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.