About a month ago, Tony came down to visit me-finally! No, only joking. He is the first one who has made it down here... so I went to meet him at the airport and we took a bus straight over to the Caribbean side-where I had never been before. We arrived in Rio Dulce, a town on the river that runs from Lake Izabal out to the caribbean. Exhausted and ready to put our bags down and get reacquainted-we headed to a nice little hotel you can only get to by lancha (little motorboats) from Rio Dulce called Casa Perico. We splurged and got the bungalow (my first bungalow!) with an awesome porch that looked out onto the swamp. I saw basilisks, frogs, and turtles from the seat-more species of herps than i've seen in my site in six months....awesome.... You can see Tony getting to know the local wildlife...

We took a day trip from Rio Dulce to a place called Finca Paraiso, further inland, where we swam in this awesome swimming hole with a hot waterfall that feeds into it. Then we walked across the highway and out about two miles to the lakeside restaurant for hamburgers. There we met a family from southern california who owned a marina in Rio Dulce and had arrived at the beach via speedboat-we chatted them up for a while and got a ride back to Rio Dulce in style! It sure beat the microbus...

Goofing around in the hot springs water fall..the sulphurous water falling down the rockwall over the year formed some cool looking mineral buildup.

After a few days lazing around in Rio Dulce, we decided to make a move out to LIvingston. Livingston, only accessible by a beautiful boat ride, is home to a population of Garifuna-descendents of an escaped slave population mixed with the locals who have a language and vibrant culture all their own. The main income comes from tourism and fishing-and most of the locals spoke Garifuna, Spanish, and at least some English. They were very friendly, and cooked some awesome food. Tony treated me to my first lobster and grilled conch which i didn't take pictures of, but it was DELICIOUS, and we ate on the porch overlooking the caribbean sea in the middle of a rainstorm.

Pretty much everything we ate there was amazing-the coconut bread, and coconut candy, and coconuts filled with rum that you drank and then chopped open with a machete to eat the coconut meat out... rice and beans with coconut milk. OK i love coconut, its official. We also stayed at an awesome hostel called La Casa de la Iguana, where they served family style dinners and also had affordable breakfast lunch and happy hour, and cool friendly staff and people. The pool and hotel pictured above is not where we stayed-just where we payed to use the pool one day....As luck would have it it started to pour the minute we settled down in the lawn chairs. Oh well.

Livingston was awesome but the time came to travel all the way across Guatemala back to Sija, so Tony could see where I live. I put him to work fixing drippy showers and backed up sinks and moving furniture, etc etc. =) Ladies, when a man travels to another country to visit you and fix your faulty plumbing...I think he's a keeper.

So in conclusion, had a great visit with the man, and he's ready to come back so we can go on a more 'focused' herping trip.... Can't wait! As it is, we have plans to meet up in Honduras in November to do some Boa-chasing. yay.