Livingston, Guatemala ~ Only A Chosen Few Will Cross the Bar

Deja Vu at anchor~Livingston, Guatemala

After several wonderful weeks in the Bay Islands of Honduras, we returned to the Rio Dulce in Guatemala. Timing and waypoints are everything. Deja Vu has a 6ft draft so we can only cross the shallow, wide bar at the mouth of the river at very high tides. This time we had new, improved waypoints for the deepest part of the bar~or so we thought. As the depth sounder registered less and less water under our keel we held our breath and suddenly we could feel the boat bumping along the bottom. Powering through, we crossed the bar, dropped anchor and waited for customs and immigration to clear us in to Guatemala~our home away from home.

The photos are of Livingston, (pop. 6000), a mixed community of Garifunas (Black Caribs), Q'eqchi Maya and ladinos, at the mouth of the Rio Dulce and only accessible by water.

It's a laid back town with a rasta kind of feel--the only one like it in Guatemala. It's mango season and the daytime temps hover in the 90's.