Rio Dulce Guatemala

Continuing our January Adventures

We enjoyed a full morning in the ruins of Copan and then early afternoon we left and crossed the border back in to Guatemala heading for Rio Dulce (sweet river).  It took us about 4 hours before we got to the little town and crossed over the biggest bridge in Central America.  We had no reservations so we searched the town and didn't find anything promising.  Meadows knew of a resort called Mansion Rio Dulce that friends had stayed at and had given directions to.  It was way out of town on a horrible muddy road and just before we were ready to give up, we found it.  It was well worth the drive and we wished we had more than one night to stay there.  Wish I had some pictures of it cause it was lovely.

 We had breakfast 'a fresco' under thatched roof by the pools.   As we checked out and were driving away down the long driveway to the road, we had a tender mercy.  The security guard at the gate told us we had left a credit card at the desk.  Brannick realized it was his and as we turned around to go retrieve it, we saw an employee running to try to catch us with the card in his hand.  We had no phones on us nor left any address so it would have been impossible to get it back after we left.

We contracted a boat and took off down the river. The river begins at Lake Izabal and is so wide for such a long ways you don't realize you are in a river.

It was so beautiful, peaceful and calm on the river that we just relaxed and enjoyed the trip.

We saw many beautiful sights along the river including this patch of water lilies.

 
We saw lots of these mangroves with their spiny roots going down into the water.  A little creepy!

 This was a large island in the middle of the river where various birds hang out.  Can you spot the beautiful long legged white birds up in the trees?

We saw evidence of people used the river for all sorts of things like this group of ladies doing their laundry.

This family home was quite a ways down the river and the only access they had to shopping or anything like that is by canoe or boat.  We wondered about school for these kids.

This business woman conducted her business on the river by bringing her wares to sell from her canoe right up to the  tourist boats going up and down the river.  

We made a rest stop here at Agua Caliente (hot springs).  I think this was about half way.

We were offered fresh blue crabs which we declined and a trip up the hill to this rustic bathroom which we did appreciate.

The hot springs was actually very hot water that flowed underground from a volcano quite a ways away.  It was really hot right near these rocks and then cooled off as it mixed with the river water.  Very interesting.  We could not even see the volcano.

The river flows into a long narrow lake named El Golfete  and we went through a gorge with steep tree covered walls on either side.

As we neared the mouth of the river we began to see signs of civilization again but this flock of pelicans caught our attention as we came into the port of Livingston where the river emptied into the Caribbean. 

Livingston is part of Guatemala but it sure seemed like we had dropped into Jamica with black ladies in bright colors and tall young men sporting dreadlocks.  What really threw me was that they were all speaking Spanish!

We were admiring this tall skinny dude's long dreadlocks when he decided to share them with Ken, who doesn't have much hair.  He was talking Caribbean English and was part of the colorful street scenes there in Livingston.

We left Livingston and just flew fast back up the river for a short tour of the fort.  At the entrance to Rio Dolce there is a small Spanish colonial fort, the Castillo de San Felipe de Lara, built to stop pirates entering the lake from the Caribbean when this part of Central America was an important shipping staging point.

It started to sprinkle on us as we finished so we fixed and ate our peanut butter sandwiches  in the car and headed north to Tikal, our next adventure.

Exploring Copan, Honduras

Since our temple was closed in January for two weeks and we needed to be out of our apartment for the thorough cleaning of the annex, we decided to go traveling with Ken and Chrys Meadows.  Their kids, the Bradys had been there over Christmas, so we didn't have much time to plan our trip other than the main places we wanted to visit.  We decided that since we didn't know how long we wanted to stay at each of our planned destinations, we would just get our first night's reservations and trust that we could wing it for the rest.

We bought peanut butter, bread, and some snacks and started off on our way on Wednesday, Jan. 7 at 7:00 am.  We crossed the border of Honduras late in the afternoon and then it took us only about 10 minutes to get to Copan which was a quaint little town with narrow cobblestone streets going up and down the hills.

After traveling all day we were glad to get out of the car and walk those streets.  We found our hotel and were delighted that it was even lovelier than described on the internet.

We walked to El Bosque (the forest) which was recommended by our hotel.  This was the meal they brought us to share.  Wow!  What a lot of delicious food!  It was the best beef we had tasted since leaving the states.

This is the patio of our hotel where the next morning they served us breakfast on little tables set up here.  It was lovely with the sound of the birds in the trees and the water in the fountain.

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We walked to the ruins and right away a guide "Tony" attached himself to us.  He was 77 years old and had been a guide there for 40 years.  We were really glad we did as we learned so much more than we would have on our own just walking around.

We learned from Tony that these magnificent Mayan ruins cover a time period from 1000 BC to 8 or 900 AD so there very well could have been some Book of Mormon connections here.  He was actually familiar with the Book of Mormon and had read it.












The carving on the stelas here was magnificent!  They were carvings to honor their rulers and were very detailed all the way round on four sides.
Both of these stelas are of Governor 18 rabbit and there are 6 stela images of him here all intricately carved like these.

Between the four of us adventurers you can see the Mayan ball field like the one we saw in Zaculeu.  They are found in most Mayan ruin sites and are quite well preserved.  We were told that on special occasions they have a ceremonial ball game.  I hope they don't kill the losers as they did anciently!

This old man's head sculpture is one of the most famous and was featured in National Geographic.  This is the monumental head of a bacab, or elder holding the sky.  There were two enormous sculptures at the top of the Great Stairway of one of the temples.  Apparently the body was fractured so badly it could not be reconstructed.  I can't imagine how colossal it would have been!

This is the Hieroglyphic Stairway and is the largest text in the Maya world.  Governor 15 Humo Caracol had this stairway made in the year 753 AD which tells a history of this people.  It was discovered in 1886 and as they tried to reconstruct it they moved some of the steps not realizing they were a text.  The stairway consists of 1250 rock blocks with hieroglyphic inscriptions which have not all been translated yet.

This is what they think it would have looked like in its original form.  Mighty impressive!

This altar with its detailed carvings represents the images of the 16 governors of the Copan dynasty.

There were tunnels under the temples dug by the archaeologists to explore that we could have gone in but since we could see this complete replica in the museum, we opted not to knowing how much Brannick likes tight  confined spaces.

This is a replica in the museum of the Rosalila Temple dated 571 AD  which is found buried under another temple because it is so sacred.  According to archaeologists it represents a mountain and the God of the Sun. The original actually has these bright colors on it.  They have discovered two more large temples buried underneath the Rosalila Temple which are not accessible to the public yet.

Our guide Tony compared Copan to Paris and Tikal to New York City.  The beauty of Copan was in the detailed carving of stelas and small temples but they did not have much height to them as we found in Tikal.




We also enjoyed the beauty of the plants and birds as we spent the morning exploring these amazing ruins.

To the left you see a cacao tree from which our chocolate is made.
The beautiful parrot is one of the many flying around in the treetops among these ancient Maya ruins.

We were so glad that we were able to spend the day with friends and see the sights that we would probably never have been able to see had we not come to serve in Guatemala.