Through the Looking Glass…( 1/1 )

Just call me Alice…
I’ve just returned from a wild and wonderful week in the northern jungle of Guatemala’s Peten region. My goal was to watch the sunrise with the monkeys and toucans on the ruins of TIKAL (which I did with great success and almost perfect solitude), BUT I found even more magic in the surrounding environs…

I was going to write to you all about Livingston.

The only way to arrive in Livingston, Guatemala’s only Carribean black community, is by boat. I took the longer route on the Rio Dulce through the mountains, and by 3pm or so I was scaling the hill into town. Luckily, I had an exquisitely detailed map to a secret non-guidebook discovered place to stay called Finka Arabu. (Philippe, your maps and advice were perfect as usual…I found Bico exactly as you drew him for me, and I even took a picture of “the leetle rope”)…

Rasta Far I…

I was greeted at the gate of the Finka by a fleet of multi-colored and many-sized dogs. The owner, a Canadian woman and massage therapist, came next, closely followed by the caretaker, a rastafarian named Bico. My timing was perfect, and I managed to snag the very last available cabana (there are ony three!) for myself. Set in a “food garden” of papaya, bananas and various other jungle vegetations, the Finka really felt far away from anything. By the time I had gotten the tour of the cabanas, pit toilet (complete with reading material that would rival that in a dentist’s office), cocoa trees and “shower” from Bico, we were already fond of each other. Not five minutes later, I had a little tiny dog sleeping in my lap and was watching him nimbly roll a joint, blunt style, on the little table in my cabana. We listened to the jungle and each other.

A Side Note
For the last several weeks I had been hearing very mixed reviews about this town. Most people said it was too touristy and drugged-out, with little to do and lots of scam artists working the scene. They also said that they didn’t really get to hear much of the local language, Garifuna. It’s a mix of African, Creole, and Spanish unlike any other, only spoken in this region of Guatemala and some parts of Honduras and Belize.

Anyway, I have learned to very rarely take second-hand information. I came to see for myself, armed with secret plans and clever tricks…

As an anthropologist, I couldn’t have been luckier. Bico was patient, funny, gentle and lovely. He carried a huge smile and could sometimes be remarkably shy. When he spoke though, it was in a huge Benjamin Sisko or James Earl Jones type quality voice. He really looked out for me, always stopping in for a chat and a smoke whenever he passed by. Sometimes he would bring his friend Sagou, a beautiful woman on a bicycle, who was initially quiet around me (we could only speak Spanish to each other). By the end of my time in Livingston however, she would visit me on her own.

Lovely.

Sometimes Bico and Sagou would get into really animated conversations with each other in Garifuna. It was beautiful beyond description. I couldn’t help but laugh whenever they would laugh, even though I had no foggy idea as to what they were saying. Basically, I spent most of my time in Livingston with those two, enclosed on all sides by the jungle.

At night, when the light was off, the moonlight would creep in through the holes in the bamboo hut and reflect off of my mosquito net: I was sleeping in my own private constellation of stars. Reggae and soca poured out of the clubs down by the beach. The whole town was in a trance.

The atmosphere was infecting my dreams. It was magic.

Did you like this article?

    

 

Share it

 

Place a comment