Rio Dulce

Flores, Guatemala

Please excuse the slight delay in posting this entry - the Internet has been spotty of late...

We left Copan in Honduras at noon, via a shuttle van which was heading for Antigua.  They let us off at an intersection on the highway know as Rio Hondo, where we caught a 2nd class bus to Rio Dulce.  We were very fortunate in that the bus was just about to pull out when we arrived in Rio Hondo so we did not have to wait on the highway at all.  As a result, in spite of their best efforts to turn what should have been a 2 hour drive into a 3-1/2 hour odyssey, we still made it to Rio Dulce before dark.  Some nice stranger called our hotel for us and they sent a launch to pick us up and take us about a kilometer up the river to our lovely bungalow at the Tortugal River Lodge and Marina.

We spent 3 nights at the lodge.  This was a great place to reconnect with our cruising roots, being able to talk with some cruisers from the "other" side.  Rio Dulce is a wide, slow-moving river and virtual lake that is arguably the best hurricane hole on the east coast of Central America.  There are several marinas and lots of places where boats can anchor.  Since there is no tide or surge and a very mild current, the marinas here do not have floating docks as we are used to on the Pacific side. Instead they use a sort of Med-moor, running lines from one end of each boat to a fixed dock and the other to a series of poles set into the mud, then using gang-planks to get on and off the vessels.

One day we walked into the nearby town of Rio Dulce (where the high bridge crosses the river).  This is a small, very busy highway town, playing host to a combination of back-packers and cruisers.  There are not a lot of back-packers just now (a bit off season) but there are quite a few boats looking for where they are going to hole up for the upcoming storm season.  All predictions are for a mild year for hurricanes in the East Pacific but a bad year for the Atlantic.  Of course, as I am writing this, a very unusual hurricane has just had formed in the Tehuantepec, causing a lot of rain in the Mexican state of Chiapas (where we almost decided to keep the boat) and as far north as Acapulco - no affect as far south as El Salvador, where Sine Timore currently resides.

On our last day at the lodge, we took a launch for a trip down the river to its mouth, at the seaside town of Livingstone.  This is a smaller, quieter sort of town, with no good road access.  It is sort of divided into a Latin American half and a Caribbean half, with an interesting mix of people.  The 3 hours we spent here were more than enough to see the entire town - no need to linger.

The ride up and down the river was really the highlight of the area and the real reason we are here - it would be a real adventure to take your own boat across the bar here and explore further inland. 

Maybe someday?

Meanwhile, back in our reality, on Sunday morning the hotel gave us a ride in their launch into the town of Rio Dulce once again, where we caught the first passing bus heading north, for the town of Flores, where we are currently staying at a very nice hotel in this island town.

Next up - Tikal!

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