La Isla Dulce Hotel, Marina and Cafe — Hotel in Lívingston

We recently spent several days at Isla Dulce and we were blown away. This charming little hotel and cafe is tucked away in a quiet little bay about halfway between Livingston, Guatemala and the town of Rio Dulce. The owners have created a lovely little jungle sanctuary with a laid back, welcoming atmosphere.

Blue morpho butterflies flutter through the trees and living spaces and there are orchids and lush tropical plants everywhere you look.

Doug and Darija have put so much love into Isla Dulce and nowhere is this more evident than in their cafe. Everything that comes out of the kitchen is delicious and made from scratch. They use the cleanest, locally sourced ingredients and are serving the best meals, pizza, drinks and desserts in the region.

Some favorites include:

fresh ginger tonic tea espresso martini with homemade kaluha exquisite thin crust pizza curry with fresh caught fish poached eggs on avacado toast coconut milk cappuccino cinnamon rolls - best we’ve ever had!

We recommend taking an afternoon canyon tour with Doug and Oso, the resident dog and k-9 host with the most.

We truly enjoyed our time relaxing in this jungle paradise and can’t...

A friend told us about La Isla Dulce and suggested for us to go there for dinner. We messaged ahead to see if they had availability since we were going to check out at Livingston and wanted to spend the night in Texan Bay. A nice dinner sounded great! We arrived at 2pm and due to our poor planning we didn’t set up a launcha service in advance to take us to Livingston - you don’t want to take your dingy since it can be a rough long ride. Doug and his dog picked us up in their launcha since he couldn’t find a launcha service available for us on such short notice. He saved the day! We wanted to leave by 6am to check in at Punta Gorda, Belize before 11am so getting to Livingston that day was high priority. We highly recommend checking out this way. Since we didn’t want to put our dinghy down, Doug picked us up at 6pm for dinner. We had steak diane, eggplant parmesan and pizza. It was delicious! We enjoyed chatting at the communal table with their guests too. If you need to spend the rest of your Queztal then this is a great place to do it, however, they do accept credit cards. The hosts are very friendly, accommodating and made us feel very welcomed....

I stayed at Isla Dulce with my girlfriend during our trip through Guatemala and it was great! We slept in the room on the dock and it had enough room for a the bed and our stuff. The hosts (Douglas and Darya) were very welcoming and their dog oso greets you from the moment you arrive. All of their food is homemade and tastes delicious (definitely try the Melanzana and the coconut icecream)! There’s plenty of room to chill at the dock or more covered under the trees. The bathroom is shared but is nice and Darya makes all of her soap/shampoo herself. It’s a great base to explore Livingston (for which Douglas arranged all the transport) and you can take the kayaks out free of charge to explore the area close to the hotel. As oso is used to go out with the boat around 4pm everyday all the guests are welcome to join to see oso bark at every dog in the neighborhood. Honestly, it was a perfect little relaxing getaway during our busy trip in Guatemala. Would definitely recommend...