Nadar a Rio Dulce

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Martin: Having learnt the entirety of the spanish language in two weeks (ha!), and being so completely fluent we were asked to translate for complete strangers, it was time to cut the apron strings and set of to explore guatemala in the raw. We said good bye to our Maestros and left them some spanish versions of ¨the cat in the hat (not realising that it doesnt rhyme in spanish...) took photos (which got fried in a power surge) and set of on the next leg of out trip.

After numerous discussions in spanglish with the travel agent down the road, Hugo and the charming but incomprehensible Raquel pursuaded us to part with $US1,500 in return for some hand wirtten pieces of paper, that they assured us would provide us with hotel rooms, private shuttles to the Rio Dulce, tours of various Mayan sites near Flores and domestic flights back to Guatemala city.

Hugo dropped us of at Rio Dulce (a 5 hour drive) where the Finca Tatin boat picked us up from the Rio Bravo restaurant.
A canadian at the restaurant berated Paula about our choice of lodgings

What do you want to go there for for? there is nothing to do there.

. But the boys loved it. A quiet place in the jungle on the edge of a reasonably clean river off the Rio dulce, with huge numbers of hammocks, jungle walks, kayaks, trips up and down river and (their favourite) a rope swing from the jetty out into the river.

We saw tortuga (turtles), snakes, humming birds and good size spiders. We got bitten by fire ants and mosqitos. Had good food with communal dinners and a choice of vegetarian meal (this fooled us a little - am wrtiing this on 1 jan 07 and now realise how rare catering for vegies is in central america). Favourite trip was kayaking down the Rio dulce for two hours, including a stop at a natural hot water waterfall.
The boys cried when Paula insisted we needed warm showers and a palace that was cleaner after a few days. We ended up at Finca Paraiso (Paradise farm) which was awful.

OLIVER (thats sir to you): FINCA TATIN was GREAT we didnt want to leave and me and louis got this horrible fealing like we were going into a great evil when paula told us we were leaving because she wanted a hot shower (not that she got 1). so we got the boat, then the taxi over the smelly rubbishy once-was-jungle-now-is-fields to that heanous disgusting place of filth home for the dumpy deformed people and the ompah music. The waterfall was nice but it was a bit of a walk there and not a nice one at ALL. But there is a place next door which was nicer the rooms were pretty much the same but cleaner but it was the owner we liked he was nice and talked to us in english or spanish. dinner was not so good and breakfast was the samething.

Then we stayed a night and most of two days at casa perico and had some great food at the sundog cafe. Casa perico was lovely and we kayaked out to where it was good to swim.

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Additional photos below

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Photos

Finca Tatin Lodgings
Louis outside our cabin. Probably looking for turtles.

Comments

[Barb]

Hola!!
I love your travel stories-keep them coming. I leave next week for NZ and the big news is that I got a lovely wee puppy from Nicole, for Christmas. Love to you all. Barb