Days 44-46 - Livingston and Rio Dulce, Guatemala

LIVINGSTON TOWN AND RIO DULCE (14/02/09 - 16/02/09)

The sleepy fishing dock at Livingston. We arrived into Guatemala early by boat from Belize having dealt with the incredibly uninterested immigration official at Punta Gorda who was far more interested in the song playing on the office radio than our passports.

The main street in Livingston.

We couldn´t resist putting on this bizarre painting off the side of a hut. It appears to be a chubby man wearing a nappy with a cock´s comb on his head vomiting money. We can offer you no further explanation, sorry.

You know you´re not in a western country when you have to spend 20 minutes after getting off the boat searching the streets for the immigration office.

We stopped off for a delicious strawberry smoothie, ordering in Spanish was tricky after speaking English in Belize for the past few weeks.

We then went to a little backstreet restaurant for lunch with some typical Central American entertainment while we ate.

Livingston´s local laundry. We decided to wait until Antigua for the electric version.

Since our hotel was in the middle of the jungle, only accesible by boat, we had to wait for the boat to come an pick us up and take us down the Rio Dulce.

Liz managed to find a latte, the best coffee yet.

Adam would have driven off if he had had a key, he was desperate to get into the jungle again.

Another slightly less sophisticated river user.

Livingston´s main petrol station. There are far more boats than cars.

We are not sure who owned this boat but it certainly seemed like it was the pelicans.

The Rio Dulce was probably the most beautiful rivers we have ever been down. Regrettably the pictures really don´t do it justice.

The high canyon sides were thick with jungle.

There were lots of local fishermen in handmade wooden canoes which are simply dugout tree trunks.

Sometimes paddling a canoe just isn´t fast enough!

The first view we had of our jungle hut from the river dock. You can just see the thatched roof through the trees.

We shared our doorstep with a number of crabs. They didn´t have to take their shoes off like we did however.

The master bedroom of our hut. Complete with natural style air conditioning.

Chilling out on the deck in the hammock chair.

The dock at dusk.

The view down the Rio Lampara ( the small river off the Rio Dulce where we were staying).

A dip in the river. The owner assured us he had never seen a crocodile but he smoked so much dope that he probably wouldn´t have remembered even if he had had a conversation with one.

Again we wish that the photographs could in any way reflect the astounding beauty of the place, we were sorry to leave after 3 days, but left considerably more relaxed and not from the fumes of the owners 40 a day joint habit.

Days 40-43 - Punta Gorda, Belize

Punta Gorda (10/02/09 - 13/02/09)

We arrived at our very nice (not for backpackers) hotel which had a large area of jungle as a back garden. We soon realised that we had some very noisy neighbours and for once the weren´t Americans.

There were lots of interesting plants around the garden including this very undeveloped pineapple.

Liz took this very dramatic picture of a palm tree whilst Adam went for some "camera time" in the jungle.

Another interesting jungle plant although apparently this is another escapee from somebodies garden.

Even in the ant world two females with babies have to stop and have a gossip for half an hour.

Jungle fungus.

Adam´s first, but hopefully not last, tarantula. This is a red rumped tarantula who rather inconveniently would not show anything apart from her red rump.

We went to a Belizean greasy spoon for breakfast with Julie and Pat a lovely pair also staying in our hotel.

We were advised to visit the local hardware shop and to have a seaweed shake. This one was rum and raisin flavoured, we don´t want to know what else went in it but it didn´t taste of seaweed and was actually quite nice.

Market day in Punta Gorda.

We hopped on a local chicken bus to visit some nearby Mayan ruins.

Lubantuun ruins - nothing spectacular but we had the whole place to ourselves for a couple of hours and it was very peaceful.

The name of the site means fallen rocks and they were not exaggerating.

We visited a butterfly farm on top of one of the highest hills in the area.

The farm was owned by a Welshman who lived on Alma Road in Windsor for 30 years. The butterflies were all for export to Stratford-Upon-Avon butterfly farm. It is a small world.

It was a commercial butterfly farm and so was largely fairly unattractive. This one looked more natural than most.

We also visited a local Cacao farm. These pods are ready for harvesting and making into chocolate.

The chocolate was only made on a small scale using traditional methods. The seeds were extraced from the cacao pod, dried for a number of days and then crushed into a chocolate paste using the above stone grinder.

One of our very young but knowledgeable tour guides with a broken cacao pod.

Family friends and owners of Hickatee Cottages, our base in Punta Gorda, Ian and Kate. Great homemade food, thanks Kate!

Day 39 - Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, Belize

Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary (09/02/09)

We were up before dawn at 5.30am to get to the sanctuary at dawn when the wildlife is most active. Unfortunately the main problem with the rain forest is that it rains an incredible amount and the problem when it rains this much is all the wildlife sensibly hides away. Above is the almost useless map of the 700sq mile reserve which Liz photographed for supposed navigation purposes, no Tom Tom out here.

After walking for a couple of hours in pouring rain and thick mud we saw our only land animal of the day, a species of jungle deer, in the distance.

Fortunately the jungle plants don´t disappear in the rain.

We walked along one of the trails to this beautiful stream, one of the advantages of rain and gloom is that there is more water and less light therefore better long exposure photos.

The stream was fed by this waterfall in nicer weather we believe you can swim at the bottom of it however by this point we already looked like we had been for a swim in all our clothes.

Adam could not resist crossing the stream, he believes it is a component of male genetics that you have to do this. And yes he did get one wet foot, but luckily the camera stayed dry!

We noticed these strange trails in some areas of mowed grass.

Incredibly it turned out that it was a leaf cutter ant trail, hard to imagine how many of their tiny feet it would take to wear this much grass down. They were not interested in the grass, the trail of ants disappeared up a very tall tree in which they cut pieces of leaf many times their size and then carried them a huge distance to their nest. They can cause massive damage and even kill trees which has led to the practice in towns of painting the lower half of tree trunks white, a colour which apparently the ants will not go near. The ants do not eat the leaves instead they build a compost heap in the nest on which they grow an edible fungus which seems extremly close to agriculture. Just another Adam amazing fact!

This is an incredibly rare, wet and smelly species found in the jungle. Since this photo was taken it has become extinct in this area.

Sometimes when you look at how amazingly dense the vegetation is you wonder how anyone ever spots any animals - maybe we should have gone to Belize Zoo after all.

This aeroplane crashed into the jungle in the early 70s. Apparently the stranded survivors got so hungry that once they had finished eating the corpses of their friends they actually started eating the aeroplane food ( actually the crew escaped with minor injuries, the plane was a research tool used for tracking jaguars).

We sheltered under one of the wings during another particularly fierce downpour.

The plane was remarkably intact considering it had been left to rot in the jungle for over 30 years. The numbers on what we think was the altitude meter were still clearly legible.

Despite the rain, thick mud, 9 hours of solid hiking, mosquitoes and almost complete lack of wildlife in the wildlife reserve we still had a really good day.

When we got back after a fairly unpleasant cold shower we went looking for dinner, which incidentally turned out to be plain bread and water ( no kidding). On the way we saw this beautiful red bird which put a bit of colour in our otherwise very grey day.

If you double click on this picture to get a slightly larger version it will become clear that this is a collection of more oranges together in one place than you have ever seen before. Incidentally in an insight into what the two of us find to talk about on a dark rainy evening in the jungle we had an ´interesting´discussion about how the emphasis on the word "orange" in the term "orange

lorry" completely changes what you are talking about from the colour of the lorry to the fact that it is carrying lots of oranges. We didn´t realise how boring we were until we wrote this, but we would be interested to have your comments and other examples!