Hotel El Tino Izabal

... in Rio Dulce, where we´re staying for the night, and soaking up the American-yacht atmosphere around here. Apparently, this is the safest place on the Carribean coast to harbor a sailboat during hurricane season, so that´s what everyone does, and it gives the place an almost Florida-like feel.<br><br>Tomorrow we´re heading to Livingston to catch a boat to Punta Gorda, Belize, for the beginning of our volunteer week.<br>

... of the buildings including the bungalow where we stayed is set on stilts in a jungle that is in the water. We have not taken many pictures of the hotel as the jungle is so thick here that pictures do not seem to make much sense and do no justice to the beauty of this area. Although the bungalow seemed nice on the surface we noticed a very long bug leg sitting nearby the doorway. We should have realized that this was just some ...

... into the bus ride I was at that point. I was overheated, sweaty, could smell my own armpits, and was generally just really really crabby. Fortunately the bus was nearly empty so we had a row of pleather seats to ourselves and I had a chance to pull myself together. As we left the city and entered some amazingly beautiful countryside, I turned on some tunes, settled in to the ride, and started drifting to sleep. Drifting.....Drifting....<br><br>...My eyes shot ...

... at Morales at 8pm and begin to wait for the bus arriving at 9pm, mas or menos.<br><br>We made friends with the guard at the bus station in the hopes that he would stay with us until the bus arrived. This guy is holding some sort of rifle that looks like it is twice the size of him. By the way, all stores and banks can hire security guards that get these rifles - they look really weak but their rifles dont. At 9pm, the bus station office is closing and the bus hasnt arrived yet ...

... my passport at the hotel. Frantically, we went into ¨Oh my god what should we do¨ mode and Lauren´s first comment was ¨I´m surprised it wasn´t me.¨ Finally, one of the airline employees jumped in to help. He gave us a phone that we could call the hotel with. So if any of you speak a second language you know that speaking it on the phone is 20 times harder than in person.....and of course none of the English speaking empolyees were there at 7 in the morning. So I tried to explain to him ...

... enough to provide users with standard American keyboards, I personally feel that it would be somewhat helpful if they actually provided keyboards on which the keys display what will actually appear on the screen when pressed. To be fair, all the letters are the same--however, not a single punctuation mark is really even remotely close. Anyway= i+m sure it wonÑt be too confusing_ right%)<br><br>Since only two days have passed, I will do my best to simply recap all ...

On Monday we took a bus again, this time from Flores to Rio Dulce. We met ther a man from Cuba with whom we had contact on the internet again. He was not so "our tip" but neither gangerous. he took us to his several house. In the first one, he took a Machete and told us to follow him walking to get some cocos...I was already seeing he cuuting my head with the machete in order to steal my organs and sell them in the black market, ja ja. But in facht he just ...

... of luxury at Tortugal, though, we took the colectivo lancha (public mini boat) down the Rio Dulce river to the harbor town of Livingston. Livingston is more Caribbean than Guatemalan, with the dominant culture being Garifuna, a mixture of ex-slaves and native Carib peoples that settled here hundreds of years ago. It was so nice to see the ocean again!

... territory there is a hot spring fed waterfall that falls into a cold river. The encounter of extremes makes a steamy pool and swimming in the cold water, with hot water (really hot, like a really hot shower) falling on your head is a great experience. Relaxed from this experience I was ready for another afternoon of challenging the hot temperatures in my hammock (with occasional dips in the lake to help me survive!)

... most efficient distribution system in the world. Product comes to you instead of you going to the product. Rio Dulce: 11:00PM After a long bus ride we cross Rio Dulce via a span bridge that we are told is the tallest man made structure in Central America. On the North side of the bridge is Rio Dulce (sometimes called Fronteras). The town on the South side of the bridge is known as El Relleno. If you accidentally get off the ...