8 February Our first night in the River was spent at anchor in a wonderful jungle setting but near a small marina called Texan Bay, so luckily although surrounded by nature cold beers were on hand!
We carried on up the river towards the small town of Fronteras (also called Rio Dulce) going through amazing changing scenery as the river widened out to a huge lake called El Golfete where the jungle had been cut down and the land cultivated. All the time the water was being criss-crossed by fast speed boats called ¡®Lanchas¡¯ carrying a mixture of locals & tourists and small dug out canoes with children going to school, men fishing and people just popping out to the shops.
Just off the town of Fronteras, we dropped our anchor guided by the good yachting principles of where the strongest wi-fi internet signal could be picked up and settled in for a few days. We aimed to do some research for the upcoming holidays. The Sheed / Barbis holiday on Jem, from Guatemala to Belize and the Seymour holiday away from Jem travelling inland in Guatemala to Belize. So we wound down the dinghy and set off for an explore, whilst pottering around we saw a friend¡¯s boat and went over to see if they were there and were pleased to find they had arrived the day before, a dinner date was duly made to catch up.
After a few days of life ¡®in town¡¯ we set-off again down the river to explore a little more of the Rio Dulce before leaving for our inland trip. We motored gently down and took a side tributary for about 4 miles and meandered slowly through the river with jungle clad shores spotting all sorts of birds and spider monkeys bounding around in the trees. After a couple of hours we decided to go for a dip in the rather brown water, it turned out to be quite cool and very refreshing and what a nice to change to swim in fresh water. We spent a couple of nights in a wide open bay surrounded by jungle spending the days giving sweets & pencils (with rubbers on!) to the children who visited us in their dug out canoes and exploring the little side rivers in our dinghy.
We forgot to say that this is a true rain forest and consequently it is very hot and steamy in the day, if you want to do anything you need to get up early about 6.30am as by 11am until 3.30pm it often too hot & sweaty to do much at all. Then most nights there are huge tropical down pours, really fat rain if you know what I mean.
We then headed back to Fronteras to tie up in a marina, give the boat a good spring clean and set-off on 16 February by bus for a 6 hour journey to Antigua via Guatemala City.
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