Welcome to Africa
Traveling to Livingston, Guatemala.
“Welcome to Africa,” a man said as we piled off the boat from Rio Dulce and entered Livingston, a Guatemalan town known for it’s Garifuna culture. But, you wouldn’t really know it unless you were told. The town is comprised, mostly, of two touristy streets with a couple of empty restaurants offering overpriced seafood (though my tapado – a local coconut-based seafood soup – was amazingly delicious and contained a whole fish, a crab, several shrimp, and somethings in shells) and no real culture to take in at all.
While watching a Mother’s Day event (they seem to go very crazy over Mother’s Day…) a man approached me and some others I had met on the boat over and offered to show us the “real” Livingston. He took us off the main path, introduced us to old ladies sitting outside, playing kids, young men who saw us girls and wanted to meet us.
In all honestly, I spent the first half of our hike just assuming I was about to die. Or at least robbed. But in the end, he just asked us for a donation.
I spent three nights in Livingston, though I was ready to leave after one. But the way the timing worked out I didn’t want to arrive back in Antigua until Sunday, so I could pick up my new debit card on Monday, and head to Honduras on Tuesday…
Joaquin Rios
November 8, 2017at11:19 amIn a way I feel as if your ignorance clouded your ability to thoroughly enjoy the Garifuna culture that was so clearly there.