Goodbye Xela, hello Rio Dulce

5 p.m. May 2

I had to bid Xela, my home for four months, goodbye yesterday.  It was hard to part from the dingy yet oh-so-lovable city and its friendly citizens, especially my lovely host family.  I’m not saying goodbye to Central America just yet though, because for the next three weeks six friends and I are trekking it from Xela across Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to Costa Rica before heading back to the states.

Today I am in Rio Dulce, tomorrow I will perhaps be in Livingston, the Garifuna haven on the Caribbean coast, before crossing the border into Honduras.  The beauty of our travel plan is that we don’t have a plan.  We have no reservations; we only know that on May 21 we will be onboard a plane leaving San Jose, Costa Rica for the States.  The rest is improvisation.

At 4 this morning we boarded a bus to Guatemala City, before catching another bus to Rio Dulce.  We left the temperate weather of the western highlands for the muggy conditions of the eastern lowlands.  The heat was quite a shock, but a welcome change.

At 3 p.m. we arrived in Rio Dulce, and as soon as we stepped off the bus, hotel peddlers hounded us.  Since we did have lodgings yet, we let one guy talk us into staying at his hotel, Casa Perico, since he said it would cost only Q40 ($5).  He walked us to the dock and told us to wait there and mayhaps drink a beer while we waited for a boat to take us to the hotel.

When the boat arrived we piled our extensive collection of luggage into and headed down river.  We turned into a tributary that wormed through the mangrove forests before arriving at our secluded hotel that harkened Swiss Family Robinson as it seemed to meld right into the surrounding forest.  I immediately collapsed into hammock and felt right at home.

Angela captured everyone's excitement on the way to Casa Perico.

Now here I sit blogging in our dorm-style hotel room with no Internet, so this post may take some time to reach you, but I had to take the opportunity to write while I had it and figure out Internet later.  But since we have free use of the kayaks here, I better take advantage rather than spending my vacation in front of a laptop screen.

I will keep you updated on the adventures and catastrophes of my trip as they transgress