A day at Kangaroo

Waking up, I rolled over to see that the network status bar on my computer had a big "X" on it. Once again the WIFI network at Delphin was down; when I checked in it had great promise. There were visible networks, "TURBONETT" and "HOTEL DE DELPHIN". Strange, the networks at Gil's and at Happy Fish are also called "TURBONETT" but they are different networks. It took a few minutes but the receptionist finally located the pass phrase for the network, but it didn't work. After about five minutes I tried the phrase on the "TURBONETT" connection and established a 54 MB WIFI connection to a router that evidently had a 500 kb internet connection. My computer hovered on the the edge of connectivity if when it had a signal at all the indicator only displayed a single bar. It would run fast for a while then drop the connection. My file download was not restartable. With an estimated download time of two and a half hours this was my first chance to get the file down in a day.

After brushing my teeth I used the toilet. The huge toilet paper dispenser was empty despite the fact that I had not used it. Three towels hung on a bar. More the hotel's problem than mine. No water came out of the tap despite the fact that it had rained the entire previous evening. Half an hour later the water came sputtering out of of the tap. I quickly shut off the tap and stripped for a shower. Although there were hot and cold water handles neither provided heated water; between the two of them there was barely enough water to rinse the shampoo out of my hair.

My destination for the day was, Lanquin, a small town to the west that is highly regarded as the most beautiful place in Guatemala. Now the question remained, how does one get there? Fortunately, I inquired at Happy Fish rather than just assuming that the buses left from Punto TODO and I was informed that I needed to return to Fronteras, more frequently referred to as Rio Dulce by the locals. I booked a tour for Q125. Although I had seen a sign for transportation to Rio Dulce for Q90 somewhere I could not recall who offered it. The tour left on the same boat I had taken the day before to Sieta Alteres y Playa Blanca at 9:30. Returning to my room I packed up, then I went next door for a wonderful omelette and a couple of cups of fantastic coffee, returned to my room, grabbed my packs and walked down to the dock.

Shortly before 9:30 a man hopped aboard the boat and took off downstream, my destination was upstream. I kept my eye on the boat, hoping that he had just gone off to pick up another passenger and that I was at the correct dock. Fifteen minutes later the captain and a passenger boarded the boat and came back upstream and started to pass the city dock. Hoping that he had a passenger manifest that indicated I was to be picked up but lacking a great deal of confidence I blew my whistle and waved at him. He acknowledged and pulled alongside the dock a few minutes later. My packs were wrapped in a tarp with the two suitcases that were present. The American that had already boarded clutched a high end aluminum brief case; strange travel gear to be sure. We picked up an English couple and an Englishman from the same hotel. It turned out they were not traveling together and did not know each other.

A mandatory stop in the tour is Aguas Caliente (hot water). I offered my flashlight stating that the one's provided were pretty dim. The American said that no flashlight was necessary and the Brit's returned my flashlight. They swam in the river in water the temperature of a hot tub where the hot springs drained into the river through a small hole in the rock. When they returned we took off and I showed them the pictures of the turtle eggs, crayfish and spiders I had seen in the caves a couple of days prior. None of the four of them knew there were caves at the site despite the fact that there was a large sign, in English, at the end of the dock, directly in front of our boat prominently inviting tourists on the cave tour.

We cruised up the gorge, through the TODO, the American asked how much longer. He was in distress, suffering from food poisoning. I told him we only had about twenty minutes left. The American was staying at Backpackers, a hostel underneath the bridge. When it became evident that the captain intended to sail to Castille San Felipe an old fort I called out, "Necessito alto pora Americano. American necessito Backpacker immediato." I have no idea if immediato is a word in Spanish but it is a tricked I picked up from someone in Panama, it would certainly stand a better chance of being understood than "immediately". After dropping off the gringo I had the captain take me across the river to the Fronteras side.
The hawker who set me up with Tortugal told me that the bus to Lanquin left from the dock at 1:30 and that there was an Internet cafe at Bruno's at the end of the Bridge. My Spanish is almost useful even if severely limited. Bruno's was an unappealling place, the rooms were attached grotty cells encircling a gravel and dirt parking lot underneath a noisy bridge. The internet fee was Q15/hr; the connection was pretty fast, T1 speed (144 Mb/sec) and the computers were relatively fast, but the screens were 600 x 800 and the keyboards were sticky; It took me six attempts to log into Facebook, the ultimate time killer before my password was acccepted. I started my download again, the estimated time to completion was one hour and forty five minutes; I had two hours to kill. When it was time to go the estimated download time was another twenty minutes.

I returned to the dock, bought a club soda and sat down to finish off For Whom the Bell Tolls. One thirty came and went. I approached a couple of people on the dock. "Que hora pora bus haste Lanquin." "Uno media." "¿Hoy?" "Si". Ok, bananas country, it's just running late. Around two o'clock a woman deigned to occupy the Tourist information booth having left her game of cards and told me that would just be a few minutes more. Finally the hawker returned, I asked him what the hell was going on and he made a phone call. Turns out there weren't enough people in Lanquin to justify a trip to Fronteras so they just didn't come. He assured me that there would be a bus tomorrow, there were a lot of people coming tomorrow. He asked me if I needed a room to which I replied I had decided on Backpackers. This evoked a very negative response, being under the bridge it is very loud. In answer to his question, yes I like Tortugal very much but I just wanted to try something else out. He recommended a place with the improbable name of Kangaroo. The boat would be coming in ten minutes. Twice in a row I needed to catch a boat and one was scheduled to come within minutes.

A small panga pulled up, the hawker indicated this was my boat and I, the only passenger was whisked up the river, past Tortugal and almost to San Felipe. We turned into a narrow affluent and wound our way past the verdant lush jungle dotted with the weekend retreats of the rich of Guatemala their small wooden houses merely accessories to the large yachts. In short order we pulled up to the dock in fron of a cozy wooden retreat. I was shown the various rooms and again chose the dorm as it was the nicest room in the place and I was the only customer. Faithful readers know that I have a need to walk and there is not much room to walk at Kangaroos. Three women and Domingo, my boat cabin lived at Kangaroo. The receptionist, a pretty Guatemalan and the only English speaking person in the place is the niece of the owner a 52 year old Australian. The music could easily have been from the favorites list on my Ipod, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Police,
I booked a two hour tour with Domingo for Q50. We slowly made our way down the river to the Rio Dulce and accross to San Felipe. A very pleasant guard took my Q20 entrance fee and handed me an entrance ticket printed on a sheet of A1 sized paper both sides of which were covered with the history of the fort in Spanish. After I was done viewing the small fort I walked up the drive constructed from rocks embedded in concrete in two parallel tracks a cars width apart, past the path to the dock and down into the jungle. Domingo reached me breathlessly and notified me that I had missed the turn off. I told him that I need to walk. "Yo necissito caminar vente kilometers pora dia." I informed him. Yes, you heard me twenty kilometers a day. I was walking through a large, sparsely populated cemetary, the graves in above ground concrete tombs; strange as I would have thought this soil readily dug and dry. I walked toward the end of the park, Domingo took a sudden interest in a tree, apparently because it was stationary. I picked him up on my return and asked him if I could buy him a water. He indicated that he preferred beer which did not suprise me.

We set off in the boat and soon found ourselves at a very small island, maybe it was just a cluster of mangrove, I never looked down nor did Domingo ever stop. The trees were teeming with birds TODO and TODO. I hope that sometime somebody will explain to me why these boat operators insist on only slowing down. My compact cannon has a 14 power optical zoom so I used it in shutter priority, setting my shutter speed to 1/2000". Unfortunately the camera is not smart enough to drop down the speed if the aperature is insufficient to adequately expose the picture so I have to do some fiddling. It beats trying to take pictures of birds with a 70 mm lens on my SLR however.

Domingo pulled up to a river front bar and I bought him one Gallo after another. Four beers later he was a happy man and indicated that I needed to zip my lip when we returned to Kangaroo. "No problema". Upon my return I culled pictures from the day's shooting, never culling enough I left a bunch of crap out there. It is hard to call what I am doing these days photography. I am just taking pictures to give my friends a feel for a place, I haven't taken a photograph with artistic merit in months. The girls were interested in my cropping and culling but were facinated by my travel pictures, Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia, Peru, Bolivia; they had never left this city.

For dinner I had Chicken Mole, authentic Mexican food. I was invited to go to Backpackers to go dancing at nine o'clock with the three women. Why the hell not?