The Road From Utila to Flores

 

A primary reason for visiting Utila is to enjoy fantastic scuba diving in the area.  The island doesn’t have much to offer beyond the diving, but for scuba enthusiasts there are great deals to be had on courses and equipment rental and superb dive spots offshore. It has a reputation for being one of the cheapest places to dive in Central America.

There are a couple of small beaches on Utila, but for the most part the shoreline is occupied with ramshackle buildings fighting for space alongside hotels and overpriced bed and breakfasts. Poverty is quite evident on the island and the cost of everything is abnormally expensive. Food is also not cheap on the island unless you are cooking your own meals or eating baleadas. Baleadas are a local food that combines a tortilla with a choice of meat, refried beans, cheese and vegetable. They’re essentially a cheap and delicious take on burritos.

American currency is accepted everywhere in Honduras and generally more wanted. If you dive there, you will likely be quoted prices in U.S dollars. The problem with this practice is that should you pay in the local currency you will be given a fixed exchange rate that will favor the dive shop. If you pay with a credit card, they’ll charge you a fee for using a card. Avoiding this means bringing a lot of American currency, something that is risky considering the amount of theft that occurs in Honduras.

After one week on Utila and a few days visiting a friend in San Pedro de Sula, we decided to head north to Livingston, Guatemala and then onwards to Caye Caulker, Belize with a stopover in Flores to visit the Tikal ruins. The journey is not an easy one between San Pedro and Livingston. Most travellers making the trip between Roatan or Utila and Livingston skip San Pedro de Sula, so there are quite a few shuttle options that make planning the trip quite easy. If you are travelling from San Pedro to Livingston, you’ll need to do it with public transportation and it’s a bit tricky.

Getting from San Pedro de Sula, Honduras to Livingston, Guatemala.

We started the trip at the main bus terminal in San Pedro. There are collectivos departing for Puerto Cortes every 15 minutes or so and costs 52 Lempira ($2.25 USD). Once we arrived in Puerto Cortes we had to cross the highway on foot and then board a chicken bus heading towards the border. This costs around 30 Lempira ($1.25 USD). The bus dropped us off on the side of the road about 30 minutes from the border. We ended up joining a Honduran traveller also heading to the border and split a tuk-tuk for 50 Limpera each.

After crossing the border we got on a collectivo heading to Puerto Barrios. This cost 50 Quetzales ($6.75 USD) and took almost 2 hours. The van dropped us off at a local market and we had to quickly walk to the ferry terminal to catch the final boat heading to Livingston. This cost 35 Quetzales ($4.75 USD) and takes about an hour. The total journey was around 9 hours and cost under $20 USD.

                                                                                        

Livingston, Guatemala is a colorful and vibrant town isolated on the east coast of the country at the mouth of the Rio Dulce. It is only accessible by boat. The town is inhabited with an interesting mix of Garifuna, Maya, Afro-Caribbean and Ladino people making it quite unique in Guatemala. There are a few affordable boarding options here and food is reasonable as well. There aren’t any nice beaches in the town, but if you hire a boat for the day you can find a decent private beach nearby known as Playa Blanca.

We spent a few days here before taking a boat two hours up the Rio Dulce to the town of Rio Dulce. The river journey is filled with beautiful sights of birds and jungle lining the steep river banks that tower over the water way. There are locals fishing out of small canoes and tiny villages that appear out of the dense foliage. Eventually the journey ends at the town of Rio Dulce. From the jetty we made our way through the town to the Fuente del Norte bus station where we boarded a bus north to the town of Flores.

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