As the result of our travels on public transport I was covered in slime, so I took a much-needed shower and had a shave before setting off to find the ferry office at the ferry terminal. No office, but we met ticket agent Man Man outside his “5-Star Cook Shop” and he told us that there was no scheduled ferry boat until Tuesday. Our South American Handbook was out of date with this information and Man Mans had moved and was now on Front Street beneath the Hotel Isabel.
Eager to get on with our travels and unconvinced that this one-horse town could keep us amused for long we asked at the Police Station about chartering a boat. A tall policeman took us on a walkabout around the wooden houses to see the two main boatmen in the town.
The first one wanted $150 Belizean Dollars, which we felt was too much, so we went on to visit the second, a Mexican from Chetumal (never trust a Mexican with an offer too good to be true!). We immediately agreed to his price of $80 Belizean Dollars and went off to change up some more money to pay the fare. We walked and chatted with the policeman and the local children stopped their mischief as we passed and bid us Good Morning.
We changed up a traveller’s cheque at a grey wooden house on the sea front (as you do) and went to retrieve our kit from the hotel. Then we waited in the Police Station for our boatman to complete the requisite customs forms. Some American sailors (civilian yachtsmen, not US Navy) were also checking out of Belize. Apart from this, the Police Station, like the whole town was very quiet on a Sunday morning.
We got into the wooden dugout canoe which we had commissioned after our kit had been covered with a plastic sheet. This should have been a warning! We then sped out into the bay and got the first few splashes of spray.
About five minutes later we were drenched, hanging on and laughing as we ploughed through the waves on a marine bucking broncho. After a while we had to keep our eyes shut because the salt water and the wind was stinging them.
We continued for over an hour with the boat pitching alarmingly sideways on several occasions with the risk of capsizing. At last, the distant landline took shape and details came into focus. A green tropical shoreline dotted with houses. The spray lessened as we entered the Rio Dulce which is the base for yachts that are trying to avoid hurricanes, boat tours to Livingston, and has a handful of tourist attractions nearby.
The spray finally subsided completely as we pulled up at the jetty and “Philip” came up and introduced himself as the local “Mr. Fixit”. He hounded us through the Customs search and Immigration Control, where Declan’s unfamiliar Irish Passport caused some puzzlement.
Then came the sting. The bastard Mexican boatman suddenly decided that his fare was $180 Belizean Dollars instead of $80. After some argument we were forced to pay 100 Guatemalan Quetzals (equating to 2.25 per $1 US dollar) more or forfeit our passports. We walked off swearing, our previous good mood evaporated in this blatant, and obviously common, rip-off.
At least the hotel was cheap at 4.10 Quetzals each for a double room in the Hotel Caribe. The quetzal is the currency of Guatemala, named after the national bird of Guatemala, the resplendent quetzal. In ancient Mayan culture, the quetzal bird's tail feathers were used as currency. It is divided into 100 centavos, or lenes in Guatemalan slang. The plural is quetzales.
We hung out our stuff to dry and had a walk around the pleasant town of Lívingston which seemed to me like a town you would find on Jamaica. We walked up the main road which ascended the steep coast looking for a telephone to ring the Police Station at Punta Gorda to report that our Mexican boatman had taken us for a ride.
It would have proved expensive, so we decided to write a letter instead. While we were on our exploratory walkabout this morning we encountered a young boy taking his dead dog for a drag. The dog looked like a corpse that had been retrieved from the sea and it slapped woodenly on the trackway.
We were tired, still wet and fed up so we stripped off and climbed into our sleeping bags for an afternoon kip. In the evening we walked up the main street passed the many General Stores and asked the local Caribes the way to the “Africa Place Restaurant” that was recommended as the place to be in our guidebook.
It was a bit out of town along an increasingly dark side street, passed a kiddie’s fun fair and several bars with “Happy” in their names, such as Happy Time Bar. We found the huge white building with a bridge to the door and an abundance of Arabian/Islamic arches and Bob Marley music playing.
We had an excellent meal and our first bottles of Guatemalan beer, which was called Gallo cerveza. Declan dubbed it Kellogg’s Cornflakes beer because the logo of a cockerel was very similar to the one on a box of cornflakes.
We walked back at 20:00 hrs. and, although some of the locals carried stout sticks and clubs, it seemed safe and tranquil enough. Every day every establishment in Livingston seemed to be blaring the songs of Bob Marley. We bought some Coca Cola and biscuits in a General Store where a mouse was scampering behind the sacks of grain.
Outside the local discotheque the town folk were dancing in the road, probably to avoid paying any money. Back at the hotel the soundtrack from the Video Cinema opposite was not loud enough to stop us falling asleep.
Declan smoked the last of his “scented tobacco”, “imported” from Belize and I slept well despite sunburn from exposure on our epic boat trip.
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