by LP, so yet again we were pleasantly surprised. We walked up the hill to the top of town and enjoyed a really happy couple of hours chewing the cud with Christine and Rick with some rums, beers and Ant had a local garifuna seafood and coconut soup ( yummy). It was all too soon as it was time to say farewell. I am sure that we will all meet up again, as they are great travelling companions and we had tonnes of fun. So Christine and Rick if you are reading this – salud y muchos gracias, hasta luega!!

The return trip was much quicker and we spent our final night at Rio Dulce getting the laptop fixed for less than £4, eating smoked pork chops at Bruno’s ( like bacon – why hadn’t we had these before?) and reminiscing about our trip.