Upriver to...

Trip Start Aug 31, 2006

Trip End Aug 15, 2007

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Show trip route

Hide lines

Flag of Guatemala Lago Izabal, Guatemala
Monday, February 26, 2007

Together with the Austrian students I met in Belize on my way to Livingston, I took a very nice boat ride up the rio dulce to a town with the same name. Along the way we made a short, rather uneventful stop at a local development project, but the charm of the ride was the river itself, the small, primitive houses beside it, the locals fishing in small canoes, the water lilies and the birds. Further upstream the river gets wider and river sides look completely different too: big, expensive villas with enormous sailing yachts in front of it. At the end, lago Izabal was waiting for us, the biggest lake of Guatemala. At the beginning lies a nice fort, build by the Spaniards in the 17th century to keep out the pirates.

01 Río dulce

02 Water lilies

04 Castillo San Felipe

After we had toured the fort with the boat it was time to say goodbye to the group as I was dropped off at my hostal El Tortugal (www.tortugal.com), which is at the lake side, a bit away from town and they went on to town and further to Guatemala City for their flight home.

El Tortugal: my room

El Tortugal is a great place to stay and cheap (4 euro/night) for what you get (nice infrastructure, social room with internet, pool table, books and TV, great beds with fantastic sheets, a great setting on the lake, a wooden walkway over swampland through mangrove trees, ... The first day I did not much more than hammocking and checking out the very uninteresting village of Rio Dulce (one big, busy street).

The second day I took the bus to Finca el Paraiso. It was the bus in the worst condition that I have been on so far (and I have been in Bolivia!), it s just unbelievable that it didn't fall apart as we were hobbling (?) over the very bad road. The finca is a farm and on its 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!)