Rio Dulce and Livingston

We decided to use Rio Dulce as our gateway to Honduras and the Bay Islands and since we were already there and not quite ready to give up Guatemala yet we spent a few days exploring the area. 

We Stayed at the Kangaroo Hostel, owned by Gary from Noosa. He actually knew where Bilo was. It was a pretty cool place with a bit of a jungle feel, some dogs and local wildlife. It was also the first time we've seen any Bundy Rum on this continent but sadly it was too expensive to have a drink, imported all the way from Australia. 

Some of the local Wildlife - An Iguana 

One of the Dogs we got to hang out with

With our first day in Rio Dulce we decided to take Gary's advice and check out a local waterfall and canyon, he sells the day pretty well. Apparently it's the only hot waterfall in the world and it was pretty damn cool. You swim up to it and the river is pretty cold and then you get under the waterfall and it's hot, finding a rock to chill out on under the falls is amazing (doubly amazing when you go a while without a warm shower). We're pretty sure that it was volcanic activity that made it hot. You can climb up to the top of the waterfall and relax in some hot pools - really hot pools.We were quite red when we got out of them. After the waterfall we caught a collectivo down the road to explore a canyon, where at one point the boat dumps you and if you want to explore any further (which we were told we should) you have to swim/walk up current - a fun, sometimes painful challenge.

The waterfall - you can see the steam

And we saw this cool little pig

The Collectivo we wanted to catch to the canyon was full - no problem, we'll just chuck the guys on the roof

The Canyon

Day 2 was a day trip to Livingston. We were originally planning to try and get to Honduras via Livingston until a cheap option from Rio Dulce presented itself. Gary had also told us that Livingston is a "shithole".We were still curious to check it out though as it's completely different to the rest of Guatemala. It's only accessible via boat and is the only place in Guatemala where the Garifuna people (Descendants of Africans brought to the New World as slaves. Their roots can be traced to Roatan (one of the Bay Islands in Honduras) where the British dumped them. They then spread out on the Caribbean Coast) have settled. To get to Livingston was a 2 hour boat ride where they stopped and showed us a few of the local sites. When we pulled up to the pier in Livingston we were greeted with wide arms, a grin and "Welcome to Africa!". Livingston didn't disappoint on the being different front, being surrounded by Jamaican sounding accents. We didn't do much here and there really wasn't a whole lot to see. We walked around town, got a frozen choco banana, looked at the uninspiring beach and tried a local delicacy - Topado. 

The first stop on the little tour was this funny little castle

Lillie Pads on the River

Livingston

Topado - fish, crab, prawns, plantain and coconut milk. Very fiddly to eat and the fish eat with the burnt out eyes is a little off putting but it was actually delicious!