Rio Dulce

Our next stop has a very different feel, a little wooden hut by the riverbank of the Rio Dulce. It’s a very welcome retreat with jungle one side, and river the other. 

The hotel is a little eco-hostel where all you can do is kayak around and mingle with the other guests (lots of other travellers). You can also listen to the massive screams from Tristan when he finds a giant tarantula in our bathroom!! 

During one of our kayak trips, we visited an ‘AK Tenamit’ school / college project where we were kindly shown around by one of the students. We had read about the ‘AK Tenamit’ project whilst in Livingston, a project that was basically set up to educate and empower the local indigenous Mayan communities where there is traditionally a lack of education leading to extensive and continued poverty. Average earnings amongst this population are between $3-6 a day, with girls receiving on average 1.8 years of education, often to start having children early in their teens. Well what a visit this was….about 1200 15-20 year old Mayan people attended the school, where they were educated in many different fields, but largely tourism and agriculture. The school was amazing to see, with literally all of the pupils welcoming us with big ‘buenos Dias’ s’ and really wanting to engage with us - they really did look like such a happy group of teens, with not a phone in sight! Many of the pupils boarded 7-days a week as they lived so far away, during which time they slept in boiling hot dormitories of 500 people in one one room, which looked like giant army camps (one for boys and one for girls).The pupils were immaculately dressed, with no such things as washing-machines in sight, and we spotted many of the students happily washing their clothes in the river at weekends! 

During the rest of our time here, we kayaked around observing the true Guatemalan culture, observing Mayan families living in the most basic of housing by the riverbanks, popping out only to fetch their daily catch of fish in their little wooden kayaks. 

Of course, our time wasn’t all quite so tranquil…the river water was probably not the freshest to swim in 😳. Seb vomitted, Johnny has profuse diarrhoea and Tristan is a bit touch and go as we speak! Let’s just keep everything crossed we finish this 4 hour bus journey with no disasters!!!