Flashback: Livingstone, Guatemala
Heading to my next stop involved a hour and a half ferry ride across the bay. I was looking forward to visiting the town of Livingstone which was a heavy Garifuna (Black-Caribes who were transplanted from the island of St. Vincent back in the colonial days.) The atmosphere was also supposed to be unique due to the fact that there were no roads leading to the town and it was only possible to be reached by boat.
I had the option of taking one of the faster water taxis, but the slower ferry seemed like a more relaxing way to go. It was fully loaded with supplies as well as a couple of dozen locals and tourists. After a pretty smooth run we arrived at the sort of odd port town.
My original perception upon pulling up to the dock were pretty good. It was as advertised, a town running along an river inlet curving around to the ocean. Just as soon as we pulled up to the dock, the local rasta wanna be touts jumped on board scrambling to grab hold of the couple of groups of backpackers wanting to whisk them away to their preferred paying hostels. As I was alone I was able to sneak by unmolested. Just getting past the blockade to the dock, the second wave of hasslers were lined up ready to take you on a boat tour to a few standard destinations. Once bypassing them it was a short walk up hill to the heavily tourist lined main street which housed the hotels, bars, restaurants, and tourist souvenir shops. The third wave were the lazy touts who just waited outside the hotels on the tourist street trying to be “helpful”. The whole while, mass tourist groups with guides holding up their little flags kept a bunch of cruise ship tourists all grouped together. I didn´t like any of it. A few guys tried to buddy up but I just kept blowing them off even when they kept following me around hoping that they could hitch up to me as I walked into a hotel and score a free payday. I figured that since it was early in the day I was in no rush to find a room and without the heavy weight of a large pack I could just wander around the town feeling it out to see if it was going to be somewhere I could shack up for a few days as based on the earlier descriptions it seemed like a place I could do some time. Walking around was pretty mundane as there really wasn´t much different about the town than any other although it did seem like you were more on an island as the town was on a sort of isthmus with the river on one side and the ocean on the other. After a couple of hours I had hit pretty much all there was to see so I figured it was time to drop my pack. I picked a little place off the tourist street and more in a little residential area. I had to cruise around a while to find a locals place that didn´t cater to tourists as the prices on the tourist street were nuts. By mid-afternoon I was pretty much through with Livingstone and headed down to the dock to see what my options were for a boat to my next destination.
Generally, the guidebook is fairly reliable on transportation options, but I guess something happened as the two companies that ran daily boats to Belize were no longer in business and the twice a week ferry was the only option. As that didn´t leave for a couple of days I was kind of stuck. Talking to one of the water taxi guys, he let me know that the other possibility was to take a water taxi back to Puerto Barrios where they had a daily boat at 10am. I was already dreading having to get up for the extra early boats that no longer ran, and now having to get up early to make a run back to the town I was already at plus make it in time for another boat departure just made the whole thing sound dreadful. The only good part was that my hotel in Puerto Barrios was close to the dock, it had tv, and I could get another helladelicious at the park.
The next morning I was up early as I was wanting to get the hell out of Livingstone. The only catch was that there are no scheduled boats back to Puerto Barrios, so you have to wait until the boat fills up before they leave. Luckily, I only had to wait about an hour. A quick hour ride back and I was there a half an hour before the Belize boat was about to leave. A nice kid came along and took me to the ticket place which was actually a van parked in front of the immigration office. I had to get my stamp out of Honduras before they would sell me a ticket. With ticket in hand I had about ten minutes to spare before the boat was to depart.
Tags: Guatemala