Going to Livingston again!

Extranjeros I am very interested in talking more with some of these folks who have been here for so long…..especially NOT on retirement income. How do they manage? A woman I met in Pana lived by making cookies to sell to tourists. My one steady friend here is a massage therapist. Others live on savings. The woman who hosts the writers’ group I have started going to has been here for 30 years. I know how she manages to live, because she is partners in one of the “hottest” café’s in Antigua, but she must have been here during the war years, and I’d like to know more about how that was for Gringos in Antigua. My Spanish teacher (Guatemalteca) says she and local people she knew were totally unaware of what was going on, even though as part of her university education, she interviewed many people in the government for a paper she was writing. Not unlike the situation in the U.S. for the majority of people who only read mainstream news. 

I’ve been thinking about Livingston since I first heard there was a black Caribbean community here in this Eastern Coastal town in Guatemala, and of course especially after becoming so enamoured of the Caribbean black culture when I was in Jamaica for three weeks. Thus I decide to take my second trip to Livingston during the weekend of their annual celebration of the day the first Garifs landed there, 199 years ago, which coincides with our Thanksgiving week in the U.S.....end of November, 2006. I wanted both to experience what I expected to be a weekend of music and dance, in the rapid hip-shaking punta-style, but also to check in with the ONEGUA organization dedicated to Garifuna cultural revival and to spend time in the community to settle my mind once and for all whether I would like to leave Antigua at the end of my six-months’ lease and live there. 

Last time I went to Livingston was with a tour – the same guide and big van all the way. This time I’m going to get there by public transport, and on my own. My scheduled shuttle pick up is late so it is nearly 4:15 am, not 3:45 when it arrives; I’ve been up since 3:15. Score one for the vagaries of travel, though this is minimal. We drive thru the still-dark streets of Antigua and then into the country and finally the lights of Guatemala City. We make our way toward the bus station through a million dirty streets with closed dirty shops – shades of the downtown Oakland Greyhound station 30 years ago. I stand in the freezing wind with 15 or so Guatemalan men, women and children after the shuttle drops me off. When the station office opens at 5 am I learn that the bus for Rio Dulce is at 6 am, not 5, as my Spanish teacher had been informed on the phone. (Score minus two.) The good news is that I misunderstood the price of the ticket - ¼ of the way across Guatemala by 2nd class public bus – it is not 50 dollars, but 50 Quetzales - about $6.50. Seated in the waiting room, we all huddle over our bags; the cold wind blows through the station door - my teeth are close to chattering. The woman next to me enviably has a light sports blanket over her shoulders (I had elected not to bring mine, at the last moment,) the man across from me has a bath towel wrapped around him. People gather around the lunch counter when it opens but since I thought I was going to be short of cash I have a little stash of food in my bag, which I consume with my hands as I wait. (I wonder what locals think of me, an obvious gringo, operating like a poor person.) The bus, while it has TVs mounted above some seats, and probably A/C and heat…activates none of them. It also has a non-functioning bathroom in the back for this five-hour trip. The temperature in the bus doesn’t become tolerable until 8 am or so. By 9 I’ve taken my sweater off, as the sun comes out and we drop in altitude. It’s been so chilly most days and evenings in Antigua for the last few weeks I am really looking forward to warmer weather at sea-level, but when we reach Rio Dulce it is cloudy and just pleasant. People are saying there is some polar air mass moving down through Mexico and Guate, making the weather chillier than usual. I'm not sure how I'll find the launch for Livingston, but "the tourist industry" takes care of that: when I step down off the bus, a young guide essentially grabs me with the call, “Livingston!” He gathers up the other two gringos who were on the bus – a young couple who have kept to themselves and looked at noone - and we go down to buy tickets for the public launch. I walk with the guide and am pleased that my still-minimal Spanish makes possible a shallow conversation about the weather and his brother who lives in L.A. He says it is even COLDER in Livingston than here at Rio Dulce. I am lucky again – the ticket is $13 one-way, not the $26 it cost for the shared private launch last time – however although I got up so early to be in R. Dulce before the “last launch” I’d heard about at 1 pm, it is still only 11:20 am and the launch not leaving until 1:30 “or when it’s full.” I go next door to a restaurant overlooking the water, opt for a hamburger and fries (something I rarely eat,) and wait, watching the ducks and a coconut floating in the water next to the deck. The food arrives – a huge hamburger, lots of very crispy delicious fries, and a huge tart limeade in a chalice decorated with cherries. About $5. A young man walks past me and dumps what appears to be a large bowl of soup into the beautiful river. He turns, sees me, quickly says “Hola!” and laughs at my exaggerated shocked look. I watch boats and people come and go, some of them fisherman standing up poling their carved wood barcas. Suddenly there is flurry of very small fish in the water in front of me – can they be after the soup? I check; there’s a much greater congregation in that part of the water than anywhere else. The launch is finally ready and I am startled to see it is piloted by two boys who look about 12 and 17, however the older one turns out to be the best pilot I’ve ridden with. We follow pretty much the same route as last visit, minus the wonderful lilypad lagoon. I chat and joke a bit with the 20 or so young travelers from Germany, Australia, France and America, but everyone is traveling in couples and groups. There is one apparently-gringo man my age on the boat, speaking perfect Spanish with his handsome 20-something son. Along the route we drop off a young couple who have decided on an overnite at a riverside Bed and Breakfast run by what looks like a 30-something hippie couple who’ve bought here on a lagoon off the Rio Dulce. The boatmen don’t know the place the couple describes and are not even familiar with the little tributary the B&B is on, but conversations with passing boatmen provide the directions. What a Paradise! A redwood A-frame house visible in the thick dark green foliage that borders the water; other structures half-hidden behind it, and a friendly welcome. A girl in the group who also speaks rapid perfect Spanish gets off at the dock of the school project - Ak-Tenamit - that we stopped at last time. She is going to “stay the night in a Mayan village and walk to Livingston through the jungle” mañana. I beg to get off at the same place – momentarily – as I wanted to buy some crafts objects last time but had no money. The guide agrees to “diez minutos” and I run up the walk, quickly select my carved and painted gourd bowls, and off we go again – churning water downriver toward Livingston. After the obligatory stop at the hot springs on the edge of the river (steaming water coming out of the foot of the mountain) we land about 5 pm. A Rasta guy hits the boat immediately with a “bid” for his Hotel Viajero at $4 per night. Several folks head for there – I look at one room; clean but very sparse. I part from them and continue down the street to look for the hotel where I’ve reserved a room for four nights at $20 per night, which sounded cheap until I got here. On the way I run into a group of drummers walking along – two of whom I’d met in Antigua. One I’ve never spoken to recognizes me and gives me the traditional kiss on both cheeks, as does the guy I know better. He says they will be playing tonight at 10 pm, then extricates himself to follow his friends, saying, “We’ll see you later!” What a nice welcome to Livingston! Livingston is a community of about 5000, on a jungle-covered peninsula on the Rio Dulce, accessible only by water. The town itself is slightly hilly, and rambling - concrete block houses interspersed with some thatched-roof huts or cabins, empty lots full of banana and coconut trees, brush, some flowering bushes, trash, and scavenging, mangy dogs. The main roads are paved with concrete, not cobblestones like Antigua, although there are some with interlocked concrete blocks. Children run all over town, on their own. There are few beggars and no hawkers, such as we encountered in Jamaica, but all along the street, there are tiny carts or makeshift tents with food or other goods in front of the many small stores of every sort. Because it is essentially an “island” there are few cars, but many bikes and motorcycles, and many more pedestrians. My hotel – Casa Rosada – is very pretty, but a long way from the area I presume most activities will take place. I look at the rustic bungalow I’ve reserved, with its traditional peaked roof covered with dry banana leaves, capped with a tin cone. The place is very pretty, right on the river, with flowers and a few pieces of hand-painted furniture in the clean but simple rooms, but the bathrooms are communal and only one has hot water. Seems like a comparatively steep price for this. I decide I will look around for something else, and see if I can change. I throw my bags down and go out to check the town before nightfall. I run into two folks from the boat collapsed on their bags on the sidewalk near where we docked. One of their group has gone to look for a hotel. I tell them about mine and about Viajero, and walk on. I see the hotel - Via del Mar - my Garifuna drummer “friend” mentioned to me when they were in Antigua. I ask about a room there, on the second floor with sort of a view of the bay: “Oh si, no problema.” It is bare but clean, and overlooks the street where a lot of activities will go on. In part this means I won’t have a long walk home alone after midnite or whenever the music stops. It is 25Q per nite or about $3.50. I don’t know if I can get out of my reservation for four nites, but will try in the morning. At the ocean (actually a huge bay) at the other end of the main street, the fairly smooth grey water comes right up to the shore – no sandy beaches. This is about 1-1/2 miles away from my hotel via the street. There I find another group from the boat sitting at a table outside a restaurant, drinking beer with a young local guy in a Rasta cap. They invite me to sit and I order the best lemonade of my life. They make it by blending the whole unpeeled lemon so it’s deliciously tart and tasty. It turns out these kids have been studying in Antigua, so I spend the next couple of hours listening to these young internationals tell stories of the night-life I miss in Antigua, gossiping about people, other places they’ve traveled, and so on. They are very welcoming to me and include me in the conversation, and I make joking remarks from time to time, and by now even have a few simple travel stories. Then the cook brings out their dinners: great curry and a traditional Garifuna dish called Topada. Eventually there is some broth left over from this, so I order more piping hot garlic bread and we all dip it in the broth. The Hispanic man at our table, Prince, eventually walks off with me and a very tall 19-year-old German (Elena) to show us where the bar is where the Garif music will be, later. We get hung up at the internet place where Elena does her email while Prince tells me his love-troubles (in good English – his father is from Livingston but he went to high school in L.A. and his mother and stepfather now live in Texas.) We discuss ethical and emotional responses to his situation [I can’t escape my profession.] We then leave Elena, who is still emailing back to Germany. He shows me the bar I was introduced to last time, in a slightly different place than I thought and looking much more colorful outside than I remembered it from the brief trip just a few months ago. Then I walk back to my room to take a nap before the music begins at 10, knowing there’s a good chance I will sleep right thru it since I’ve been up since 3 am, but recognizing there will be music all weekend. I wake at 3 am, listen to the crickets, the water lapping gently at the dock near my bed, and a few dogs barking in the surrounding community, and go back to sleep. What a treat all this is!