Belize to Flores, Guatemala

THE TAN
We spent three great days on Caye Caulker in Belize laying in the sun and eating seafood. Sara worked diligently on her tan and managed to achieve a colour somewhere between cream and ivory, but not quite as dark as beige, but darker than bone. She was incredibly impressed with the colour change and quite pleased to avoid turning pink.

THAT CASSETTE
We took a bus from the Belize capital across the border to the Guatemalan town of Flores yesterday. Flores is situated on a tiny island in Guatemala's second biggest lake about 70km from the border with Belize. I'm not exactly sure on the official rule with islands and bridges but this island is connected to the mainland by a 500m causeway so it isn't an island in the sense that we didn't have to catch a boat to get here. Nonetheless the setting is very pretty and we've been impressed by the food and the people here in our short stay to date. We chose the Toucan Guesthouse - a bargain at US$8 a night with a real toucan in the garden to keep us amused.

Toucan @Toucan Guesthouse

We have noticed that all the buses in this part of the world seem to have the same greatest hits collection cassette which the driver plays non-stop and occasionally at volume throughout the journey. We have heard 'Love hurts' by Nazareth and 'My heart will go on' by Celine Dion more times than any one person should safely endure. Whereas the former is a classic piece of rock legendary which I don't mind so much, the latter is a terrible piece of tripe from an overrated movie. The same could be said for a few other songs on the tape in question, namely 'I will always love you' - Whitney Houston, and 'Hopelessly devoted to you' - Olivia Newton-John. These songs haunt me now.

TIKAL
Today we visited the Mayan ruins of Tikal, about an hour north of Flores. It was supposed to be one of those sunrise trips but like many of our other sunrise trips it rained so we watched the alleged sunrise from the restaurant near the gift shop and drank coffee until the rain stopped. To get to the ruins you need to walk for about 30 minutes through secondary jungle growth and many of the temples have yet to be fully excavated - we walked straight passed Temple III believing it to be a hill when in fact it was a 55m tall structure that has yet to be touched. We were surrounded by howler monkeys making a tremendous noise as well as anteaters, toucans, parrots, woodpeckers and even a huge tarantula that one of the locals pulled out of it's hole.

Breathtaking Tikal

Temple V

  Temple IV

Me being more of an active type of tourist decided to climb all of the temples (except for the two that were off limits) while Sara, content to be a passive observer, watched from a distance and read the guidebook. The locals are very proud of their Mayan heritage and so they should be. Tikal is brilliantly clean, well maintained and the jungle setting is truly fantastic. One of the Star Wars movies was filmed here but I can't recall which.

The Great Plaza near the Temple of the Great Jaguar

LA VACA ES MARRON
My Spanish is progressing slowly. My vocabulary is up to about 200 words and I am able to say interesting things like 'the cow is brown' (see above) and 'here is a pen' which has, to date, been staggering useless to us in our everyday travels. Still it's more than I have bothered to learn in any other country, although in Mongolia I learned to say 'I hope your animals are fattening up nicely' in Mongolian and use it on a Mongolian herdsman who replied with the customary 'fattening nicely, thank you'. It's those small successes that we have learned to celebrate.

Tonight we catch the overnight bus to the capital.

Caye Caulker, Belize

NO PROSTITUTES PLEASE
After Chichen Itza we decided that it was time for a change of pace and a change of country. Belize is the sixteenth different country of the trip so far and it's probably the most laid back as well. We caught a bus straight into Belize City, the charmless capital city, and successfully negotiated the back streets on foot until we found what our guidebook described as the cheapest place in town - the North Front Street Guesthouse for US$15 a night. The sign on the front door stipulated that no prostitutes or gigolos were to be entertained in the rooms at any time - to which I laughed - and then gave more thought to as I had just met a bloke on the street called Byron who wanted to take me out for a beer, and insist I pay.

TROPICAL PARADISE
The following morning we caught a boat through the mangroves out to one of the islands off the coast. Over the last few days we've been doing nothing but sitting on the beach and enjoying the hot sun and cool sea breeze. We're staying at a hotel called Tropical Paradise (about US$17 a night) which fronts the south end of the main beach on the island which is frequented by pelicans for most of the day. Many of the locals are incomprehensible since, although English is the official language of Belize, they speak Creole, usually drunk Creole at that. To my untrained ear they use the word 'panny' far too often for it to mean just one thing. On our first night we at in a restaurant with a couple of older locals who were arguing at the top of their voices but we could barely understand a word they were saying. Sara was convinced it was a religious discussion but I knew they were disagreeing on whether Empire Strikes Back was better than Return of the Jedi. May the force be with you.

Tropical Paradise Guesthouse in the background

 Our own little piece of beach

 I found a really cool tire swing