Choose another map, showing:

• Mexico (South)
• Mexico
• The Caribbean
• Transatlantic
• The World

Other entries in Lívingston

Early bus to Rio Dulce, boat to Livingston

We wake up to the alarm at the unearthly time of 4.50am and struggle to get out of bed. The sun was about to come up and the lake looked very pretty and calm. There were groups of joggers working up a sweat before dawn (crazy). We pack up, stumble out and watch the sunrise from the downstairs balcony.

A tuktuk driver comes for us to take us to Santa Elena bus terminal. It was amusing watching him trying to squeeze our oversize backpacks into his tiny tuktuk! At the terminal we hop onto the bus to Rio Dulce. The rest of the journey is just pure exhaustion! The bus stops frequently to let people on and off. A toilet stop costs me Q2 which is more expensive than Victoria station! We have a nice stash of tortillas, beans and chilli for breakfast so we have a munch. The journey takes on the following shape: snooze, wake up, snooze, wake up...

Eventually we arrive late, hot, sweaty and dehydrated into Rio Dulce. As soon as you are off the bus people are in your face about the boat to Livingston. The company in Rio Dulce have an expensive lancha (boat) you can take to Livingston for Q125 which is around $25. Unfortunately it is the only option from Rio Dulce so you are backed into a corner really, unless you feel like another 2 hours on a hot cramped bus to Puerto Barrious and take the cheap ferry across at 5pm. We discuss this over a liquiado and a pretty poor immitation of a coffee and decide the rip off boat is best for us as we cant face another bus journey! We pay for the tickets and go to the nearby restuarant for lunch to perk us up. The restuarant is fantastic. We have a very good prawn ceviche and the best fillet of seabass grilled in garlic sauce that I have tasted. The beer and liquiado do very well too. Rio Dulce does have a positive point :-)

The boat leaves (late of course) and we take a 'scenic tour'. The boat stops and hovers around Fillipes 'Castle' which is a piss poor immitation of a castle, if you want to see a castle go to Europe! The other boat passengers seem particulary excited by this which I find quite amusing. We see lots of birds hanging out in Mangroves and we stop some hot pools.  The hot pool stop presents my first smell of coco pan (coconut bread) which makes my mouth water. Coco pan is a speciality of Livingston so I'm looking forward to my first taste there.

We arrive in Livingston rather late, the boat had difficulty starting again after the hot pools, and we all started to wonder if we would be stuck on the river overnight :-). We make the short walk to Casa La Iguana and stay in one of their cabanas (overpriced Q150, full of cockroaches (and I mean FULL), the bed is unconfortable and the painting in the bathroom is just plain creepy!). To tired to move anywhere else we sign up for dinner and head out to rehydrate and look around.

Livingston seems like an interesting place. It has a nice laid back atmosphere and carribean feel. The population is a mixture of Guatemalan and Garifina culture. We try Coco pan ( delicious light, fluffy and a mild taste of coconut) and puposas (pancake stuffed with cheese, beans, salsa and hot sauce). Puposas are traditionally a El Salvador speciality but have made it to Livingstone and taste really good. The puposa lady is very friendly and says she is here every night, great news for us!

We stroll back to our hostel with the sun setting for a dinner of prawns (quite nice but I mistake the salad dressing for some nice sauce and douse the beautiful grilled prawns in liberal lashings of the stuff) and beers. We have a good chat with fellow travellers Tom and Joe cool dude Londoners with great sences of humour and we play a quiz game. This was all good fun until our team won and all except us got tasty shots because we 'hadn't signed up' What a shame, put a bit of a dampner on the night. What a poor show and poor welcome that was from Casa La Iguana. The rain has also started to pelt down so we head back to the cabina for a rest.

Photos / videos of "Early bus to Rio Dulce, boat to Livingston":