June 1, 2018 – June 4, 2018
We needed to do a fairly major resupply before we could leave Cartagena. After a few false stops at what Google Maps had mistakenly indicated were grocery stores, we had a full fridge and were on the road again. Not knowing how long our shopping would take we had picked a spot close to Cartagena for the night to break up the drive the drive to our next destination which was Mompox.
April 16 – April 19, 2018
The crossing into Costa Rica on the Nicaraguan side was chaotic to say the least. We had no idea where we were supposed to park, which building we needed to head to first and we were immediately approached by “helpers”, people who hang out at the border, walk you from one building to another and tell you what you need to do next, all for a propina (tip). We had not used one since we had accidentally used one when crossing into Belize (we thought he worked for the border agency and didn’t realize we needed to tip him until the process was almost complete).
April 1 – April 3, 2018
We were happy to be back on the road and after a few hours of driving on good roads we arrived at our campsite at Somoto Canyon. We parked in a green field next to the river with a great variety of birds, including the national bird of Nicaragua, the Guardabarranco, which looks like this, I have yet to get a good picture of one, but, as you can see, they are pretty gorgeous. Feathers like that and you may imagine that this beauty lives in an elegant nest, surrounded by eider down throw pillows and firefly lanterns, but no, they live in a hole in the dirt banks alongside roads, trails and rivers (thus the name which translates to the guard of the bank). Could be quite nice inside I guess….
Lanquin is the town that many backpackers base themselves out of to visit caves, do hikes and see attractions in the area, Semuc Champey being the highlight. We had been warned that the road to Semuc Champey was rough, had a few precarious bridges that might not support our 5 tonne plus rig, and after the drive the day before, it wasn’t really appealing to us. We opted for a return trip on the hostel’s shuttle to Semuc Champey and back at a cost of about 10 CAD each.
We looked at the different routes we could drive to get from Rio Dulce to Lanquin. There were a few options given by Google Maps, but our iOverlander application warned that the roads of some of the routes were bad…really rough, unpassible bridges, rockslides, that kind of thing.
Many travellers have heard of Lago Atitlan in Guatemala, but the largest lake in Guatemala is the less visited Lago de Isabel, at the outlet of which lies the small harbour town of Rio Dulce. The Rio Dulce river then flows about 40 kilometres out to the town of Livingston and the Caribbean Sea.
We wanted to head towards Rio Dulce, so to break up the trip we spent a night at Las Pozas. The family owns a large piece of land along a river, where the water gathers into pools for swimming. We arrived in the afternoon on the weekend and there were many local families in the park enjoying the water, the rope swings, the picnic shelters and the soccer field. The owner told us to wait until a little later in the day when the crowds thinned and then we could move our truck to the river and set up for the night.
I had read about the ATM caves tour in our guide book, but wasn’t sure whether we should do it or not. First, it said that you had to be relatively fit to do the tour…Derek and I are fairly fit for our age, but we have been fitter….hours of sitting in a truck, you know…and younger…years of living, you know. Second, it was pretty expensive compared to other tours where you might, say, float on an inner tube through a cave. Then we talked with a fellow tourist at another campsite, and he had said that if you are going to pay for one tour in Belize, that it should be the ATM cave, so we signed up. We later were told that National Geographic listed the Top Ten Sacred Caves in the World, and the ATM caves was named number one. Sold.
We had, yet again, been having problems with our fridge when using it on propane. Derek worked on it near Bacalar, but we just could not get it to stay lit and we had run out of tricks. The plan had been to visit the beautiful multi-hued lake of Bacalar, but instead we decided to head to Chetumal where we had a larger town at our disposal and better internet to troubleshoot the issue.
The Usumacinta River forms part of the border between Guatemala and Mexico. Yaxchilan is a ruin along the river that you can only get to by boat from the Mexican border town of Frontera Corozal.