Travel to Livingston, Guatemala

   I would love to travel back to Livingston, Guatemala. A beautiful border town where Guatemala, Honduras  and Belize meet, on the Caribbean coast only accessible by boat from a stinking port Puerto Barrios in Belize.  100 year old woodframe  guest houses bellowing  friendly  Caribbean music  line the main street.  Descendants of the Garifuna people who arrived early from shipwrecked slave ships from Africa and intermarried with the Caribe Indians inhabiting St Vincent allied themselves with the French against the English. Once the English started to separate the more African looking from the more Indian looking, They  set off in rafts  once again to escape inevitable slavery, landing all over the Caribbean including Haiti, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras.

  I was lucky to meet a native son, in Tikal who invited us to come to this rare gem off the beaten tourist track and to meet with his family and friends. We walked through paradise to jungle waterfalls and to clean white sandy beaches shaded by coconut trees. Dude had come home because of a funeral and invited me to attend the vigil as it was very African, like Voodoo. The villagers met at dusk and beat the drums all night, every night for three days. During this vigil they danced, they danced and drummed until the levitate. The music induced trance. Hallucinatory, sleep deprived and intoxicated they drummed until dawn, for three nights yet they seemed to carry on as a functioning town by day. Greeting us and each other, “Buenas, Buenas Dias” and “Ola” and “Ciao” merrily attending their business.

   I would love to see this enchanting  paradise and see if people are as open and friendly as they were in 1977. To run into Dude to see if he retired there or if he made it to Detroit to visit his Rosacrucian Brother. To travel from the beaten track and explore the real world, to blog and travel, to couch surf and enjoy, What could be finer?