Rio Dulce - to go or not to go?

In Honduras, Easter is known as Semana Santa (Holy Week) and school is closed for this week. This is the big national holiday and the whole of Latin America is on the move to see family, to the beach etc. We had decided to go away for a few days also and had arranged to stay at a lovely sounding hotel in Rio Dulce which is in Guatemala.

I arrived to catch the shuttle and there was Lucy and Julie already waiting but so were all the other volunteers. Strange I thought but once I arrived, Caroline said that as well as wishing us well for the trip that she was there in an official capacity. She had to inform us that four Belgian tourists had been kidnapped in Rio Dulce yesterday. It later turned out that the Foreign Office were only advising essential travel only. A quick discussion amongst ourselves revealed the following thoughts, that the place was likely to be swamped with Army and Police and probably be pretty safe and we liked an adventure so we were off.

The minibus shuttle took us as far as Rio Hondo and from there we had to catch bus to Rio Dulce. We ended up with a 90 minute wait at Rio Hondo and then to stand on the bus for a couple of hours before we could get a seat. While I was waiting at Rio Hondo I took this picture of the food vendors selling refreshments to the passengers on the bus going in the other direction.

Anyway, you may be wondering about the kidnap. The background is that there is this guy Sr. Choc who is either a fighter for indigenous rights or a money grabbing extortionist bandit depending on which side of the fence. Anyway, he has been stirring up matters for some time claiming the land belongs to the indigenous community (we also have the same debate in Copan). He was arrested last year and his supporters have been agitating for his release. They had kidnapped some police for a couple of days earlier this year. There was a rally the weekend before and the police arrested Choc supporters. The Belgians were kidnapped with the demand for the supporters release. There was some negotiation and the Belgians were released 48 hours later while we were in Rio Dulce.

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