Tuesday morning we arrived in our next port, Santo Tomas de Castilla, Guatemala.

Welcome to Guatemala!
For this port we had also arranged an excursion, this time with “Go with Gus” guide service. We originally tried to schedule the Las Escobas Waterfall and City Tour, but were told that due to a recent lack of waterfall the falls were dried out. Instead, the tour company offered to take us into Honduras to visit the La Lenca Waterfalls. We thought it would be cool to also visit Honduras, so we went ahead and scheduled the tour.
On Tuesday when we found Gus and the Go with Gus crew, we were informed that the road to Honduras was under construction and we wouldn’t be able to go on our scheduled tour (I guess delays due to the construction could last up to 4 hours!). What Gus suggested was their Humanitarian tour that they claimed would include a hot spring, cave, views of lots of birds and animals, visits with some of the people, and the chance to visit one of the local towns. This sounded pretty good, so we went ahead and agreed thinking we’d be leaving soon (they estimated it would take about 10-15 minutes). Well, almost an hour later we finally got on a boat and headed off.
The boat ride itself wasn’t that bad, but overall the tour wasn’t exactly what they promised. The river was surrounded by jungle on either side, but we really didn’t see that many birds and no other animals. Also, both times we stopped it was at tiny places along the river where there were too many people and not enough space! The first stop was to try some homemade tortillas and salsa. James wouldn’t try and after a couple of bites I ended up throwing it away even though I hated doing so. Yet it was interesting to see the process of making and cooking them.
The second stop was at the hot springs. The hot springs were literally right on the river, very small, and had a bunch of locals and tourists crawling all over it. It was so crazy, I got a look at it and decided it just wasn’t worth it to even take pictures (i.e., it wasn’t even scenic or pretty). And the cave? The cave was actually right by the hot springs (so it was also overly crowded), was an extra cost, and we didn’t even have time because you had to go with a guide that wasn’t associated with our tour. I started to get rather frustrated with the tour, but decided I was going to make the best out of it.
So, what did I do? I took pictures of flowers and did my best to try and find a way to enjoy the experience, even if it wasn’t what I wanted or expected.
After the river, they took us to the small town of Livingston where they dropped us off and let us wander through the city.

Standing along the dock in Livingston
This was probably my favorite part because I had decided to have fun no matter what and I enjoyed taking pictures of all sorts of random interesting things!
When we made it back to the dock where the ship was, we went back to the bazar area to look for magnets and postcards. The bazar was pretty interesting with a band playing live music and lots of local wares laid out all over. I found my magnet and some postcards, and we headed back to the ship.