Still alive in Livingston

Hello! Greetings from Livingston, West Guatemala at the Carribean coast, only to be reached by taking a boat over the Rio Dulce. A quiet village where in earlier days the slaves from Africa arrived which resulted in a very colourful town of Garifuna´s, Maya´s and ladino´s. The Garifuna´s are a minority in Guatemala, for the population consists mainly of Maya´s and Ladino´s - a mix of Maya´s and Spanish people. The Rastafari is all around in Livingston.. relaxed atmosphere, music everywhere, streetlife till late at night. We were in a Garifunabar and enjoyed a nice show with african girls dancing, one of them asked me to join.. so I did.. was very funny! and scary :)

And what I loved very much... to see the sea! What´s really too bad though, is that the the beaches are not very beautiful. They´re small and there´s lots of trash, especially flipflops and bottles and other plastic rubbish (everything that floats). It seems the water is rising, so the beaches get smaller. Furthermore most countries at the Carribean don´t have well functioning ´trash management´, so it keeps piling up especially because the populations are growing rapidly. We made a nice walk of about 5 hours yesterday to waterfalls where we swam. ´We´ are my travelcompanion
Stefanie, Ana from the US and two Spanish guys Jordi and Jose. We spoke lots of Spanish the last days for the guys don´t speak English, I´m getting more and more comfortable with it. We met them at a ecological (VERY basic..) hostel at Rio Dulce, in the middle of the jungle where we have been kayaking, walking, swimming and visiting a developmental schoolproject. The picture at the right is in the middle of the jungle, while Stefany and I are soaking wet from head to toe.. Sunrise at Tikal was great and we experienced the rainforest in its true ´sense´.. later more about this. Bye!