Belize and Mexico

BELIZE

Our crossing over the border was pretty painless. Actually it was kind of strange, 'cause as we went through the Belize immigration the guy behind the desk was on his mobile the whole time.

We managed to broker a good deal with a taxi driver (what luxury!) to take us to the town of San Ignacio, which isn't far from the border. We immediately felt a difference here. Everybody spoke English, all the signs were in English, and old Lizzy-queeny-pants was on the dollar bills. The English influence was undeniable, which was understandable given the history of the country.

The feel of the town was fabulous. It really reminded us of Cahuita (in Costa Rica), with it's Caribbean style verandas and brightly painted facades. We were pretty shocked by the the price of accommodation - we were used to paying two quid per person, per night, and submitted to the fact that we'd have to dig a bit deeper into our pockets than when we were in Guatemala. Nevertheless, we certainly got our what we paid for, as we had our own private room with sparkling clean en-suite along with huge, fluffy towels, plus a ceiling fan to keep us cool. We both agreed that this was the nicest place we'd stopped in all trip.

We'd had an exhausting day so far, as we'd spent eight hours at Tikal that morning, so took it easy that afternoon. In the evening we tried to draw some money out from the bank, but to our initial panic neither of our cards were working. We wondered what was going on. Had the bank stopped our cards for some reason? Had someone fraudulently bled our account dry? We tried to log onto our bank and the internet service was down, so we figured that the whole service was probably undergoing a shutdown.

We scraped together the bit of cash that we'd swapped at the border and went across the road to the local restaurant. Luckily the food was extremely reasonably priced, and we managed to get a delicious chicken dinner for our pennies.

The next morning we both felt a bit worn out from the day before, so lazily got out of bed and slowly got ready for the day. Luckily our cards were working so we were able to eat breakfast on our veranda whilst watching the world go by. A little later we headed out and walked a circuit of the town, taking us up hills and across the lovely river, which was fast flowing, clear and full of locals cooling down. The afternoon saw us spending several hours on the blog, which took so much time due to the amount of things we'd seen and done over the past few weeks!

The following day we made our way to Belize City. We didn't stop there, however, and caught the boat out to Caye Caulker, our next destination. The water taxi really got a shift on, leaving a white frothy trail in the beautiful blue waters of the Caribbean. We were there in less than 45mins, and landed on a small, sandy spit of land filled with palm trees and colourful wooden hotels. We walked to a hostel we'd read about and found they had room, which we were chuffed about as the place had a lovely high veranda overlooking the sea.

We went out to walk the Caye, which took us only about half an hour to do the full circuit as the place is that small. We kept on bumping into the same guy on a bicycle, who was one of the locals living and working there, and it became a running joke every time we saw each other. It started to rain quite heavily after a while, so we retreated back to the hostel for a shower and a mooch about.

The day we arrived was the start of lobster season. I tucked into one that very evening, but unfortunately James had not managed to shake off a tummy bug he'd picked up in Guatemala. Whilst most of the restaurants were dead due to it being low season, the small outdoor stalls had a thriving trade. This was probably largely down to the colouful characters who were cooking and calling people in to join them for dinner.

The next day we took our swimming gear and made our way to the far North East part of the Caye, where there is a protected swimming area (protection from the motorised boats whizzing about). Whilst there was no beach there, we made ourselves comfortable on a half crumbled sea wall, from which we could plunge at will into the warmth of the sea. The waters here were incredible and it was like looking down through glass. There was plenty of sea life to be found here, and lots of bright and pretty fish swam beneath us. There were also starfish and James managed to accidentally step on a small ray which was camouflaged by the sandy ocean floor.

There was a guy next to us fishing, and he managed to catch a bone fish, which he showed us. It flashed a bright and beautiful silver in the sunlight before the man released it, letting it dart off through the crystal waters.

Once more during mid afternoon we were forced back indoors as the rain came back. This time the grey clouds really set in, and the heavy downpour continued well into the night, only letting up briefly every so often. We spent the afternoon chatting with two lovely couples from Sweden, who were having a holiday together. Later we ducked out for dinner in between the torrential showers, enjoying more fresh fish that had been locally caught

The next morning the weather wasn't any better. In fact the sky started to empty just as we had to leave for the water taxi out of there. By the time we had got to the dock we were drenched through to the skin, sopping wet clothes stuck to us like glue. The Swedish folks had walked with us and shared in our soggy fate. We managed to dry out a little on the ride back to the city, but the bus that we caught to the border was icy cold with air-con which was pretty bloody freezing.

MEXICO

After paying the departure tax out of Belize (seriously, what is that all about?) we crossed into our final Latin American destination. It was a bit bizarre at the Mexican side when we walked through customs. To the left there were several men standing next to a table, which I presumed that they'd call you to for a search if you looked a bit dodgy. On the right hand side was a traffic light, which people would press and the green light saying "PASE" would come on. They told me to press the button, which went green, and to my confusion was signalled through. We later found out that this is the Mexican way of randomly selecting people to search, which we found most amusing.

Upon entering the country I half expected to be greeted by poncho and sombrero wearing Mexicans with heavy moustaches, smoking cigars and knocking back tequila (stereotyping? me?!). It looked very similar to all the other Central American countries that we'd visited.

The bus to Tulum was equally as Arctic as the one before, but thankfully by this point we'd dried. At the station we said our goodbyes to the Swedish couples, and said that we might see them in town at some point. The cab that we took to our hostel drove us away from the town, and parallel to the seafront. When we caught our first glimpse we were struck by the electric blue of the sea, and we couldn't wait to get to the beach. Unfortunately, after a looooong day of travel, it was around 7:15 in the evening so all we had time for was a shower and dinner.

Our "eco hostel" was about as far away from the town that you can get. It consisted of very rustic cabins with thatched roofs and open air showers. The electricity only ran from 7pm until 11pm, and there were plenty of citronella lanterns burning in the large communal areas, which helped to deter the hoards of mosquitoes that are found in the area. There were hundreds of quite large crabs allover the site, which would scuttle for cover as soon as they saw someone approaching. We even had a couple take refuge in our cabin at one point. Someone we stopped with commented that the hostel felt a bit like a hippie commune,which just about sums up the vibe of the place.

That evening we took a twenty minute walk to a great bar and restaurant which served beautiful food on an open air veranda overlooking the sea.

The second day we caught the free shuttle bus to the local Mayan ruins. These were by no means the most impressive ones that we'd seen, but the location was second to none. The site has a fortress wall, and it all leads uphill to the main temple, which is perched on the edge of a limestone cliff overlooking the sparkling ocean. We were also fascinated by the scores of large monitor lizards sunbathing in the ruins.

James practically ran around the ruins as he was incredibly impatient to get to the beach and into the sea. Instead of going to the overcrowded beach at the ruins, we walked further away to a larger and much quieter beach. We were totally stunned by the natural beauty of the area. The dazzling white sand, which was cool to the touch and extremely fine, felt like baby powder between our toes. The waters looked so bright that they looked unreal, with every different shade of turquoise and blue. The best thing was that there was hardly anyone else on the huge expanse of beach. There we stayed for the rest of the afternoon, basking in the hot sunshine like a pair of lizards.

That night we went into town with Zuzana, one of the girls from our hostel, and met up with the Swedish couples for a bite to eat. We had a great night out with plenty of delicious Mexican food and beer, alongside lots of laughter.

The following day we were going to go to Chichén Itzá, one of the largest Mayan ruins in Mexico, but what we hadn't realised that this was a three hour trip one way. We couldn't stop the night near the site as we didn't have the time, and the thought of six hours in a bus filled us both with dread. We agreed that it would be silly for us to rush there and back, and Mexico had impressed us that much that we also knew we'd be back to see the country properly some time in the future.

We toyed with a few ideas about what to do, but there was only one thing that we realy wanted, and that was to make our way back to the heavenly place we'd spent the day before on. We went with Zuzanna back to the beach, and as we settled back onto the sand I said to James, "I sure am glad that I've found the patience to lie on a beach and do nothing!", which is a skill I've acquired on this trip.

That evening we went back to the place we'd been the first night. This time we decided to try some tequila (when in Mexico...) and asked the advice of the waitress. She served us some beautifully smooth and delicately flavoured tequila, which made the José Cuervo we get in the UK taste like paint stripper. We were joined by a couple of girls from our hostel, and afterward we spent some time on the beach, swinging in the outdoor hammocks whilst watching the inky back waves and looking up at the magnificent starry sky.

We caught the bus to Cancun the next day, and arrived by lunchtime. We had pre-booked a hostel, and set out trying to find it. The address was a bit confusing, made up of different letters and numbers. A taxi driver told us to go one way, but when we asked a shop keeper he told us a different direction. This continued for around half an hour, and all the time we were getting hotter and more frustrated. Eventually we went to an internet cafe and asked the guy behind the desk. He looked it up on Googlemaps, and even kindly did a print out for us. It turned out that we were bloody miles away and needed a taxi. We were disheartened that on our last day in Latin America we'd managed to get hopelessly lost.

One in the taxi we relaxed a litle, until we reached our destination. The hostel was not to be found, and we'd left the address in the internet place by accident. We asked him to drive us back to where he'd picked us up from, but when we were nearly there he spotted the small sign for our hostel. It was pretty much opposite where he'd picked us up from! We laughed about it in the end, but had to give ourselves a swift kick at the same time.

We headed out for a much needed lunch, treating ourselves to some extremely tasty fajitas. We were going to catch the bus out to the airport early the next morning so didn't have a lot of time in the city, not that we minded. The place was touristy as hell, even in the downtown area, and we were glad that we wouldn't have to endure the huge hotels and hoards of tourists at Cancun beach.

That night was very low key, and we hit the sack pretty early. We were both quite sad to leave Latin America, as we'd had such a great time sampling the different cultures. We both felt that Mexico marked the end of our trip, and that Miami was just a stopover on the way back to the UK. However, at the back of our minds we both knew that we'd definitely be back to this part of the world.