the sweet river

After stopping in Lívingston again for a couple nights, we took the beautiful boat ride down the river to Río Dulce. I´ve heard it´s beautiful, at least, but a half hour before we left Lívingston a torrential downpour blanketed the region. Nothing would be canceled unless there was a hurricane, so we wore our ponchos and they covered us with big blue tarps, but the speed of the boat made the rain even more stinging and unbearable - I barely peeked out from behind the tarp the whole ride, except when we slowed down enough to stop the sideways rain. Then, we saw lush jungle and beautiful herons, grand thatched roof houses right on the river or built on docks. The majority of the population at Lake Izabel and Río Dulce don´t live in the towns, but all along the water, getting around by canoe, speedboat, sailboat, yacht...
The ride was supposed to be a kind of tour of the journey upriver, stopping at Mayan educational centers, hot springs, and other things no one wanted to get out of the boat to do. So we just sped right to town.
The city of Río Dulce is kind of dingy, built on the highway that crosses the bridge over the river. We´re staying at a place about 5 minutes from the bridge in Lago Izabel, only accesible by boat, through waterways that snake into the jungle like suburban streets docked with houses and huge boat-garages. We´re sleeping in the top of an open-air thatch hut, so the bat activity is a little intense. They go out at night, but when the sun starts to come up they wake me with their obnoxious squeaking and fluttering around. We had bats at the Outpost too, and frankly I prefer them to gigantic cockroaches that knock things over in the bathroom in the middle of the night. Ewe.