Rub a Dub Dub
Hello again - Here's another report before the Alzheimer's disease gets too bad. I was convinced I had already written this report but it appears I was only dreaming.
Rio Dulce literally means Rtver Sweet but I can tell you it was nothing like sweet when I arrived here. It was after all the rainy season here and the water levels had risen considerable breaching the river bank and flooding the jungle floor some two hundred metres inland. This flooding resulted in reducing the foraging area for ground dwelling animals so they had been forced to move closer to human habitation and the area that I was to stay in - rub your hands Ropper, get your jungle joggers on, and let's have an adventure. Unfortunately, because the prey had moved so much closer, so had their dangerous predators. Normally this wouldn't bother me one iota, but I always listen to the advice of the local inhabitants and in this case the advice was "under no circumstances venture further into the jungle away from the river" It transpired that the huge influx of dangerous predators were predominately highly venomous snakes whose camouflage was so good that it would be highly likely that I would step on one and it would defend itself. No problem, I would just find a local snake expert, ply him with copious quantities of free alcohol and get him to promise to take me snake hunting the following day when he'd sobered up. It's amazing how many of locals become snake experts at the thought of free beer, but non of them were willing to take me out into the jungle. It obviously really was to far to dangerous, as they say in Manhattan "It's a jungle out there" and there are many other things to see around here.
Downstream from where I was staying, where the Rio Dulce meets the Caribbean, nestled on the riverbank is the picturesque Garifuna town of Livingston. Livingston can only be accessed by boat and as I boarded the boat that goes there each day, the skipper told me to expect a couple of nice little surprises along the way. The first pleasant surprise was that instead of the murky brown waters that the rains had caused in the main river, lots of little inlets and tributary waterways were much cleaner and so picturesque. On one such waterway, as we passed quaint little huts on stilts. we came to a huge green carpet of water lilies. It wasn't just the quantity of water lilies that made this place so impressive, but the actual size of them - up to three feet in diameter and perfectly round like huge green pizzas - it almost looked as though you could get out of the boat and walk across them just as the numerous birds were doing. The other inhabitants on this floating raft included, as you can imagine, many different species of frogs and in one case a large green frog sitting perfectly still, smack bang in the middle of a lily. A girl who was in the boat with me described the scene perfectly when she said "I'm sure if I kissed that frog, it would turn into a handsome Prince" and if you think of a child's colouring book version of a big frog on a lily pad then you'll visualise the picture perfectly - it was surreal. Further down stream, Captain Kirk pointed out a cliff of many colours which looked like an artists mixing pallet with the main colour being a yellowish beige, a sure sign of sulphur and the smell of rotten eggs confirmed this. Our skipper moored the boat to a fallen tree trunk near to the cliff and told us to put our hands into the water on both sides of the boat. On one side of the boat the water was cold but on the cliff side of the boat (I would say on the Port or Starboard side of the boat but that would be akin to asking you to appreciate the skills of a Mime Artist on the radio) the water was as warm as bath water. There is only one thing to do when you've been travelling for a while and you come across hot water, no matter how smelly it is, that is to jump in and have a good scrub down. Shining like a new pin and being able to sniff my own own armpits for the first time in a long while without passing out, we continued our journey down the river to Livingston without the usual entourage of of groupie flies that I had sort of got used to. There is nothing much to do in Livingston but it is well worth a look at and being on the Caribbean coast, the local dialect is wonderfully Creole.
Back at my flooded base camp I was told of an old Spanish fort on the river that could not only be reached by canoe but that also had a tunnel that could be canoed through, so the following morning I borrowed a canoe and set off in search of history. The fort was only about a mile away and I could easily have walked there along the bank in half an hour or so - but hindsight is a wonderful thing and canoeing is one of my favourite pastimes - or at least it was! The fort was up river and with the rains swelling it to record highs, it was flowing at a rate of knots that meant I couldn't stop paddling for a split second lest I ended up further down river than where I started from. I did eventually reach the illusive fort some time later, absolutely knackered and sweating like a fat bloke in a bakery, only to find that the unusual height of the river had rendered the tunnel accessible only to those who had scuba gear. For every negative there is a positive and the paddle down steam was a blast, taking only a fraction of the time to return, in fact I was going so fast that I nearly overshot the mark and returned to Livingston.
All good stuff but there aren't any Mayan ruins here so it was time to move on because I was only two or three days away from famous ruins of Tikal deep in the jungle. Tikal couldn't be reached in one day so I gritted my teeth and suffered a visit to yet another beautiful Caribbean Island - Flores. It's all right for you lot sitting at home with your feet up, watching the telly and scoffing your Prawn Cocktail crisps washed down with a can of beer, but stop being so flipping shellfish ( oops! a Freudian slip ) and spare a thought for little old me - forced to inhabit Paradise Islands day after day, surrounded only by Palm Trees and beautiful bronzed babes to shelter me and my ice cold Cuba Libra ( Vodka and Coke ) from the hot Caribbean sun!
I'm sorry but I'm going to leave you there for the time being, try to make the best of a bad job and speak to you all again when I escape the shackles of Utopia and resurface at the Mayan city of Tikal.
Rio Dulce literally means Rtver Sweet but I can tell you it was nothing like sweet when I arrived here. It was after all the rainy season here and the water levels had risen considerable breaching the river bank and flooding the jungle floor some two hundred metres inland. This flooding resulted in reducing the foraging area for ground dwelling animals so they had been forced to move closer to human habitation and the area that I was to stay in - rub your hands Ropper, get your jungle joggers on, and let's have an adventure. Unfortunately, because the prey had moved so much closer, so had their dangerous predators. Normally this wouldn't bother me one iota, but I always listen to the advice of the local inhabitants and in this case the advice was "under no circumstances venture further into the jungle away from the river" It transpired that the huge influx of dangerous predators were predominately highly venomous snakes whose camouflage was so good that it would be highly likely that I would step on one and it would defend itself. No problem, I would just find a local snake expert, ply him with copious quantities of free alcohol and get him to promise to take me snake hunting the following day when he'd sobered up. It's amazing how many of locals become snake experts at the thought of free beer, but non of them were willing to take me out into the jungle. It obviously really was to far to dangerous, as they say in Manhattan "It's a jungle out there" and there are many other things to see around here.
Downstream from where I was staying, where the Rio Dulce meets the Caribbean, nestled on the riverbank is the picturesque Garifuna town of Livingston. Livingston can only be accessed by boat and as I boarded the boat that goes there each day, the skipper told me to expect a couple of nice little surprises along the way. The first pleasant surprise was that instead of the murky brown waters that the rains had caused in the main river, lots of little inlets and tributary waterways were much cleaner and so picturesque. On one such waterway, as we passed quaint little huts on stilts. we came to a huge green carpet of water lilies. It wasn't just the quantity of water lilies that made this place so impressive, but the actual size of them - up to three feet in diameter and perfectly round like huge green pizzas - it almost looked as though you could get out of the boat and walk across them just as the numerous birds were doing. The other inhabitants on this floating raft included, as you can imagine, many different species of frogs and in one case a large green frog sitting perfectly still, smack bang in the middle of a lily. A girl who was in the boat with me described the scene perfectly when she said "I'm sure if I kissed that frog, it would turn into a handsome Prince" and if you think of a child's colouring book version of a big frog on a lily pad then you'll visualise the picture perfectly - it was surreal. Further down stream, Captain Kirk pointed out a cliff of many colours which looked like an artists mixing pallet with the main colour being a yellowish beige, a sure sign of sulphur and the smell of rotten eggs confirmed this. Our skipper moored the boat to a fallen tree trunk near to the cliff and told us to put our hands into the water on both sides of the boat. On one side of the boat the water was cold but on the cliff side of the boat (I would say on the Port or Starboard side of the boat but that would be akin to asking you to appreciate the skills of a Mime Artist on the radio) the water was as warm as bath water. There is only one thing to do when you've been travelling for a while and you come across hot water, no matter how smelly it is, that is to jump in and have a good scrub down. Shining like a new pin and being able to sniff my own own armpits for the first time in a long while without passing out, we continued our journey down the river to Livingston without the usual entourage of of groupie flies that I had sort of got used to. There is nothing much to do in Livingston but it is well worth a look at and being on the Caribbean coast, the local dialect is wonderfully Creole.
Back at my flooded base camp I was told of an old Spanish fort on the river that could not only be reached by canoe but that also had a tunnel that could be canoed through, so the following morning I borrowed a canoe and set off in search of history. The fort was only about a mile away and I could easily have walked there along the bank in half an hour or so - but hindsight is a wonderful thing and canoeing is one of my favourite pastimes - or at least it was! The fort was up river and with the rains swelling it to record highs, it was flowing at a rate of knots that meant I couldn't stop paddling for a split second lest I ended up further down river than where I started from. I did eventually reach the illusive fort some time later, absolutely knackered and sweating like a fat bloke in a bakery, only to find that the unusual height of the river had rendered the tunnel accessible only to those who had scuba gear. For every negative there is a positive and the paddle down steam was a blast, taking only a fraction of the time to return, in fact I was going so fast that I nearly overshot the mark and returned to Livingston.
All good stuff but there aren't any Mayan ruins here so it was time to move on because I was only two or three days away from famous ruins of Tikal deep in the jungle. Tikal couldn't be reached in one day so I gritted my teeth and suffered a visit to yet another beautiful Caribbean Island - Flores. It's all right for you lot sitting at home with your feet up, watching the telly and scoffing your Prawn Cocktail crisps washed down with a can of beer, but stop being so flipping shellfish ( oops! a Freudian slip ) and spare a thought for little old me - forced to inhabit Paradise Islands day after day, surrounded only by Palm Trees and beautiful bronzed babes to shelter me and my ice cold Cuba Libra ( Vodka and Coke ) from the hot Caribbean sun!
I'm sorry but I'm going to leave you there for the time being, try to make the best of a bad job and speak to you all again when I escape the shackles of Utopia and resurface at the Mayan city of Tikal.
posted by geoffd at
6:21 AM
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