Guatemala & Belize (part 1)

30 July 2010

We arrived in Flores, Guatemala, in the pouring rain and with no hostel booked.  Lou and I must have been talking too loudly about our plans (for me to go up to Los Amigos hostel whilst Lou waited with the bags) as a really annoying French couple decided to do the same so there was a bit of a comedy race where me and the French guy raced for the hostel.  Luckily I won (through stealth and planning, despite his speed and complete rudeness in talking over me when I was trying to book) and Lou and I got ourselves a nice wee private room at the hostel!  The hostel was an interesting wee place.  The bathrooms and showers were pretty manky, but the bar had great veggie food in huge portions, and there was a big telly which was used only for showing documentaries which was really nice.

Tikal

Coati / Jungle badger

Wild turkeys

We took a day off (from being on active holidays!) and the following day set off for the massive Mayan site of Tikal at the ungodly hour of 430am.  We arrived at around dawn and spent about 6 hours walking round the enormous site.  It's a stunning place with huge temples, some uncovered and some with trees growing out of them, surrounded by jungle.  We saw tons of animals too including Coatis (aka Jungle Badgers according to Lou), a grey fox, some orange-breasted falcons and some Toucans and tons and tons of monkeys swinging through the trees. 

Temple

Toucan

I cried off climbing one of the temples using vertigo as a perfectly valid excuse, but sweated up to the top of one of them for amazing views of the jungle with the temple tops poking out above the trees.  It must have been an amazing sight in its day when the entire area would have been cleared.

Lou and I also walked a couple of kilometers into the jungle all on our own to visit the Temple of the Inscriptions which I found to be quite an unnerving experience - I like to have people around!

After just a couple of days in Guatemala, the following day we got a bus all the way to Belize City, the old capital of Belize.  Belize gained its independence from Britain quite late, in only 1981 and therefore the country is mainly English speaking, there's still quite a British military presence there (to defend Belize against Guatemala which believes Belize to be their territory) and the people seem very pro-UK which is quite a change from the rest of the world!!

Lou and I have been compiling a list of people who need a good slap (we were trying to collate a list of actors that we liked and found it easier to list people we disliked!) and expanded our hate group that day to include French People after sitting on a bus with 20 of them!  Other categories of people in our hate group are: white people with dreadlocks; people wearing deck shoes whilst not on a boat; and men with ridiculous facial hair.  Suggestions are welcome!  (Don't hate us though - it's just for fun.)

Caye Caulker

At the end of this awful bus trip we got ourselves straight on the ferry (large bathtub with outboard motor attached) off to Caye* Caulker which is a lovely little strip of sand in the caribbean. *pronounced "key"

Caye Caulker

Upon arrival it was my turn to stay with the luggage and Lou's turn to race around the island to find us beds before anyone else!  We ended up staying in a place on the beach that was recommended to us, but turned out to be an airless concrete bunker with a random assortment of unwell (for various reasons!) backpackers in our room, so the next day we moved to a much nicer hotel with a lovely view of the cemetery!

The Blue Hole

After another day off from tiring sightseeing activities we went out for a dive on the Blue Hole.  Famous for being some kind of diving mecca we were faintly disappointed upon reaching this amazing, perfectly circular sinkhole in the sea only to see very little from the boat as the reef that defines the border is underwater and not all that visible unless you're in the air.  However, it was an experience to dive it, as we descended very quickly indeed to 42m or so, swam around some stalatites and then spent about 20mins or so ascending as at this depth your body absorbs quite a bit of the nitrogen in the air you're breathing and you've got to let it leach out again.  The increased nitrogen can also make you a little drunk or "narked" and, given Lou was thinking of her grandparents wallpaper whilst diving, we have decided she perhaps was a little narked!

We did two other dives that day which were much more interesting, and were also dropped off on Half Moon Caye for a wee stroll around a look at the frigate and red-footed boobies which nest there.  And the lunch was fantastic, so it was a good day all round.

Me!

We then proceeded to spend most of the rest of our time on the island eating at a lovely cafe for breakfast, snacking on numerous cinammon rolls throughout the day, and drinking the terribly-named, but very tasty cocktail called a "panty-ripper".  Made of coconut rum and pineapple juice it's really lovely, but Lou and I couldn't bring ourselves to ask for it by name!  We also were advised (damn you Lee!) to try a Lizard Juice up at the Lizard Lounge bar which was a flouro green coloured concotion containing about 15 different types of rum as far as we could tell!

Lou with Lizard juice

We ran into Jo & Nisha (from UK & US respectively) again in Caye Caulker and tagged along on a snorkelling trip they were going on.  It was a really great day with some lovely snorkelling (saw manatees, sting rays and nurse sharks amongst lots of other things), real sailing (with motor off and everything) and lots of rum punch and prawn ceviche to snack on.  I had always thought that prawn ceviche was made with boiled prawns, but I was wrong.  It really is just raw prawns marinated in lime juice until they've gone white.  And it's really really lovely.

Manatees

Self portrait underwater

Our snorkel boat in the rain