Through Guatemala...In which the earth actually did move for us...

...So we crossed the border from Belize into Guatemala, begrudgingly paying the extortionate exit & entry taxes that seemed to just go straight into the pockets of the immigration officials, & made our way down to a town called El Remate on the shores of Lake Peten Itza, which is essentially the closest town to Guatemala's largest & most significant Mayan archaeological site of Tikal. Tikal dates back to c. 500bc, was a major power of the Mayan world until it was defeated & ultimately deserted around 1000ad upon which it was quickly swallowed up by the jungle, not to be re-discovered until 1848 by some locals harvesting chewing gum trees.

So the following morning at 5.30am we set off on the c. 25km journey into the mountains & jungle headed for the site. The location really is quite stunning, deep in the jungle you are surrounded by the sound of tropical birds & howler monkeys - who from a distance sound quite fearsome - adding to the atmosphere of the place. It is a huge area with several hundred structures that have been excavated, including 7 main pyramid temples, the tallest of which exceeds 70 meters in height - which makes that fact that this place was completely buried without trace by the jungle vegetation pretty amazing.

The following day we journeyed further south heading for a place called Semuc Champey - regarded as one of the new wonders of the natural world. After travelling through the whole of Belize on the local 'Chicken Buses' (named so because that is what often up sharing your seat with, on their way to & from market), we decided we treat ourselves to the relative luxury of the tourist mini bus service that is a direct door to door affair, costs about 10 times the price of the local buses & is generally regarded as a more comfortable option....wrong! 15 of us then spent the next 7 hours crammed into a mini bus designed for 12 passengers, complete with the drivers mate travelling the entire journey on the roof of the van hanging onto the luggage.

Guatemala's landscape is made up of 90% mountainous areas, so the views for the most part were really impressive, though what was really quite striking from this bus journey & also the subsequent journeys we took through Guatemala was the extent of the deforestation that is going on all over the place. Almost every other hillside has a fire still smouldering where the trees have been felled, the ground burnt to prevent re-growth in the hope that the land will be able to be used for agricultural cash crops in later years. Clearly, most of us from developed countries have some level of environmental conscience these days, & are aware that these things go on in the developing nations though it is very easy to feel removed from the reality of the situation until you see it first hand. It was enough to convince us to cut down our Sunday newspaper intake from The Times, The Observer, The Independent, The Mirror & The Sport to the bare essentials of just The Sport...

Anyway, we had a couple of days chilling out in wood & straw cabana's perched on the hillside on the banks of a river - a gorgeous setting before making our way out to Semuc Champey. Semuc Champey essentially is a huge gorge carved in the limestone hillside by a river over millions of years, & there is one place where several thousands of years ago a huge slab of the limestone cliff collapsed across the river creating a natural limestone bridge. the river still flows underneath it, though on top there are a series of tiers in which have formed natural pools created from the water running down off the hillsides - a really beautiful spot, but more importantly you can swim in the pools & throw yourself off the different levels of the tiers into the water below & jump the 10m off the final tier into the river below which was great fun.

To top the day off we headed down to some local caves at dusk & sat at the entrance of the cave as literally hundred's of thousands of bats fly millimetres from our heads as they headed out for their evening meal. Thankfully all the bats seemed to have had their sonar devices recently serviced, as with the exception of the odd bit of bat shit, nothing actually hit us!

Next on the agenda was the picturesque Spanish Colonial town of Antigua,

just outside of the hellhole that is Guatemala City. Antigua is a very nice place, very touristy however & the prices of everything reflect the fact that this is a particularly popular spot.

After vowing not to get on anymore 'tourist designated' bus services, we set off on an adventure to lake Atitlan, Xela & a huge market town called Chichi for the next few days using nothing but the local Chicken

buses. Lake Atitlan looked beautifully serence from the bus winding down the mountainside although not quite so when we got there.... 'hassle' and 'fleece' the tourists was the number one pastime which marred the whole experience a little although you can understand why when hordes of tourists head into town in air conditioned buses, bling jewellery on show and will pay anything they ask rather than barter for anything.

Xela was a great place had we the time to do some of the many hikes on offer although, the rains start around 3pm, so most activities need to be finished by then or you are absolutely soaked like you have jumped into a pool with your clothes on!

Whilst travelling around on the chicken buses saved us a small fortune vs. the cost of the tourist buses, it certainly provided us with our fair share of 'exciting' moments along the way. The main link road through Guatemala is the Inter-Americana highway, which because it is called a highway, people drive on it like it is a highway - even though for the most part it winds its ways up, down & around the Guatemalan highlands. Some of the road is paved, some of it is a dirt track, some of it is single lane, some of it dual carriageway, some of it has roadworks going on, some of it has a contra-flow in place - none of these things however affect the constant 100kph the bus drivers insist on sticking to - literally launching these old dilapidated hand-me-down American school buses of the tarmac onto the dirt track that is about 1ft lower - there were bags, people & chickens being thrown all over the place. Absolutely hilarious & absolutely terrifying in equal measures!

We returned to Antigua for a final couple of days in Guatemala & had a couple more pretty exceptional experiences. The first of which was there was an earth tremor - not quite an earthquake, but definitely some seismic shifting going on. It was really weird, like we were stood on a frozen lake in our socks for a few moments as the ground literally slid around beneath our feet - the weird thing was that walls of building moved with the ground in perfect unison & nothing collapsed.

The second unique experience was that we climbed an active volcano just out of Antigua, called Pacaya - where you could toast marshmallows over the lava, walking across lava that had recently hardened & getting within inches of the stuff that was flowing. We had a 'guide' in the loosest sense of the word - who was running & jumping around on the hardened lava, one of the guys in our group actually fell through some of the hardened lava cutting his legs to ribbons on the razor sharp debris. Health & safety clearly doesn't come into it over here - apparently there is nowhere else in the world where you can get so close to active lava unless you are some sort of professional Geologist or something - a unique but really quite unnerving experience, hovering inches above molten earth that is in excess of 2000 degrees C - there wouldn't be much foot left if you fell through into that!

This journey through Guatemala really challenged the pre-conceptions we had of the country - & that no doubt most Westerners who have never been here also have, based on the 36 years of civil war that tore the country apart up until 1996. Whilst there is still massive amounts of corruption clearly evident, huge wealth & huge poverty on display, 90% of the people we met along the way were really kind, helpful, happy & respectful of tourists - recognising the benefits tourism brings to their country.

Guatemala is a stunning country, full of mountains, lakes & caves, has a Pacific & Caribbean Coast & has a whole host of things to see & they also need to remember tourists will not continue to keep paying the ever increasing costs to do and see these things.... there was a local and foreign price for everything and although this is fair in concept, the foreigner cost is rising quickly and these costs there have more than doubled from the costs the lonely planet was quoting in a book only a year ago.

The only slight dampener on our time here was the fact that on the final day as we got the bus into Guatemala city to catch a connecting bus onto El Salvador, Claire was pick pocketed & had her purse stolen. Fortunately there wasn't a great deal in there, & in reality this could've happened anywhere - so we won't hold it against you too much Mr Guatemala...

From the Pacific to the Caribbean - Mexico to Belize

After literally melting ourselves in the intense heat of Mexico’s Pacific coast we headed east on a 12 hour bus journey across the mountains up to a beautiful old colonial styled town, 2100 metres up called ‘San Cristobal De Las Casas’. The climate here was pretty much perfect - sunny with a fresh breeze during the day, & something actually resembling mildly cold in the evenings - after the heat of Puerto Escondido this was a welcome relief.

One of the things that is definitely a theme in Mexico is their love of really loud music, played through completely knackered speakers with more emphasis on the distortion than the music…San Cristobal was no exception on this front - & whilst it does have a certain innocent charm in some instances, Pink Floyd played at full volume through speakers that really should’ve been binned several years previous whilst you’re eating breakfast first thing in the morning is enough to test anyone’s patience!

San Cristobal was a really cool place, very laid back, full of indigenous tribes of people all selling their handy crafts in the daily markets, beautiful architecture surrounded by stunning mountain scenery - we had some fun sampling a few of the local Tequila’s in a bar that had saddles with stirrups as bar stools - very funny!

After spending a few really nice days in San Cristobal we jumped on another 13 hour bus ride heading East towards the Yucatan Peninsula - quite a stunning drive across the mountains, passing one of the largest Mexican Mayan ruin sites called Palenque. The trip was made a little more interesting by the addition of a couple of military check stops - one group of military doctors getting on the bus checking people out for swine flu symptoms (thankfully there was no one on our bus that qualified), & later army check stop checking for drugs - again, no one qualified on our bus so we all moved on, arriving at the Mexico/Belize border at around 1am, only to find that there was no transport available on the Belizean side of the border save for a dodgy Belizean immigration official who offered us a ride into the nearest town for $30USD - due to the fact it was less than 10 miles away we decided out of principle we wouldn’t take him up on his kind offer…so we waited 6 hours for the first bus to turn up at 7am…Still, we befriended a Belizean military medical officer who was posted there to check people out for Swine flu on entry into the country (which consisted of a few questions - have you got a sore throat? Have you got a headache? Body aches? Fever? - answer no to all of the above & you’re through…) - he was bored out of his mind as apart from us there was literally no one else crossing the border that night, so he was filling us in on all the do’s & don’ts of various places in Belize & Guatemala.

When the bus finally arrived (an old hand-me-down disused American school bus) - we headed to a town called Orange Walk - & found ourselves back in the same intense heat again that we thought we had escaped in Mexico. From here we took a really cool jungle river boat tour up a crocodile infested river, surrounded by vultures, iguana’s, monkeys (we had 2 monkeys actually get in our boat with us) & a whole host of other wildlife - 2 hours up river to an ancient Mayan ruin site called Lamanai in the middle of the jungle. With the full on wide brimmed hats we were all sporting it all felt very Indiana Jones, there was hardly anyone else at Lamanai due to most tourists being scared off by the swine flu threat (even though Belize has had no reported cases so far), so we pretty much only shared the site with the howler monkeys that were chilling out in the trees above us. Really good day.

We then moved on to Belize City where we spent a night - didn’t bump into Ross Kemp filming a series of his ‘Gangs’ program thankfully - then caught a boat out to the Cayes to spend a couple of days chilling out on Caye Caulker, a beautiful Caribbean island that is just a mile or so away from the Belizean barrier reef which stretches for about 180 miles, second only in size to the Australian barrier reef. We took a really nice sail boat ride out with an old local guy called Juni - who actually built his own boat, for a snorkelling trip around the reef where we swam with nurse sharks, sting rays, turtles & a multitude of other beautiful marine life. Another really great day.

We then headed south towards the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary, in amongst the area where there are a large population of Jaguars (the animals, not the cars…). We stayed in an old fishing village called Hopkins that was home to the Garifuna people of African descent - renowned for their tribal drumming style music & laid back approach to life. They certainly lived up to their reputation on both fronts - there was a constant rhythm pulsing through the town day & night & the people were so laid back that the local bus that took the people of Hopkins onto the next town literally stopped every 20 metres to pick up passengers & carried out a tour of the entire town to ensure that they gave every household in the town the opportunity to be picked up from directly outside their own front door, because walking to one or two designated spots was all a little bit too much like hard work. Can‘t imagine that going on in Blighty somehow!

We took a combination of buses, hitching rides & taxis from Hopkins to the Cockscomb wildlife park, where unsurprisingly we didn’t see any Jaguars - I mean, who in their right mind would be out strolling around the jungle in the mid day sun when there is a shaded palm that you could be resting under….what is it they say about mad dog & English men?!? However it was all made worthwhile by a really refreshing swim in a waterfall in the middle of the jungle, & happening upon an old plane wreck in the jungle covered by vines & general overgrowth.

We spent one final night in Hopkins in our ramshackle beach front accommodation that we found we were sharing with a variety of insect life - including some enormous cockroaches & army ants. Claire & Leanne quickly drew up a ‘Memorandum of Responsibilities’ & designated me the responsible group member to deal with Cockroaches & spiders, Claire has committed to dealing with any encounters with rats & mice we may have, whilst Leanne has taken on the task of addressing any situations we may have with large mammals including jaguars and sharks, & also possibly helping out with some ant duties…something tells me I got the raw end of that particular deal!

We got another rickety old bus ride east to west across Belize & are currently sat in a town called San Ignacio on the Belize / Guatemala border, from where today we head into Guatemala - first stop in Guatemala is the ancient Mayan city of Tikal. On the whole Belize has been really good, if somewhat overpriced - largely due to the fact that it is quite a popular American holiday destination, & while they are willing to pay the price, people will charge the price. Considering Belize is an ex-British colony as well there is a remarkable lack of any sign of British influence, i.e. no architectural evidence, no real infrastructure to speak of - the only evidence is a good education system that is in place here, & the fact that most people speak English, as well as Spanish & Creole. Bye for now!