9/2/10 - day 62.

up at half 5, 6am bus to chiqimula, hour and a half later got another bus to puerto barrios. this was a long, boring 4 and a half hour journey made all the more intolerable by another jesus preacher going at it hammer and tongs for over haolf an hour. he really started to annoy me actually. he was so loud and his chosen setting - a moving vehicle - make it impossible to get away from. instead i was forced to listen to some nutter, hysterically at times, preach and ramble. i did my best to block him out - the ipod went on IMMEDIATELY.

got to pueto barrios about half 12 and got, for the first time really, properly ripped off by a taxi driver that took me to the port. i didnt argue or haggle at the time as i thought the price was ok. lets say with the new currency i got my maths rather wrong. had a little wait in ridiculous heat for there to be enough people to get the boat over to Livingston. its only accessible by boat and is a totally different town to the rest of guatemala. it's inhabited by the garifuna community that are also on the coast in belize, honduras and nicaragua. they are of afro-carribbean descent and although spanish dominates here, english in spoke a bit as well.

when i got off the boat, i was met by a dude who showed me to a cheap hostel called african palace and told me about the town. very quite, very chilled out and drugs are tolerated. this last bit was important to him as he tried to sell my quite a variety. after a nice cold shower, i went for food (fish tacos) and a beer. rest of the afternoon i spent walking around, and had covered it all in about an hour. there's not really much of a beach to speak of but i walked along the shoreline for a bit then back to my palace.

talking to people that live here is quite funny. in the middle of their sentences, they often break into english with random phrases! for example, when earlier fella was walking with me to the hostel, he was asking me what i wanted to do here etc, and i was like oh just relax for now and think about that later. his respone was like 'spansh spanish spanish spanish, yeah man, chill out, be happy, spanish spanish spanish spanish'. i loved it!

dinner was interesting. had something called tapado. its a local specialty and is basically a soup made with coconut milk, spices, plantain (fried sweet banana) and seafood. it had an entire fish just sitting in it, head and tail poking out each side of the bowl, a completely intact crab with its legs hanging out the side and several prawns all with heads and legs still attached. ive never eaten a meal before with so many faces in it. glad i had it for the experience, it tasted fine, but would not do so again. also had with this a typical garifuna drink called guifiti. its ingredients vary depending on who you buy it from and to be honest i didnt understand what was in it when i asked the guy at the bar. all i know is, it has rum, herbs and spices and it was incredibly strong. it came in something the shape of a wine glass but little bigger than a shot. went back to the hostel afterwards and very asleep very quickly.