Livingston and Rio Dulce

Greg:

After our stint of island living in Roatan and Utila, Shana and I made our way back to Guatemala, specifically to the Atlantic coast town of Livingston. Yeah, I know, sounds really Guatemalan, right! Livingston is predominantly a Garifuna community: meaning that it is people by former plantation slaves in from St. Vincent, a British-owned Carribean island, who were moved to Livingston and Roatan when freed. For this reason, the culture is very Carribean, english is commonly spoken, and the majority of people are black. Makes for a fascinating mix.

Our trip to Livingston was an adventure. We woke up at 5am and ended up needing 14 hours and 7 modes of transportation (not counting a fair bit of walking) to get there: a hour long ferry to La Ceiba, a cab to the bus terminal, a 3 hour bus to San Pedro Sula, a micro bus to Puerto Cortez, a chicken bus to the Honduras-Guatemala border, another micro bus to Puerto Barrios, and finally a white knuckle boat ride in the dark, in big waves, to Livingston.

While in Livingston, we explored the Garifuna culture, by which, of course, I mostly mean the cooking. The highlight was a seafood coconut milk and corriander soup (can´t remember the name). We also took a long hike to the ¨7 Altars¨, a series of beautiful waterfalls in the jungle a little ways from town. The waterfalls formed some awesome pools to swim in ... seeing a pattern here?).

After 2 nights in Livingston, we took a boat tour down the Rio Dulce to the town of Rio Dulce. The ride there, which mostly consisted of a protected park, was absolutely gorgeous. It reminded Shana of the mei-kong river in Laos, especially the way the jungle started at the very banks of the river. On the way, we stopped at a textiles cooperative, a hot springs (no, we are not getting tired of these), a bird island, and flower covered bay. We had a chance to also see manatees and fresh water dolphins, but they never showed their faces.

In Rio Dulce, we stayed in a ridiculously nice hotel on the river (right at the opening of a large lake). This place would be a 4 star resort in the States, but we got a room for about $7.50 each. We slept in a large, two level, open air cabanna, which was connected to every thing else by small boardwalks. The hotel had a great place to dive into the river, kayaks, a living room with pool table and library, a good restaurant, and the World´s Best Pina Coladas of all time! No kidding! Another nice perk were the showers, which were hands down the nicest and hottest we´ve had in Central America, which I guess is not saying that much.

On our second day in Rio Dulce, we visited the Finca El Paraiso (¨Paradise Plantation¨). This whole area is famous for its banana plantations. This is where United Fruit, now Chiquita, and Dole really started out big ... partly leading to the US led coup in Guatemala in ´54. The term ¨Banana Republic¨ was probably coined for this area. We could say that we visited the Finca to learn about the socio-economic conditions and effects of the banana trade, but really we were mostly attracted by the enormous hot water waterfall on the grounds.