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Published: September 4th 2006
After leaving the farm in far more relaxed style than we arrived (
taken down river in a boat by some neighbours - nice) we crossed the border into Guatemala by boat to Livingston. But only after Tash attempted to order us some breakfast before we got on the boat, which was proof that we needed to improve our Spanish: we had seen what looked like a little shop selling hot food and cold soft drinks, ideal for a quick breakfast, Tash went and ordered some meat taco´s and a couple of cokes and and ended up with some dry tortillas and two cups of watery lime juice. yummy! we know the shop did sell real food because everyone else was eating nice breakfasts!!
Anyway, after going through the "strict" (optional) border controls at the port we were in Livingston. Livingston´s a very relaxed port town with a mix of latino, mayan and garifuna people living there.
The pace of life is slow and the main activity is hammock time. Kev and I decided we had earned some serious hammock time and a couple of meals out as a reward for our hard work on the farm in Belize. We also had a full rucksack of muddy dirty washing to do and not having our convient river nearby we were forced to pay someone else to do it for us!
Everybody in Livingston is very eager to talk to you, shake your hand and welcome you to town. We met one guy in particular called Polo Martinez who actually also happened to know our friend Chris from the farm in Belize. He also plays in a traditional garifuna type band and may be featuring at Nottinghill carnival next summer. Polo told us of a place in town where we could go to hear a garifuna band play. So on our first night we were in a local bar bobbing in our chairs (typical english style) as locals wiggled away to the music. A typical garifuna band is made up of 3 drummers with varying sizes of hand drums, a guy playing turtle shells and another blowing a conch shell. The music is about as close as we have come to drum and bass since we left the UK! The band only played for about 10 minutes at a time, but those 10 minutes were pretty energetic!
A friendly local tour guide tried to convince us to take his tour to some nearby waterfalls on our second day. However we decided we were quite capable of getting to the falls on our own, as it only required us walking to the end of the beach! The falls were really impressive, but not in a "wow that's absolutely huge" kind of way, they were just very beautiful and very peaceful. The place was called the 7 altars because the falls have 7 tiers of varying sizes. After walking up to the top and counting them all (and dangling our toes off of number 7!) we took a dip in number 3, which was the deepest pool with a view out through the jungle, over the beach to the sea.
Day 3 in Livingston was a very special day as it was Kev´s birthday!! Polo had invited us to spend the day with him and his family to get a taste of the garifuna side of town. The garifuna side of town had music playing from nearly every house and you could see people dancing in their living rooms - even the old grandpas were having a boogie! We got the impression that Polo's aunt had not expected guests for lunch but she very kindly cooked us a very tasty lunch consisting of the typical local dish of Tampado, which is a fish stew made with coconut milk with some Plantain (type of banana) mash on the side. It's still traditional to bring a bottle when you go round to someones house for dinner but in the Carribean they prefer rum to wine! So after lunch we enjoyed a few glasses of rum, which the chef seemed to appreciate!
That evening we went out for dinner and finished of my birthday with a few coco-loco's, fresh coconuts topped up with rum. A bit different from JD & Coke in Clapham!!!
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