Guatemala, or You Can't Get There From Here

Livingston, Guatemala.  An unlikely name, right?  Well, I first heard about Livingston over 12 years ago, when I was in Guatemala with Zoë.  We read about this village on the Caribbean coast of Guatemala that was only accessible by boat, and that was home to a community of Garifuna people.  The Garifuna are an Afro-Caribbean ethnic group descended from the survivors of slave ships that shipwrecked on the island of St. Vincent during the 17th century, and who were later driven off St. Vincent to Roatan, and eventually various places on the Caribbean coast of Central America.  They speak their own language, and their culture is still distinctively African (Yoruba), particularly in its music.  Zoë and I thought it seemed like a fascinating place, but getting there would have involved overland travel through parts of Guatemala where the civil war was still hot, so going was out of the question.  So, imagine my thrill when I realized that the ship would be stopping on the Caribbean coast of Guatemala, within spitting distance of Livingston.  We decided we would hit the Quiriguá Maya site on the way out, and Livingston on the way back.  Finally, I would get to see Livingston!

But Livingston is only accessible by boat.  We knew we didn't want to go with one of the ship tours, largely because those either got to Linvingston late in the day, and spent no time there, or left before lunch, which would mean not having lunch in Livingston.  So we decided to arrange our own transportation.  This was not going to be easy, because we were pulling into Puerto San Tomás de Castilla, a port facility far from any real town.  This meant that we would be at the mercy of the cab drivers and tour operators who were allowed in to the port, where they could bleed money out of the captive tourists pouring out of the ship.  Knowing there would be economy in numbers, we teamed up with some other folks from the ship, to hire a cab to the municipal pier (the expensive part), where we could hire a lancha to take us back and forth (the cheap part).  The group decided instead to hire one of the boats that the tour company was making available right from the pier.  A bit more expensive, but none of the hassles of getting to the municipal pier.  I acquiesced.

I should have known better, however, when the person who made the arrangements mentioned that the price would include the service of a guide.  You see, no one in Latin America EVER wants to sell you transportation alone.  They always want to include "el servicio de un guía" and turn the whole thing into a tour.  So we get on the boat, and proceed to hear precisely what we were trying to avoid, the endless yammering of the guide telling us that Spanish is the official language of Guatemala, Roman Catholicism its predominant religion, and the quetzal its official currency.  Really?!?!  Spanish?!?!?!  I thought they spoke Mandarin.  See all the amazing things you learn on guided tours?

But eventually we get close to Livingston, see the statue of St. Isidore the Worker, gas up and … sail right past the pier and up the river beyond.  The guide, you see, thought it would be fun to take us up the nearby canyon of the Río Dulce to see the sights.  We saw the cliffs.  We stopped off at the makeshift store of the guide's relatives to buy soft drinks and attempt to make tortillas (much harder to do than it looks).  We stopped off to explore a cave.  All well and good, but I wanted to go to Livingston!!!!  I was mad, the way I get when I don't get what I want, and I had to marshal all my strength to calm down and enjoy myself.  It wasn't made any easier by the fact that I'd gotten stung on the middle finger of my left hand by an unidentified insect, and that my finger was swelling up to twice its size.  And here I was, up the Río Dulce, certain that my finger was going to become gangrenous and require emergency amputation.  

So, finally the boat makes it to Livingston.  (Did I tell you it's only accessible by boat?) We head straight for a restaurant, where the Kid and I enjoy delicious tapados (you'll remember this delicious seafood soup in coconut milk from my previous Guatemala post), and then have time to wander through town, through Livingston, the nerve center of Guatemala's Garifuna culture … and … there's nothing going on whatsoever.  It's a Sunday, and the town is asleep.  The gift shops are open, and the Kid buys himself a cool drum and a pair of maracas, then we head back to the boat.  Thank God for the excursion up the river, or else the whole day would have been a bust.  

In the end, we heard Garifuna music exactly where we had heard it last time, in the cruise ship terminal back in San Tomás.  Here's the performance:

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