paraphernalia

Wed Jan 3
After waking at 5:40am, we took the newly-christened Silver Bullet (our bus) to Belize City. The trip was pretty uneventful, except for the non-stop barrage of reggaeton and 90s Vengaboys.

We arrived into Belize City at 11:30 to find it nowhere near as bad as Coral had made it out to be. Instead of the barrage of touts and cab drivers we found an empty bus terminal. The touts began once we got outside, but we had got our luggage and our bearings by then so all was well.

Belize is clearly a much poorer country than Mexico. I’m sure this has something to do with its lack of proximity to the US. It has many grand old buildings that have since become derelict. There are clearly strong Chinese communities (as noted by the number of shops that have signs in English and Chinese), who appear to have taken over much of the trading. The official language is English, although it’s spoken with a Creole accent, so for the most part it is unrecognisable. The other strong community here are the Christians. There are SO many churches of all denominations everywhere, even in very small communities, which I wasn’t expecting.

Our cabanas are on the island of Caye Caulker. This is truly paradise – a Caribbean island with one main road, almost exclusively for backpackers. No big resorts, no food chains – perfect. Our cabanas are really basic and a bit out of the way from the centre of things, but in this island everything is relative – the whole thing takes about 20mins to walk around.

The other thing that keeps me amazed by this island is the food. For lunch we had Mango fish burgers and banana shakes, and for dinner I had the best grilled fish I’ve ever had. Seriously. With lemon garlic sauce. Ange had Lobster tail too, so I sampled some of it, and it was just as good. I know it’s an island, and so the seafood should be good, but so often it just isn’t, so we were really pleased!

Thurs Jan 4
After having the worst shower EVER (which the whole floor heard about due to the paper-thin walls), involving a screen that creeped inward, and hard, cold water. Argh! My biggest fear of travelling is the showers (possibly too much information, but hey!) So far, I’ve been in all kinds of showers – tall, short, hard, soft, cold, lukewarm, hot, complicated and easy. But this takes the cake!

I had deliberately got up early to fit in a proper breakfast. It turned out that no one else had woken up early, so I went for a walk around the island on my own, which was fantastic. It gave me a chance to clear my head – exactly what the doctor ordered! We all eventually had breakfast at Rasta Pasta – mmm egg muffin and ginger beer!

After that it was off for the main event – a full day snorkelling tour. It was AWESOME! We went to two separate coral reefs, saw turtles and swam with sharks and manta rays. Talk about wicked, eh?

We also stopped at the other (larger) island near Caye Caulker – San Pedro. There we had lunch and the girls bought some really nice jewellery.

We got back to Caye Caulker around 4:30pm and we were all so tired (and some were quite suburnt). Thus the rest of the day was just chilling. We went out as a group for dinner to Habaneros for some excellent (and quite expensive) fajitas. From there, a smaller group of us went to the i-and-i reggae bar to try the local drink: a ‘panti ripper’. Essentially it’s just a double Malibu and coke, although it’s potent!

Tomorrow morning we leave Belize and head to Flores in Guatemala. Hopefully it’s a fairly smooth ride!

Belize photos