Rio Dulce, then on to Belize

 I woke up at dawn and got this lovely shot from the balcony of our little house on stilts over the Rio Dulce.

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Turns out we had company.

This fisherman was close enough to our house that I could say "good morning" without waking Mark up.

Before long, he moved on and joined a friend.

We headed down to the water's edge for breakfast.

We didn't stay long in the little town Rio Dulce. We were only on the main street for a few minutes, and that was enough. It overwhelms with people and noise everywhere—undoubtedly the loudest trucks, buses and motorcycles I’ve every heard, all going nonstop all the time. We were here to see the beautiful  countryside (see earlier post about ecological importance, etc.). Coincidentally, we were also able to see Julia for a brief chat. She is in the area visiting villages as part of a traveling medical team and if ours sounds like a comfy  vacation hers is true grit. For anybody interested read her yesterday (Feb. 18) post.  Here is the address:  
http://viagaudiosa.wordpress.com/

For our river tour, we caught the Collectivo ferry at 9 a.m., expecting something akin to the local bus; actually, it collects more tourists (local and imported) from the other hotels along the river and starts down the river valley to the Caribbean. I’ve never been so drenched in green.  Various shades of it, green misty sky, green water, green riverbanks, a green lily pond and at one point high cliffs covered in tropical forest. We saw cormorants, pelicans, varieties of birds I don’t know the names of, we pulled into a little hot spring for a rest stop, and finally knew we were at the Caribbean sea when the water turned blue. The photos have relatively more blue than the actual scene…dunno what causes that.

Livingston is the little town at the mouth of the river. It has the feel of the West Indies. People of African descent make up a bigger slice of the population (you also see folks of Indian , Latino and Indigenous descent), the music  is different, the colors of the small shack-like shops and bars along the main street look more like the Caribbean isles…and, mainly, at the end of the street there is a beach—a small, sandy one with some little boys floating boats they just made out of white foam packing materials. We had planned to walk in (or take a water taxi) to see some pretty waterfall near Livingston, but it turned out that the times we were told for the various modes of transport weren’t quite accurate and we only had 3 hours. That wasn’t enough time…but Livingston was hot, hot, hot and three hours was enough!

I’m going to post a bunch of photos from the cruise, then tell about our trip to Belize.

This little fort is from the days of Spanish occupation

Families, individual fishermen, and individual kids were all on the river, usually fishing.

This child's home was right by the lily pool.

She is selling trinkets.

Some homes along the water were large and looked quite prosperous, others the opposite. This one is in the middle.

We dock here to see the hot spring.

These little boys lived near the hot spring and were having a hilariously good time making pretend tortillas from mud.

We're close to the Caribbean now...this boat was abandoned to the sea birds.

Livingston's main street.

Carolyn seeks refuge from the heat.

And we're on the way back.

This is a Nazarine church.

Sean was looking for his mom, who was sailing alone. We pulled into a dock where expected to find her boat, and didn't. The nurses--you can see the backs of their heads--set up a plaintive cry....."Moooooooom, Moooooooom! ....but it didn't help. Sean shrugged and sat down. Then, when we least expected, there she was!

Sean and mom are re-united and he will help her sail this thing to her next port of call.

The little cottage was ours for two nights.