The Río Dulce is a 45km stretch of water between Lago De Izabal, the largest lake in Guatemala, and the Caribbean Sea. We were taking a boat cruise down the river to Livingston at the far end for lunch and back again.

There is not a lot of human habitation along the river apart from small settlements, and some rich "mansions". There were lots of birds though - cormorants, herons and pelicans were the ones we recognised. The river is extremely wide in places, to the point, it's almost the size of a lake (what constitutes a river?) so it seemed like we took a detour to Flower island. This small island was surrounded by thousands of water lily's. The island was inhabited by people seemingly living their traditional lives with houses on stilts over the water and wooden canoes for fishing.

The next stop on our trip was Aguas Calientes where hot water bubbled up in the edge of the river. The water temperature at the surface was 41c,way too hot for most people to stick a toe in but it became very pleasant when mixed with the cool river water below.

Livingston turned out to be nothing special, there was an expectation of a Caribbean vibe but it was really just a poor port town. We had lunch at Happy Fish, a restaurant used by locals and tourists alike and famed for it's Tapada. We didn't really know what Tapada was but thought we ought to order it regardless. What was brought to the table was a huge bowl of coconut cream based soup full of huge prawns, a whole crab in the shell and a whole fried fish - and we had one each!!

Back in Hacienda Tijax, without the breeze from being on the boat we retreated to the swimming pool to cool off.