**NERD ALERT**: For the full impact of this dispatch, please press play on the above player, then keep reading. Sure, you can press pause to turn the audio off. but really, why would you want to?

I heard a lot of amazing things about the entering Rio Dulce in Guatemala and the Rio did not disappoint. It was super, super cool.

One of the first things we noticed at the entrance to the river was the hundreds of pelicans, terns and other birds diving for fish and otherwise taking refuge from the Caribbean Sea at the mouth of the river.

looking back towards the ocean

The high-walled limestone canyons reminded me so much of growing up in Central Texas – except the walls were dripping with jungle plants reaching down to drink up the fresh water of the Rio.

in the lower right hand corner, just above the “S” in “So” you can barely see a fisherman along the wall

The river had us in awe: the first several miles are these high-walled canyons doing switchbacks from the sea. From time to time, behind a curtain of jungle plants dripping down, a fisherman sat in his canoe along the wall casting a line. It was spectacular.

With no man-made structures and the super-jungle-y flora and fauna it was easy to imagine this place just as it was thousands of years ago. There was nothing left for this boat of sailing dorks punch-drunk from an overnight passage to do but put on a little mood music (why you pressed “play” above. That’s right, we played the Jurassic Park soundtrack as we traversed up the river).

that’s a Jurassic-era speedboat on the left

Don’t you think it’s the perfect theme song for this journey?

I mean, come on, pelicans are basically dinosaurs, right?

After about an hour and a half of of meandering (with seemingly the same song on repeat), the canyon walls of the Rio open up into Golfete – the smaller of the two lakes along the river.

little palapas and the “lighthouse” house in the reeds on Golfete with the Guatemalan mountains in the back – beautiful!

From there it was another couple of hours across the lake to the highway town of Fronteras, where we plan to stake out a home base to work and stage for overland travel through the month of March.

little swallows welcoming us to the lake

What a welcome to Guatemala.