All of Guatemala celebrated my birthday!

Everyone in Guatemala laughs when they learn that my birthday is on December 7th. In the USA we remember the bombing of Pearl Harbor on that day. In Guatemala it is the DAY OF THE DEVIL! Apparently, there is a saint day of some sort on the 8th. So the devil is burned in effigy, pinatas of him are filled with firecrackers and lit all at once, and decorations of him are everywhere. So there are lots of firecrackers and fireworks on my birthday. And people still laugh that I have the misfortune of such an infamous birthday! But it was a great day.

The first guy that greeted us when we arrived in Livingstone wanted to be our "new best friend" and of course was a hustler who ended up asking for money. We didn't give him any. Another man across the park area was giving us the hand signal to not give him any. That bothered Spencer and he thought of the people there as idle and dishonest. I thought of them as full of laughter and fun. We agreed to disagree. But I enjoyed it more with my attitude. =) I loved the elaborate braid work on some of the women waiting for the launcha with us. We rode across the bay to Puerto Barrios and all of the passengers laughed and kidded and joked the entire way. Of course I could only understand words now and then. But I'm not gonna try to learn their language.

Contrasts in Livingstone

Livingstone is a unique town in Guatemala. Lots of really poor houses, but some very nice ones too. It is cleaner than Chiquimula, which surprised me. The people were very friendly. Most of them are blacks who speak their own language. I think it was called Garifuni or something like that. But they also spoke Spanish. They laugh a lot-- and very loud. There were towers at the dock. Spencer went up to have his picture taken and he said it was pretty awful. After his description I understood why there were signs posted saying please use the bathrooms that were provided and not the towers. Enough said. It is really hot and humid in the port towns. We were pretty muggy.

Natives along the river

Two of the cutest little girls came out to sell us shells. There canoes were probably about 4 feet long and carved out of one piece of wood. These people live along the river and only have river access for travel or transportation. We saw men fishing from canoes, women taking the children down river and houses on stilts. Many people had canoes, but many also boats with motors. It was fascinating.

There was a natural hot springs that comes out from under the base of the cliff. I thought it might feel good to soak my back in it for a while. No way! It was too hot to even keep both feet in at the same time. Here is the little launcha we had to ourselves, for our early morning river trip. Fun birthday.

The rain forest along Rio Dulce

These are just sample pictures of the rain forest we boated through to celebrate my birthday with a river trip down Rio Dulce. It ends up at Livingstone which is on the coast of the Caribbean / Atlantic Ocean. It was amazing for these two desert rats to behold.

Islas de Pajaros

There were two different "Bird Islands". All the white on the leaves it bird poop. These islands are home to hundreds of water fowl, turkey vultures and an iguana type animal. Look close at the top of the tree where the orange shape is. They only come out in the morning sun to warm up. We were lucky to see several.

This is the post office in Rio Dulce -- which is a fairly good sized town. You can see how sophisticated it is. That might be why mail is pretty unreliable in Guatemala. We had time Sunday afternoon and evening to wander around Rio Dulce (again). The castle hadn't changed since we visited it with Christena and Nate. But we went anyway. There was one scare when Spencer thought that his wallet had been pick pocketed. Fortunately, when we returned home, we found it hiding, standing up against the side of the suit case. Sigh. Big relief.