Eating Our Way Through Guatemala Part IV: Rio Dulce (and Flowers!)

As you’ve read from the main post, we spent most of our time in Rio Dulce at the Hotel Kangaroo y Restaurante. Since the owners are Mexican and Canadian (or Australian? it’s unclear), the food served is mostly Mexican or Mexican-inspired. I didn’t take photos of everything because I wanted to make sure to unplug a bit and chat with the other guests in the common area, but here are some of our favorites:

Veracruz-style sea bass
(Tomato sauce with green peppers & olives)

The best meal we ate, though, was in Livingston. (Read more about our Livingston adventure in the main blog.) We found a restaurant owned by a Garifuna woman and it was beautiful inside and out.

Typically, we try to order different things so that we can taste each other’s food, but this time, we both settled on the same soup. This dish has a subtle coconut milk broth with green plantains, a whole fried fish, shrimp, and a whole crab. It’s served with a side of rice and it was one of the best soups I’ve had in a very long time. All we left behind were fish bones and crab shells.

Rio Dulce was incredibly humid and hot, but Livingston took the cake. Neither one of us could walk for too long, especially since the Caribbean sun was high above. We eventually sat at a cafe, fanning ourselves, and we drank the most delicious lemonade with soda. It was tart and helped us cool down immensely. I was so grateful for it, I had to take a picture.

As a final ode to the wonderful experience that Guatemala provided us, I want to take a moment to appreciate some flowers. Of course the tropics have incredible plant-life. How could it not with all the moisture that it gets! Still, here are some of my favorite flowers and plants that we saw in our travels. I hope their beauty inspires you to pause and notice little pretty things near you wherever you go.