Renewing the Visa -- A week-long Journey. Days 1 & 2

Thursday, we left Santiago Atitlán at 6:15 am, flagging down the bus a few hundred meters from where we sleep. We woke up at 5:15, breakfasted on coffee and corn flakes and whizzed out to the road. The bus came within a few minutes.

$3.75 each to get to Guatemala City, arriving at 10 am at the new station. Outside, we found a cab. He wanted Q60 ($7.50) to go downtown, but we got him to drop to Q50. He promptly took the taxi sign off the roof, and we drove on. A block later the police stopped us. They talked with him and reviewed his papers before approaching us -- "You're foreigners, right? Do you know this man?" they asked.

"No, we're just taking a taxi to the Litegua station downtown."

The talk went on. You have to be careful to get a legitimate taxi. You'll know them because they have a sign on top. Many people want to rob tourists and pretend to have a taxi service.

Of course I've heard these horror stories for years. I hadn't been very careful. Anyhow, his history was clean, and the police said there should be no trouble riding with him. I more or less knew the way, so I kept an eye on our route, which was uneventful. We got to the Litegua station, and bought tickets to go to Rio Dulce, about 5 hours away, for Q60 each.

Your tourist visa is good for 3 months. To renew it, you can spend days in line in ugly Guatemala City, or you can leave the CA4 (4 country area of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua) for 3 or more days. Since I really like southern Belize, I want to share that with Geneen and renew the visas at the same time.

While waiting for our bus to leave, we walked around the block and bought lunch: a hot dog for Q6 (75 cents), some tortillas with a chile relleno for Q7 and some outstanding grilled pork with tortillas for Q10. We couldn't eat that many tortillas and left them with some fat in a bag on a bench when we were through in the hope that they would go to good use.

During the long hot bus ride to Rio Dulce we watched some stupid Matt Damon movie where he's a spy with memory loss. It's better in muffled quiet Spanish, but still not worth the effort of lifting your eyes to the screen.

We asked to get off before the bridge (yes, THE bridge. The only way to get up north at all in this aprt of the country. If that bridge goes out, how on earth do you get to Flores? Through Cobán? Yeah, right.) Anyhow, if you walk down under the bridge and all the way to the water, you get to Hotel Backpackers (Q150 double with private bath), which is run by Casa Guatemala. There's a dock for swimming, free internet (so what if it doesn't work? It's FREE!), a great restaurant, and the rooms are like the ones in Thailand in the movie The Beach where you can stand on the bed and look over the wall into your neighbor's room. The rooms are built on a dock that juts out over the river and you can see the water through the cracks in the floor. There is a sheet covering the screen that separates you from the world. The fans in the room keep the environment just barely bearable. After a dinner of fried fish (Q60. Geneen had fried chicken for Q50. I know, but she doesn't eat much seafood), I slept great.



We woke up at 5:30 am since we'd gone to sleep so early. By 6, we were drinking coffee on the dock with music blaring from speakers nearby. We wondered why so many people prefer that to quiet...?

By 9:30 we were on a water taxi heading to Livingston (Q125 each), and that ride is among the highlights of my time in Guatemala. You head through the Golfete, which is wide, and then the Rio Dulce narrows the last few miles before Lívingston.



We saw plenty of neotropic cormorants and white herons, and something the driver called gallina del monte (but my research indicates he should have said Gallito de Pantano, or Northern Jacana).



Some young people in Barra Lámpara wanted to sell us their findings:





In Livingston, we checked in to the Casa Rosada, same price as last night's hotel. Little cabins by the Rio Dulce. The first thing I did was jump in to the water and swim around for a few minutes.

Our mission was street food. I found tortillas and beans with chiles from a toothless Mayan woman for Q1 (12.5 cents) which was pretty filling. I don't know if the giardia or the beans were more filling...

Geneen held out for Garífuna food, which we found on the beach on the other side of the peninsula. Fried fish tail (huge portion!), slices of cabbage, and a whopping portion of some fried dough made of green plantains and (I think) flour. I had to help her eat it, and it is in my top few favorite meals ever. Now, I guess she eats fried fish!



But even better than the food was the location. We sat at a plastic table a feww feet from the water's edge, next to a man asleep in a hammock. A little boy and girl played in the sand. The little girl later decided to comb the sleeping man's hair, which he slept through. A pig ran by. Another came by and stayed for a while until a dog chased it away.



The food cost Q30 and the drinks were Q17 (beer and soda). The chef had to get out a piece of paper to add the 2 numbers. I was happy she got the change right...

We walked a few more kilometers of narrow beach over shells, dead fish, shoes, bits of plastic, discarded vials, fallen almonds and coconuts, passing vultures, pelicans, seagulls, Garífuna, Mayans, Ladinos and white tourists. We arrived at a slightly better beach and swam for a bit. Geneen was starting to get too much sun, and we were hoping to find a taxi back. A few meters from us, people were boarding a boat for a hotel right by ours. The captain agreed to take us for the cost of a cab (Q20, or $2.50, for both), and we were back in a flash!