We left Utila a little before sunrise, and headed west for Guatemala. Shoutout to Ali for doing a quick visual inspection of the engine compartment before we left and noticing that I had left the cap off of the oil fill on one of the engines. I must say that I appreciate having a wife who can do that sort of thing.

We nailed our weather window with flat seas for the hundred miles across and anchored for the night at Tres Puntas, a hook of land 8 miles across the bay from Livingston at the mouth of the Rio Dulce. We cooled off with a swim, found a scoured mud bottom with nothing on it except huge red starfish.

In the morning we woke—more accurately, I woke up, as Ali had been up most of the night already—to big seas in the anchorage and a strong west wind blowing. Prevailing winds are from the east here, and it was predicted to be very light, so this wasn’t exactly what we’d been hoping for. We bounced the anchor off the bottom in the bucking waves and headed across the bay, straight into the twenty-five knot wind. Ali and the kids sat below laughing while I sat up top with wave spray shooting over me every few seconds. For some reason I just can’t bring myself to drive the boat from inside—I need to be in the elements seeing and hearing what’s going on out there. Ali always sits inside while underway because she likes to see and hear what’s going on inside the boat.

The entrance to Livingston is over a river bar that is unmarked. At least I couldn’t find any markers. But I’d heard low depth was five feet, and since we were near high tide it should have been closer to six, so we just motored slowly ahead into the flat water with our four-foot-two draft. Made it across without any issue.

I went ashore and got us checked in. Everyone seems to use Raul for clearing in, and he was super efficient. $200 in fees, about half for him, and I had our papers within 45 minutes. The bank ATMs were out of money so I went inside to exchange some US dollars. They took one look at my twenties and said no way, they can only do fifties or hundreds. That was the complete opposite of what I would have expected. Back at the boat I rustled up one fifty dollar bill, exchanged for some Quetzales, got our papers and was back underway. I was a little bummed that the anchorage is notoriously terrible out front of Livingston—the prevailing wind/swell rolls right in there—and we wouldn’t be able to spend any time there. The town seemed nice to me with lots of people out and about, women doing wash at the big communal laundry, some nice looking restaurants, and even a small park. Looked like the type of place we’d enjoy hanging out at for a few days.

Headed up the Rio Dulce.

Cruising up the river was fun. Thick towering green all around and a slow moving river running sixty feet deep. It’s such a drastic change from normal cruising grounds. And man does it ever feel good to run fresh water through the engines—you can almost hear them thanking you.

Found a little sand bar on the curve to drop the anchor and have a lunch break.

The community school. Likely the only way in is by water.

This was a fun way to spend our anniversary together, cruising up rivers and lakes in Guatemala. If you’d asked us on our wedding day what we’d be doing twenty-two years later, I can assure you our answer would not have resembled this reality in any way whatsoever. Our path in life has been more unique and fun than I ever would have imagined. Amazing what taking just one or two lefts onto the dirt roads, instead of a right onto the highway, can do.

The river opens up into a lake. A few miles across the lake is Fronteras, where a dozen or more small marinas await the yearly influx of cruisers looking to hole up for hurricane season.

Found ourselves trudging through the wrong spot on the lake for a little while before finding the deeper water again.

We settled into a slip at the marina, immediately found lots of Bum friends around, and spent the next couple days catching up and hanging by the pool. There are a lot of good reasons that people come to the Rio, chief among them is the fact that it’s a place to get away from Caribbean hurricanes. Also, Guatemalans are always fantastic people and their country is beautiful. But also, everything is really cheap here. Marinas are $250/month, and quality boat labor is a tiny fraction the cost of the States, or really anywhere else. Everyone comes here to have bottom work done on the boat, have topsides painted, or varnishing done. We’re having all the varnish done, and the first quote we received was 1/7th of what we paid in Florida two years ago, and that’s to have about 3x the amount of work done. Essentially we’re going to end up paying ~5-10% of what we’d pay in Florida to have the same work done.

It is steamy hot here, though. Everyone-except the locals—is soaked in sweat all day. We’re going to do quite a bit of inland travel at higher altitudes over the next couple of months, and are hoping that long about October we can get out and cruise the lakes and rivers in the area a bit more comfortably.