30 hours in Guatemala
Thursday 31 March - We finally spotted Guatemala around 5.30am this morning – Guatemala is derived from the Indian word Quauhtemallan which means Land of Trees - and pulled into the settlement of Livingston around 8.00am.
We were keen to get going as we only had a day here so got into the dinghy and went into town to clear Customs and Immigration – we had read that the Customs Officer, Raoul Velez, was very helpful, and indeed he was. He went through our papers and instructed us to go back to the boat and that the Officers would come in 10 minutes to do the inspection.
Off we went and yes, the customs boat arrived, with no less than 5 people and their skipper, to do our inspection. This consisted of two of them chatting on their iPhones, two sitting down doing nothing and the fifth person, the one and only Raoul, checking out the engines for serial numbers and that was it! We were told all we had to do was go back at 2.30pm to pick up all our documents – and pay them some money – called Quetzales here!
We took the dinghy back to the wharf and set about looking around the small town – it’s very poor but we found it to be very colourful and vibrant, all the little stalls selling your day-to-day household products, clothes and fruit and vegetables.
On our walk to the top of the hill, we were approached by a black Carib by the name of Philip Flores, dressed like a Rastafarian. He told us he was a Garifuna, a village leader, and a teacher. The Garifuna are the original inhabitants of the Caribbean Sea, and there are around 12,000 of them in Livingston. In fact, the history of the area is complex. It involves principally the Mayan peoples who wandered down here in 2500 BC.
Their heyday seems to have been from 250 AD to 900 AD. There are a number of remains of Mayan villages scattered around the Yucatan Mexican Peninsula, Guatemala and Belize . It is said that the largest of them had over 75,000 inhabitants. They developed from a hunter and gatherer people to agriculture and village living. It seems that many of the pirates (mainly British) settled the area presently known as Belize as the Aztec gold reduced in the 1700’s. They cut mahogany timber and exported it to Europe. To assist in the work of cutting the rainforests and recovering the timbers, African slaves were brought in from Jamaica. The Spanish conquered the whole area in 1522 with superior power. So now the area is really made up of the original Mayan, Black descendants of the slaves and Carib Indians who originally populated most of the Caribbean islands.
Philip asked us if we would like to see where all the Garifuna people lived in the town. Sadly, it seems that the town is split in two – at the top of a steep hill in the middle of the town there was almost a division, the Spanish on one side and the Garifuna on the other. The difference was astonishing on the black Carib side, very run-down, almost derelict houses leading to the beach on the seaside and exposed to all the hurricanes, buildings destroyed by them and never rebuilt. As Philip said, it is their version of apartheid. It was quite an eye opener.
Back in town we walked – and walked – to the Happy Fish restaurant which we were told was the best place for lunch – by the time we found it we were dying of thirst and exhausted with the heat, but it was a great recommendation. We sat on the virandah over-looking the Rio Dulce and had a delicious lazy lunch in the breeze. It was very authentic and the whole place was built using Guatemalan Swietenia Mahagoni, including all the furniture. We hailed down a tuk-tuk taxi for our return – they whizz about all over the bumpy streets, like rides on a track in a fun-fare, careering around corners and amazingly missing each other, it was quite fun really and a lot quicker than walking in the 33 degrees heat.
This afternoon was a real treat. Back in the boat we sailed part-way down the Rio Dulce, it was magnificent. Towering limestone cliffs covered in thick jungle, dense walls of tropical green foliage, the river itself a beautiful shade of jade green – and hardly anyone else around except for the odd fisherman in his homemade canoe (cayuco).
It was a wonderful experience, so peaceful with the most exotic smell of a sort of sweet, earthy compost with pelicans, toucans and cranes swooping in and landing around the boat. Apparently, it was used as the location for the “New Adventures of Tarzan” TV series and it’s easy to see why. We cruised about 6 miles until we reached El Golfete, a large lake and we anchored just in time to sit on the deck and enjoy a G&T watching the sunset. What a jam-packed and interesting day we have had!
Friday 1 April – We woke up in the still of this morning to the most beautiful bird song and interesting jungle noises. We took the dinghy through some little waterways near where we are moored, through large clumps of water lilies which from a distance look like little islands, mostly white but we were lucky enough to also spot some beautiful dark pink ones too.
Breakfast at El Viajero, a riverside restaurant at the entrance to El Golfete – pancakes with sugar and fresh limes for me and a more traditional Garifuna breakfast for Geoff – yes, he's far more adventurous than me! A few lovely photos and then off to discover a small part of the Rio Dulce National Park which gave us a taste of the jungle, some dark caves to see stalagmites – another test for me, slippery underfoot and very dark and eerie, the sign said that the bats slept during the day and the huge spiders were not poisonous (thankfully I didn’t notice any of either although maybe that was because I was too busy trying to cope with my claustrophobia at the time!).
Then finally a visit to the natural sauna cave in which I was keen to immerse my arthritic knees in the very hot, 41 degree Celsius mud. Don’t worry, I could see daylight all the time I was going down the ladder! Now back on Salanjo and preparing to make our way back down the Rio Dulce and out to sea to start our overnight journey to Belize City.
So just like that – our stay in Guatemala is over but given the time restraint we did pack in a whole heap of different experiences.
Belize beckons!