It obviously took us a number of days to recover from the Birthday visit, so a few days were spent in Placencia, washing, internet, shopping ? the usual chores. We then spent a few more days idly on more beautiful palm fringed barrier reef islands before heading to Guatemala.
We checked out of Belize in Punta Gorda and then headed towards Guatemala. We spent a night at anchor under Punta Tres Capo off a very junglely shore line with lots of strange noises to go with it. We then headed to Livingston, which is a town that can only be reached by sea; it has a notorious sand bar across the river mouth, where you have to carefully time your entrance, getting tide, wind etc all right. We thought we had done this perfectly and only moments from reaching the safe deeper waters we got firmly stuck!! No amount of tricks learnt on the ICW could get us free, so Mark, heeding the advice in the pilot book, called Raul (a fixer) on the VHF radio for assistance. Unfortunately, the Guatemalans are no mugs, and a call on the VHF radio from a Gringo? boat looking for assistance is answered by most of the population of Livingston all claiming to be the illusive Raul! So we accepted a line from one of the several boats circling us "what exactly are Lloyds Open Form? salvage rules again? " and got towed off, by a line to the head of the mast and the motor boat pulling us so that we tipped over and reduced our draft!
Once ashore in Livingston we were surprised by the amount of cars, trucks & motorbikes considering there is no road access at all to this town. We wandered about, finished our clearing-in formalities, bought a bit of fresh fruit, had lunch and then headed towards the River Rio Dulce. The river winds inland for miles and has several large lakes and is a renowned hurricane shelter, lots of yachties arrive for a season end up staying in the area for years - all a bit sad really.
The small town of Livingston is on the left hand side of a very junglely shoreline with an entrance of 200yds wide which leads into the Rio Dulce Canyon. We motored through and slowly up the river surrounded by walls of jungle which rose hundreds of feet above us, birds swooping around and locals paddling by in dug-out canoes, the genuine article. It is great to see so much green after weeks of sand and sea, it's a complete contrast to anywhere we have been so far.
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