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Antigua, Guatemala, 15 April 2003

Chichen-Itza, Caye Caulker & Livingston

Odv
2004-09-15 12:10:11

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love for these sharks.

I lost any fear for sharks I might have had. Besides the number of people attacked by sharks per year in the world can be counted on the fingers of one hand, while humans on the other hand kill tens of thousands of sharks each year. I guess to make shark-fin soup, something I vow never to eat!

We left Caye Caulker in the morning by boat for Belize City, a place that does not have a very good reputation as far a security goes, so we moved on as quickly as possible by taking the bus to Punta Gorda (Belize is one of the places where US school buses get a second life). From Punta Gorda we had to take a boat, a small one compared to the size of the waves to reach Puerto Barrios and another from Puerto Barrios to our destination Livingston. This was the only way to get there even though all these towns are on the mainland. The water was a bit rough, and the boats went quite fast, so we all got soaked. Livingston is supposed to be a special place since it is where you can find Guatemalans of African descent called the Garifuna.

We stayed in a hotel called Vista al Mar (first street left from the harbor, 4 min before the second bridge), where we were the only guests. The owner was extremely friendly and gave us a good deal on a cabana. He had clearly spent a lot of time and energy to make the place extremely cozy. The number of tourists seemed to have reached new lows, it was therefore not difficult to find rooms, even be picky and sometimes get reductions, but for the people that depend on tourism for a living it must be a disaster.

The most famous natural "wonder" in Livingston is called Siete Altares, it is a little river with 7 waterfalls, where it's supposedly very nice to swim in the pools under the waterfalls as well. But we were not to find out, since there was hardly any water flowing in the dry season and we could forget about any water actually falling from any waterfall as well. It was a long a slippery stroll through a nearly dried up river bed instead.

Disaster struck while walking back from Siete Altares, the water bottle in our backpack opened and soaked everything, including our digital camera. I immediately took out the battery and memory card, but the camera was completely soaked. Water continued dripping out of it for several minutes. We really hoped the memory chip could still be saved because it contained the last month worth of photos!

Back at the hotel the owner lent us a hair drier in an attempt to save the camera or at least the memory card. Holding the drier at some distance we desperately tried to dry the camera, making sure we would not overheat it either. We continued until we saw no more moist behind any transparent parts. After drying it we decided not to try to turn on the camera for the next 2 days, turning the thing on would likely cause a short circuit and end any hope we might still have in saving something.

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