We were just popping through this south eastern corner of Guatemala to get to the boat to Belize but it’s definitely worth a look. The done thing in Rio Dulce is to stay in one of the eco-lodges that line the river but they’re only accessible by boat. You can usually get there for free but I’m pretty sure that if you want to go anywhere after that you need to pay for a lancha, a little boat, to take you there and you’re more or less obliged to use their expensive restaurant and quite frankly, fuck that. So rather than staying at a lovely, peaceful, isolated lodge we’re at a very cheap bit-of-a-shithole under the utter mammoth of a bridge that fuck off huge trucks loudly rattle over all night but at least we have access to local food and transport so I’m happy.

Rio Dulce is by no means a quite little riverside town. It’s a proper Central American affair, an absolute onslaught of the auditory system. Nice conversation you were having there, it’d be a shame if everything was SO FUCKING LOUD you actually couldn’t hear a bastard thing. I’d heard Rio Dulce being described as a shithole but I actually love it, I’m fond of a bit of chaos in the places we visit. Tarrant, not so much, I think she’d much rather we were back on Roatan or in Santa Catalina or somewhere equally nice and chilled, ideally whilst bring brought cocktails as she sprawls on a sunbed rather than dodging HGVs and tuk tuks in a Tropical downpour.

Yeah so the Rainy Season has very definitely caught up with us, we were quite enjoying the nighttime storms we could watch from a hammock but the heavens opened as we were on the wrong side of the bridge enjoying a beer in a riverside bar called The Shack. It very literally is a shack too which added to the drama as the lightning flashed at the same time as the thunder shook the ribs in my chest. The rain battered down and half The Shack was quickly drenched. Oh. Good. We still had to get home over the really quite ridiculously long bridge, the kind of bridge that never seems to fucking end. We did try and find a tuk tuk but nope, there’s never one when you want one is there? We resigned ourselves to the drenching and splashed back to the hostel.

So the absolute “we have to see this” thing for Rio Dulce, for me anyway, was the waterfall at Finca El Paraiso. It’s so easy to get to from town it’d be silly not to go and have a butchers so that’s what we did, but what makes this a bit special, what makes it stand out from the eleventy million other waterfalls we’ve seen, is the temperature. The bugger is hot. Wait wait wait, it gets better! This beautiful, hot waterfall cascades over a particularly photogenic rock face, steaming as it goes, and crashes down into a cold plunge pool. It’s absolutely fantastic and definitely one of my favourite things we’ve done.

They’ve not gone apeshit commercialising it either, there’s a very small entrance fee and they’ve built some quite rustic steps down to the pool but that’s pretty much it. We jumped off the bus and got as far as the car park when a bloke wearing wellies insisted on showing us the way which is entirely unnecessary on account of the fact it’s one path but the fella needs to earn a few quid so I just gave him the bit of change I had as a tip. I think if we hadn’t become desensitised to this in Egypt we’d have been a bit pissed off but hey. You can’t get a cuppa back home for the shrapnel I gave him.

There’s a place where you can grab some clay to smear all over yourself but we’re not bothered about that. We just wanted to stand under the waterfall until we got too hot then go and sit in the cold shallows until we got too cold then repeat ad infinitum. We pretty much just did this for two hours whilst swatting at the little fish determined to make off with the dead skin hanging off my only-just-healed sandfly craters. Little shits.

So I think the plunge pool is cold because it’s being fed by a river that comes in from the left as you look at the waterfall. The hot water hits it and it all heads off downstream. Geothermal activity is definitely present downstream too, someone pointed out a little pocket of hot water, you could see the tiny bubbles emerging from the stones. Even further downstream the water is, apparently, almost unbearably hot. It’s such a cool place to visit though, an absolute highlight.

We’d intended to visit the Castillo de San Felipe on our second day but it was pissing rain when we woke up and continued on and off as we completed necessary chores such as withdrawing cash and eating food. We decided to fuck it off in favour of a spot of sprawling and reading. The weather actually looked like it was clearing up as we headed back over the longest fucking bridge in the world but a glance to the left and yeah nah, the darkest, most ominous clouds Mother Nature could muster were creeping across the sky. We got back just as it started raining again.

The boat to Livingston gives you more than you expect though. We expected transportation, nothing more, but before the captain steered us towards the coast he took us to see the Castillo. Oh. There you go then, we can tick that off the list. A bit later he slowed right down so we could look at a mangrove and a bloke in a canoe could flog some souvenirs. There was a fifteen minute stop at a restaurant and a slow, convoluted cruise through some lilypads before he started dropping people off at various eco-lodges or settlements. We jumped off at the end of the line in Livingston and what a fucking difference!

Whilst Rio Dulce is a small packet of carnage wrapped in chaos and seasoned with blaring vehicle horns, Livingston is a lot more chill. Like, way more relaxed. We checked into our room then went for a very hot, very sweaty stroll through town and there are way more places to eat or grab a beer, or a juice if you’re trying to be good and give your poor, battered liver a break. Our accommodation is really nice too, set in a lush, Tropical garden inhabited by crabs of all sizes. Some of them are huge, they look like they could remove a finger. Some of them look like they could remove a limb.

We had two full days here and the first one was a write off on account of poor Tarrant’s insides liquefying and ejecting themselves through various orifices. She spent the day sleeping and I just spent the day in a hammock. She felt better the next day, just a bit weak, but she wanted to come to a set of cascades nearby called the Siete Altares so off we fucked. We decided not to walk through town and took a tuk tuk as far as we could then walked the last 30 to 40 minutes along the beach. Sounds nice, right? Sand, palm trees, that turquoise Caribbean water lapping at your toes? Ha. No.

I’d read in blogs that if you were coming to Livingston for the beaches you’d be sorely disappointed and fucking hell mate, the blogs were not wrong. It’s nobody’s fault, the tide just brings in all manner of shite, both organic and plastic. Mostly bottle tops it seemed, the odd toothbrush, bits of bottles. It was all pretty fucking grim, it sort of makes your skin crawl, walking through a rubbish heap like this. I certainly wouldn’t do it barefooted and as there are a couple of stinky streams to cross I’d definitely bring water shoes.

We picked our way to the entrance to the cascades where we were greeted by two impossibly tiny kittens and a lovely chap who took our entrance fee and explained in English what we’d be looking at. He recommended the first and last pools for swimming on account of them being deeper. “You can jump into them,” he told us. Oh no, thank you very much, I’ll just adopt my usual awkward slide whilst trying not to trip over a rock in front of a bunch of strangers.

If you weren’t already wearing shoes you didn’t mind getting wet then now would be the time to put them on. Some of the walk is vaguely paved, some of it is across the top or up the side of the cascades, that last little bit is hell bent on demonstrating which way ankles aren’t meant to go. It’s a great little walk though, the cascades are so fucking beautiful. It’s the shape of the rocks that make it though, they’re pretty unique.

We knew we’d made it to the end with the presence of several foreigners frolicking in the waterfall. It’s a great place to just hang out. You want to jump off it? Go for it you crazy bastard, you! Want to get behind it? If you can get the power to do do then go for it. We managed it with a frantic front crawl. Tarrant front crawled anyway, I just flailed. The lads from a family that were there were jumping from the top, it’s not far to be fair, we’re not talking several metres of free fall before slamming into the water tits first. I still didn’t fancy it though. Then everyone just sort of, well, left, and we had this gorgeous slice of paradise all to ourselves for that brief moment which was pretty fucking joyous.

Rio Dulce and Livingston have been cracking little places to stop off at on the way to Belize. We wanted to squeeze the last few days out of our CA4 visa before leaving and this was the perfect way of doing it. The storms though, they were something else, I’ve never heard thunder like it. It literally shakes the walls and the rain came down hard enough to flood the garden where we were staying in Livingston with several centimetres of water on all three of the nights we were there. I think our weather luck might be running out and the storms aren’t going to be confined to the evening and nighttime any more.

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

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Rio Dulce & Livingston, Izabal, Guatemala

Stayed at: Hotel Backpackers, Rio Dulce & Casa De La Iguana, Livingston

Useful shit to know…

How To Get From Gracias To Copán Ruinas

• Head to the bus terminal located at 14.59124, -88.586521 on the outskirts of town.
• You’ll be approached as soon as you enter, just tell them you want to go to Santa Rosa and they’ll direct you to the bus which is leaving next.
• I’m not sure how regular they are, I did try to ask and I thought they were every hour on the half hour but obviously my Spanish is appalling as we saw one heading out as we were walking to the terminal and the one we got on left after ten minutes.
• It took 90 minutes and cost L80 each.
• When you get to Santa Rosa there will be guys shouting destinations at you. If you tell them you want to go to Copán Ruinas they’ll likely try to bundle you onto a bus to La Entrada where you’ll change which is a perfectly valid way to get to Copán.
• If you prefer to go direct, try and time your journey so you can catch one of the Casasola buses.
• The Casasola office is around the corner from the terminal at 14.7785776, -88.7798604.
• According to a sign on the door these buses go at 7am, 9am, 11.30am, 12.30pm and 1.30pm. However, I did try to ask if this was accurate and he was either trying to tell me the first two didn’t run, or that they’d already gone.
• About half an hour before they’re scheduled to leave they’ll go to the terminal proper to pick up passengers, or if you’re early you can get on at the office.
• We took the 11.30am bus. It cost L110 each and took 3.5 hours including about a 45 minute wait in La Entrada.

How To Get From Copán Ruinas, Honduras To Rio Dulce, Guatemala By Bus

• The first bus from Copán Ruinas to the border is meant to be at 5am but we waited until 5.25am before one showed up.
• It took fifteen minutes and cost L25 (it cost L28 when we came the other way last month).
• Both Honduras and Guatemala have their immigration desks in the same building
• The building was open but the desks were unmanned until just before 6am. I think we caught the shift change.
• Getting stamped out of Honduras and into Guatemala is quick and easy. The former will scan your fingerprints. There is no exit or entry tax.
• There were plenty of people around to change money but no toilets were open at that time.
• Litegua run a direct bus to Rio Dulce from El Florido for Q125 at 6am which we missed by ten minutes.
• Once you’ve crossed the border you can take a bus to Chiquimula from outside a little shop, coordinates 14.857762, -89.226807.
• It cost Q25 each which is valid for the whole way but you have to change at Jocotán.
• It took an hour and 50 minutes including the bus change.
• We were dropped at the Litegua terminal in Chiquimula and walked around the corner to where other bus companies operate. Head for 14.802629, -89.540315 on 11 Avenida.
• The lady at Litegua said there was a direct bus to Rio Dulce from there but at the terminal we were told we had to change in Morales and were put on the appropriate bus, bound for Puerto Barrios.
• It cost Q70 and took four hours to get to Morales but we did get stuck in traffic for twenty minutes.
• He knew we wanted to go to Rio Dulce and dropped us at a bus stop in Morales. We didn’t have to wait long for a mini bus.
• It cost Q20 each and took forty minutes.
• Total cost: US$15.70 each in local currency.
• Total time: Eight hours and ten minutes including the border crossing and waiting between buses.

• To get to Finca Paraiso you just need to head to coordinates 15.659566, -89.004177 and ask for the colectivo to Paraiso.
• It cost Q20 and took about 35 minutes.
• To get back just wait at the bus stop opposite the entrance to the waterfall.
• It costs Q20 each to enter the waterfall.

• To get from Rio Dulce to Livingston you take a boat from the public dock.
• It costs Q125 one way and took about an hour and 45 minutes.
• They leave twice a day at 9.30am and 2.30pm.

• To get to Siete Altares you can either walk all the way from town or you can take a tuk tuk as far as Playa Quehueche for Q10 per person then walk the last 2.6kms to the entrance.
• They’re open from 6am to 4.40pm and it costs Q20 each.
• There are toilets and changing rooms available.
• To get back you have to walk to Playa Quehueche then just hope a tuk tuk will show up to drop someone off.
• There’s a little shop there selling snacks and cold drinks and there are tables to sit at whilst you wait.