Cañon El Buquerón
Today I made a daytrip from Rio Dulce. In my Footprint guidebook I read about the things to do in the neighbourhood and came across a place called Cañon El Boquerón which was described as ¨impressive, you can swim with the current all the way down the canyon, which is brilliant fun. It´s a deep canyon with lots of barba de viejo (old man´s beard) hanging down, strange rock formations, and otters and troops of howler monkeys whopping about. One of the locals will paddle you upstream for about 800 m, US$0.65.¨ It sounded brilliant, so I thought ¨looks like a day well spent!¨ and went for it.
After having breakfast I took a local chicken bus this morning and sat and sweated and shook for about an hour, watching the marvellous landscapes go by, in a bus crowded to the top with people, an old american high school bus, so badly rusted that it was only being held together by duct tape and string, broken windows, an unasphalted road with many holes, sun brightly shining… wel… you get the idea. As I arrived at El Boquerón I was welcomed by: nothing; it was an absolutely empty place, only a mudtrack and a fence. ¨Hmm… this is going to be interesting…¨
I followed the mudtrack and found that it lead to a big river, of which to the right the promised canyon started. For the rest: a local woman washing clothes in the river, a shack for lumber, and the jungle with howler monkeys happily howling.
After about ten minutes a local on his mountain bike came along and asked me if I wanted to go upstream the river in his boat, to which I said yes of course. He stepped on his mountainbike again, just paddled off, and didn´t return for the rest of the time I spent there. I actually wasn´t sure if he´d return or not, maybe he did later on after all, but I guess I´ll never know..
In the meantime waiting for a boat that never came I entertained myself (just me there by then, me, the river, the jungle and the howler monkeys) by swimming in the river, enjoying the sun, listening to my MP3 player and the monkeys screaming back and forth. It was good, just lazing about in the middle of nowhere.
After a few hours I backtracked a bit towards Finca El Paraíso (Farm ´the paradise´) which is another place to have some good clean fun in the water. It´s a hot waterfall with waters that plunge into a cool-water pool below. It´s nice to swim there and get away from the heat, or just laze about in the nicely temperatured thermal river above the waterfall. I also met up with a few people from my hostel, and after a while we decided to head back to Rio Dulce. Not wanting to wait for the bus (everything´s on Gautemalan time, you never know if or when anything will actually take place) we started hitching and got a sweet ride immediately in the back of a pick-up truck.
So well, there we are, that was my day today (so far anyway, it´s only 5 PM). Since the last post, of about a week ago I think, I visited Tikal, which was absolutely amazing. I harcore high-speed hiked through the jungle for three days on a guided tour, an incredible and unforgettable experience. And I visited a lovely tiny untampered with village on the east side of Lake Petén Itzú, where I unfortunately fell ill for two long dreary days due to a case of Guatemalan fever, so I spent my time there lying in bed, ill, feverish, miserable, trying to sleep as much as possible, and visiting an old local doctor with a long white beard who assured me that it would pass and gave me Ibuprofen.
All in all, it´s been a few quite interesting days I must say. Yesterday I felt all better again luckily, and I travelled to Rio Dulce, located in the south-east of Guatemala. This day has been just what I needed to continue my voyage for the next 21 days. Tomorrow I´m taking off again from this region and will head west to Antigua. Take care.
James
