Lucie & Rhys´s Honeymoon Adventure: Week 45 - Rio Dulce, Livingston, Placencia (Guatemala, Belize)

After a relaxed breakfast of banana cake and coffee at Finca Ixobel we packed up and walked the 15 minutes to the main road. After an hour we were still sitting at the road side in sweltering heat waiting for a bus. We soon got fed up waiting and ended up flagging a tuk-tuk to take us into Poptun town where we found a bus to Rio Dulce, glad to be on the move at last. It only took a couple of hours before we reached the town. It’s not the most attractive place, just a dusty town lined with market stalls on the edge of Lago de Izabel, the largest lake in the country.

After tracking down some insect repellent we found our way to a bar on the river where they called ahead to our hostel, Casa Perico for a boat to come and collect us. The hostel was perfect, about 1km from the town tucked away in a little side branch of the river and built on wooden walkways over marsh among the trees. By the time we got there it was late afternoon so we just kicked back and enjoyed the atmosphere. Just after dusk Rhys spotted their pet kinkajou climbing up one of the tables, i’ve never seen anything so adorable, like a miniature bear, all fluffy and playful, until you picked him up that is, he was a biter and had extraordinarily sharp teeth - that didn’t stop us playing with him though.

The next morning we headed out on the hostel boat back to Rio Dulce and jumped in a micro to take us 25km around the lake to Finca El Paraiso, the location of one of the country’s most curios natural phenomena. One of the guys working at the Finca met our bus and walked us down to the waterfalls. We changed quickly and jumped in. It was like a natural spa, there’s a waterfall, not a huge waterfall but impressive enough and it’s hot, the water tumbling down into a cold water pool underneath. It was so relaxing to sit under the falls with your legs in the cool pool surrounded by forest. We stayed for just over an hour, long enough for Rhys to climb and jump off the falls, before heading back to the road. The guy working there stood with us and put us on a micro 7km further around the lake to the Boqueron canyon. Along with another couple we jumped in a little boat with a local guy for a short 30 minute paddle through the canyon, it was so peaceful, the vertical canyon walls were up to 250m high in some places and you could hear howler monkeys echoing through the gorge. After the boat trip we caught a micro back to Rio Dulce and grabbed a cheap lunch to eat on the jetty before popping into the bar again to call the boat to come and pick us up to take us back to the hostel.

We had booked a 1pm boat to pick us up from Casa Perico and take us to Livingston the next day so we had the morning to relax, watching the reflection of the flickering light on the trees around the hostel and the hoards of turtles who lived under the wooden gangways. Our boat was about an hour late but eventually it turned up and we were on our way. Although it was hailed as a ‘tour’ it wasn’t really anything more exciting than a water taxi ride, we took 5 minutes to stop and admire some lilypads and a 20 minute break at a little restaurant with a random hot water spring before pulling into the pier at Livingston. We headed straight to Casa Rosada, a hostel we’d seen advertised everywhere and luckily got the last room. Livingston is so different to everywhere else in Guatemala, it’s reachable only by boat and has a large Garifuna population and a real Caribbean vibe. The Garifuna trace their heritage back to two Spanish ships wrecked in the Eastern Caribbean in 1635, carrying slaves from Nigeria to America. Although we didn’t love the village itself, it’s abit scruffy and has abit of an edge to it, we had another great hostel and happily whiled away the evening and the next day reading/playing on the computer/drinking rum and chilling in the hammocks in the little hut at the end of the pier over the water.

The first night in Livingston we ended up in a nearby restaurant for pizza with a couple we’d met on the boat. As a storm rolled in we ended up getting trapped and staying there drinking hoping the rain would stop, in the end we just had to make a run for it. The next day we didn’t venture far from the hostel. That night I ate alone at the hostel and had a local specialty seafood soup called tapado. It came with a whole crab, prawns and a whole fish, it took an age to wade through it all.

We were up early to leave Livingston and Guatemala for a water taxi to Puerto Barrios 30 minutes away. Once there one of the guys working at the port took us to a little ticket office 5 minutes away where we bought our ticket to Punta Gorda in Belize and then directed us to immigration. We then had a couple of hours to wait until the boat left. There’s not much near the port in Puerto Barrios and after a smoothie there was nothing to do but wait. Finally the boat arrived and along with every other gringo in town (and even then there was only 20 of us) we boarded ready to cross in to Belize. We were sad to leave Guatemala, I think we would both agree it has been our favourite country so far. It’s cheap, the people are so friendly and it is stunningly beautiful.

The boat ride was an experience in itself. The sea was far from choppy but we still got bounced about in the little boat on the open water and were pretty glad when we got into port. Immigration was pretty easy and we managed to catch a 12 noon bus directly to Independence from where we caught the Hokey Pokey water taxi to Placencia, our first stop. It turned out most people on our boat were stopping in Placencia too and we’ve been bumping in to them for the last couple of days. We checked in to yet another great hostel, Lydias Guesthouse, where everything is sparkly clean and we have a view of the Caribbean sea from the veranda outside our room. As it was baking hot when we arrived our first priority was a swim. We headed to the beach and were a little disappointed to see that the storms had brought in a lot of seaweed scattered all across the coarse granular sand. We walked to the end, had a dip in a sheltered bit of the cove with less seaweed and wandered back to the hostel along the ‘sidewalk’ a concrete path that runs through the centre of the village and acts as the main thoroughfare lined with brightly coloured wooden hotels, bars, touristy shops and tour offices.

The village is very ‘americanised’, English is the first language in Belize, the first country in 10 months where we can understand everyone and it’s abit overwhelming, you can read all the signs, chat with the locals and understand all the conversations you can overhear. As an ex-British colony you can buy all kinds of home comforts in the grocery stores, in the three days we’ve been here we’ve had salt and vinegar Pringles, Dr Pepper, baked beans and corn beef! It feels like we’re on holiday everything just suddenly got alot easier but less of an adventure at the same time.

Our first full day in Placencia we headed to a sandy spit for a couple of hours and Rhys made friends with a local kid who was fishing off the pier. After buying his own reel, hooks and a bag of prawns he spent the next couple of hours with the kid fishing. We wandered back to the hostel for lunch then headed back out again to walk along the beach in the other direction before heading back to the spit for Rhys to fish and for me to read on the beach and swim.

The next day was much the same, Rhys bought some smaller hooks and more prawns and spent a couple of hours fishing off the pier with far more success than the previous day, catching over 20 fish of different types. After lunch at the hostel I left Rhys on the computer and went back to the beach where he joined me later for a swim before heading back to the pier for more fishing. There are loads of trips you can do from here but they’re all pretty expensive and to be honest we’re enjoying just sitting around relaxing in the sun and it is so so hot that the thought of going for a long walk or a bike ride/kayak isn’t all that appealing.