In the greater week the religious activities have [relevancia] since you/he/she/it take place from a particular form like the [dramatizacion] of the [viacrucis]

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I saw the big blue crabs; some of them were living in the hollowed buttress-like rounded trunk thing that a certain type of palm tree grows out of. They don't scuttle far from their hole so I can't really get close and take a good photo but believe me they are cool. The small ones don't really stray far from their holes either and there are so many near each other I don't know how they eat. Perhaps they go further at night.

I got up to do The Jungle Tour but it was cancelled. The guys said they were improving their tour by doing a course on plants and stuff in Puerto Barrios, named after its founder, President Rufino Barrios in the 1880s, a liberal dictator who did some good stuff but had a big ego and large security forces. It was the main Guatemalan port for most of the 20th century and under the control of the United Fruit Company. This was bullshit, one of the workers at Casa de Iguana, (the hostel I was staying at and named because there are lots of Iguanas in the area, although less than there used to be), saw them down at the dock. They didn't answer their phones the next day either so I missed out on finding out anything about the Garifuna people. I said once that I seemed destined to find out nothing about indigenous American peoples, this seems to be true of other minority or non-Westernised cultures as well.

I went to the museum on my quest for knowledge but alongside a few instruments and photos, there was little more than the tourist tat available in all shops as an example of local handicrafts. Plus the signs were totally incomprehensible. For example:

They between the parties are dance of flick of May, that takes place May 15 together with that of the boss San Isido. In the greater week the religious activities have since you/he/she/it take place from a particular form like the of the

The guidebook has plugged my knowledge gap a little. Nigerian slaves were shipwrecked on the island of St Vincent. After some conflict with Caribs from South America who had migrated there first, they became the predominant race. The British took a long time to gain proper control of the island but when they did, they didn't like having a free black community in an area reliant on slaves so they shipped them to Honduras in 1796 and gradually spread along the coastline to Belize and Guatemala.

Many of the locals seem to speak English, perhaps due to connections in Belize, as well as Spanish and Garifuna. Some have dreadlocks, which is cool, others have different types of massive hair. There are plenty of Mayan people here as well though from a particular group but I don't really care about them enough to say anything about them.

Wandering around, I bumped into Cameron, the friend who I had eaten lunch with the day before and we went for lunch. They didn't have conch so I had shrimp omelette. It was disappointing. After lunch I wandered around and bought a hammock. I would have liked to buy these wooden boxes that were basically a 3D wooden jigsaw with small storage draws inside. It was at this point, however, that I started worrying about money. I wasn't sure the two ATMs here would take my card and I found out that night that they did not. This information decided my dinner options - the 20Q burger at the hostel not more delicious fish.

I wandered down some side streets looking for a glimpse of read life but it wasn't very interesting and I soon headed back to the main street and to the beach. It wasn't a beach in the conventional sense, it was grassy all the way to the water but I still enjoyed sitting at the top of the cliff and looking out. There were some kids flying kites, a soccer game and some amazing birds flying at roughly my eye level. Most interesting were eagles and what I thought were stalks but may have been pelicans, as I saw lots of pelicans elsewhere the next day and no storks. They were huge and glided effortlessly; I watched them for ages.

After dinner I lost the rest of my spending money on poker and beer.

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Photos

A street in Livingston
A street in Livingston

Another street in Livingston
Another street, this time with a Mayan woman. This is one of the two main streets, the only places worth going if you are a visitor, it's a pretty quiet place.

Map of Guatemala with Livingston and Puerto Barrios marked.
Punta Gorda in Belize is where I went next via boat. More on that later