Up the river….

From Livingstone you proceed up the Rio Dulce via a huge gorge, it is stunningly beautiful and the cliffs are covered in dense jungle vegetation.

It is so different to all of our cruising to date.  All along the shore you can see Egrets, pelicans and cormorants. There are also Quetzals, the national bird of Guatemala and Toucans but we haven’t seen them …..yet!!!!

The locals travel up and down the river in dug out canoes, or the more affluent, by long boat. It is so quite you can hear the crickets on shore.

We picked up several passengers. Tiny little black and white birds, who flew onto the boat to hitch a ride.. On Hula they flew inside the boom. As Spring is in the air, they are nesting, so they are flying backwards and forwards with little twigs, building their nest in our furling gear

We anchored for the night just before  El Golfete.  Hula invited us for sundowners, so by way of a celebration of making it into the river we cracked open a couple of bottles of bubbly, had smoked salmon and cream cheese with some of Eliann’s wonderful bread, falafel and sweet corn fritters. It was a lovely evening.

The river is incredibly still and quiet apart from the jungle sounds. But what is especially wonderful is the stars. Because there is no light pollution the stars are more visible and because the water is so still you can actually see the reflection of the stars in the water. I only wish I could capture it on camera it looks so magical.