GT 8: Rio Dulce

Sad as we were to leave Antigua, I was nevertheless pretty psyched about our next destination: Rio Dulce (gentle river). For one thing, it is back in the jungle/tropical part of GT, while Antigua is in the highlands, where it gets COLD at night. Our hostel had no heating, and windows that do not shut; after barely sleeping the 1st night, I wore every single piece of clothing I had to bed the 2nd night, and finally managed to get some shuteye.

The Austrian guy (Thilo) in Antigua recommended staying at Casa Perico. It's 10mins by boat from the town of Rio Dulce/Fronteras, in a little waterway branching off from the main river. Tucked in the jungle/mangrove, the hostel has nice little cabanas on stilts, hammocks (Hammocks!), a bar, and little dugout canoes. We took a canoe out to explore the river, and learnt that

1) dugout canoes are extremely wobbly
2) zigzagging wildly from left to right to left riverbank is not the most efficient way to travel

(picture credit: Eve Andersson's Rio Dulce page)

The next day we took a bus to Finca Paraiso, home of the agua caliente (hot water) waterfall. The bus drops us at the little open hut/shelter. There's a guy inside with a metal box collecting the entrance fee. Then this other guy wearing a yellow t-shirt that says 'SECURITY' starts walking into the jungle and gestures us to follow. He talks to me in Spanish. I think he's saying good things about the waterfall, because he mentions 'agua caliente' and there's a huge smile on his face. I try to talk back. We lapse into silence.

10mins later we descend to the river bank and Oh! there's the waterfall! It's tucked in a little corner of the lush forest-- a side tributary (hot water) falling into the meander of the main brook (cold water), with water so clear you can see the pebbly bottom.

We get into the water. hm. it's a weird mix of hot and cold. We swim to the falls and clamber up to the rocks at the base. We manage to find several good spots where, positioning ourselves just so, we could sit or stand against the rocks, and have the hot falling water massage our shoulders and back.

BLISS.

I felt like I could stay there forever. When we felt too hot we simply stuck our feet down to the cold stream, or take another swim before climbing back up for more hot massages... it was better than any spa I've been to!

[um... actually that's not saying very much because I haven't been to ANY spas... but trust me, it was good.]

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We reluctantly tear ourselves away from this little spot of paradise, mostly because 2 large guatemalan families, each with about 15 assorted children, parents and grandparents, had arrived. We wait along the road for 1.5hrs for the bus while baking slowly in the sun. We think about buying an orange from the little girl selling oranges at the hut. we also think about walking back to Rio Dulce, probably a 2hr walk if we didn't get lost. [ok, actually I was thinking of walking, but was easily disuaded from the idea by Charmaine]

A quick aside here about oranges in GT: they get peeled using this interesting orange peeler contraption. you stick the orange between the clamps and just turn the handle. viola! perfectly peeled citrus. every fruit and drink cart seems to have one, and hawkers clamber up to your bus bearing baskets of peeled oranges for your Vit C-consuming pleasure.