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Mini jungle, Simon vs the spiders

Rio Dulce Travel Blog › entry 19 of 48 › view all entries

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World › Central America › Guatemala › Rio Dulce

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Mini jungle, Simon vs the spiders

June 8, 2009

Not a bad view

Rio Dulce

We left Flores to head to Rio Dulce, again as always at the crack of dawn - this time being 8am, early enough for me. We again had private transport with the ever faithful Guatemala resident Mario - sounds as if he is from Italy doesn't it. The public transport is fine in Guatemala I'm sure but it is much quicker to use private transport and so far it hasn't cost us an extra. The private transport also meant we could visit a hot/cold waterfall on route to Rio Dulce. It cost 10 Quetzales to gain entry to the waterfall so about a pound in our money.

The waterfall wasn't as impressive as the one I was in at Cockcomb Jaguar Sanctuary in Belize but it was nice to have an hour or so to stop and take a dip in the water and take away all the sweat - attractive I know! The water was really hot and you couldn't sit under the waterfall for very long because you would have been roasted.

The water in the pool below the waterfall was cooler and relaxing though you did have to watch out for the fish that would take a wee nibble at you now and again. As we walked back to our minibus we saw that all the locals were washing their cloths in the water and swimming. Little girls no older than 8 were trying to sell us some banana bread for 1 Quetazal - 10p - and were asking for pens and pencils to write with for school. It shows the level of poverty in some areas of Guatemala when you see locals use the river for everything like washing themselves and their cloths.

We arrived in Rio Dulce at about 3pm after our detour. We took a short boat ride to the Tijax Jungle Lodge were we were staying and got our room keys from the staff. As the name suggests the accommodation was in the middle of a mini jungle were there were snakes and spiders galore.

This was demonstrated in the first few minutes of us arriving. I was sitting waiting to get my key when a spider the size of my hand came down from the ceiling and sat beside me. Only for one of the other guys in the group shouting I think it might of landed on me! Needless to say I kept a much keener eye out for the animals and insects of this mini jungle we were staying in, but my experience with rather large spiders was far from over.

Me and the German as I now refer to him - not to his face mind I think he might take offense - were put in the Quetzal cabin. The place was nice and had a white mosquito net covered the bed to ensure you didn't get bitten - too much anyway. Shortly after I got settled i decided to take a shower. I told the German that I was going to take a shower and went on my merry way - remember this important fact, I told the German were I was going.

When I got to the shower I was confronted with the mother of all spiders. The cheeky little chap was sitting right on the shower head. Needless to say I wasn't going to have a shower with my eight legged friend watching. I thought I would be nice and try to give him an opportunity to leave so I didn't have to kill him. I tried throwing water at him to encourage him to leave, no joy I think he rather enjoyed the bath. I tried hitting him with a towel to gently encourage him to move along, again no joy. I quickly realized that it was kill or be killed territory - just like in Vietnam I would imagine - and starting throwing some soap at the little bugger. He was stuck to the side and feel down onto the floor, phase two of my plan quickly swung into action.

Bruce lee was in the room, enter the flip flop - see what I did there - and i quickly dispatched the little sod to the underworld.

After I had grabbed a shower and my heart rate had returned to normal i was looking forward to lying down in my room, but no the German had other ideas about that. I went up to the door to find a big padlock on it no sign of our Nazi loving friend - a tad harsh you might say but I was really mad at this stage so it warrants some serious abuse. I looked around and he was nowhere to be found. I soon came to the conclusion that he was in the restaurant some 5 minute walk away, great! I walked into the restaurant toga style with the towel and soap. Grabbed the key gave the German a 'i would so love to slap you right now look' and went back to my room plotting my revenge.

Evil German in question... dont let the smile decieve you!

I saw a few ants when i got back into the room and decided how best to bring the German down. I put about ten or twenty of the little suckers under his Mosquito net and hoped that they were hungry and would be able to invite more friends along. I woke up in the middle of the night to find the German smacking his bed with his flip flop. I rolled over with a Cheshire smile on my face :-) mission accomplished!

Day 2 in Rio Dulce and you guessed it, early start. I don't complain about them but my body does a little, I like getting things done early but it does take about an extra hour or two for my body to realize that it has to waken up as well as my mind. We were heading to Livingston by boat stopping off at a remote beach called Playa Blanca.

The beach is on the Caribbean coast so as you can imagine it was lush and luckily we were the only ones on the beach. We spent 2 hours at our mini paradise drinking Coconuts and eating pineapple - which is delicious by the way. 15 Quetzales for a Coconut and 5 for a Pineapple so 2 pounds total, bargain I hear you say, I concur.

We then set off to Livingston were apparently they had the most amazing soup, now when I say soup you picture a bowl of liquid, right? Well you would be 30% right. The soup we had was a little different. It had coconut milk, bananas, 1 fish, 1 crab and 3 shrimp in it. A pretty big meal all for the costly sum of £8, I know its crazy. It was my first taste of crab and it was really nice, the shrimp was very tender and you could taste how fresh all the ingredients were.

It was certainly worth the 2 hour boat ride over.

We got back to the boat round 3pm after taking an hour to eat our meal - crab isn't the easiest thing to eat you know. It took us a couple of hours to get back and our driver stopped at areas of natural beauty so it was a very pleasant boat ride back to our mini jungle. Spent the rest of the evening relaxing and reading my book. I managed to get through a Dale Brown - guns, plans, Russia Vs America and men's toys sort of stuff - in just over a day. I just couldn't seem to put it down. We head to Antigua tomorrow, 8 hours of traveling, cant wait :-(

There are mild bits of bitching starting to break out in the group, which I find funny. At times I am a little bored because I don't really have anyone I get on really well with but when we are doing activities its great and to have somebody who speaks Spanish is a real help - I think knowing 15 numbers and some colors will only get you so far, time to continue my Nintendo DS studies.

Special soup

By the way I have downloaded some free spell checker software so I am hopeful I will be able to spell things now :-) I really am lost without it you know.