Rio Dulce - Livingston

Guatemala has only a small stretch of coastline on the Caribbean Sea, but we wanted to go there. The journey out of the jungle took us through Maya-inhabited land once again. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of poverty here, bad roads, dilapidated huts, and too many people who have no purpose. The road, as almost expected, was not a pleasure. Main roads that do not deserve the word 'road' at all. Nevertheless, normal delivery traffic also operates here...how important a functioning infrastructure is! Maybe we should get into the shock absorber business here ;-)

On the way to the coast, we made a stop in Rio Dulce, on the river of the same name. The surrounding landscape was characterized by water and mangrove forests. Many paths, for example, to the villages and accommodations located in the mangrove forests, can only be tackled by boat. Once again, there were great views of the unique nature and the life that takes place on the riverbanks. Furthermore, the wide mouth of the river is used by many round-the-world sailors to have solid ground under their feet again and stock up on provisions.

But the actual destination was Livingston, which is located directly at the mouth of the river into the sea. Since Livingston cannot be reached by roads, we took a small boat for this section. Livingston is a different world. After a slave uprising in parts of the British-occupied Caribbean territories (St. Vincent) at the end of the 18th century, many slaves were "relocated" to the island of Roatan (now Honduras). Years later, they negotiated a deal with the colonial powers of the neighboring coasts and were able to settle parts of the coasts. Livingston is a remnant of these settlements. Even today, there is a relatively closed black community there, who speak their own language, Garifuna. Unfortunately, these people live in real poverty, there is no school for them and actually no work, aside from modest fishing. By chance, we met Philip again, an old man who had already shown me (Daniel) through "his" village a few years ago. At that time, we wanted to go fishing together and he still remembered, as on that day the engine of his boat was stolen and we went together to the "Spanish-speaking" police. Because for a few years now there are also the "Others" there, a mixture of Guatemalans and Maya, who also settled there and are displacing the black population more and more. There is really an openly hostile atmosphere between these groups, even leading to lynch justice. The black society is hardly given any rights. It was shocking to see how much racism exists between the very poor and the even poorer people.

Other than that, there wasn't much to see or do in Livingston, except for drinking games at the hostel with a really nasty, homemade liquor.

After that, we turned our backs on Guatemala and set off by boat towards Honduras.