Greetings from Belize...
You better Belize it! It’s an unbelizeable place. We couldn’t belize our eyes. I belize in a thing called Love! Ok enough already.
For those of you who
are still reading after the appalling start to this blog entry, here is a
summary of our time in Believe…
Mexico to Belize via boat… After paying the apparent “Departure tax
sting”, that Lonely Planet warned us about, we were 2 boats ride away from our
destination, Caye Caulker in Belize.
Where the hell is
Belize??
There it is!
At first the border
crossing seemed pretty intimidating- guards with guns, a sniffer dog, a whole
heap of gringos lined up hoping no one had planted drugs in their bags etc etc.
That said two things occurred that lightened the mood:
2. The
sniffer dog accidently got a baggage tag sticker stuck around its nose for a
few seconds and everyone laughed while the gun bearing guards tried to unstick
the sticker.
Once we got on the
boat to Belize, we started talking to a very passionate Canadian chap (or should we rephrase- he started talking at us) who loved
Belize. As the extremely
bumpy (extremely!) boat ride continued, we found out more about his love of
Belize. He actually had “You Better Belize It” tattooed on his upper arm. As the
boat ride continued we figured he must have eaten his remaining stash of
amphetamines prior to the crossing (he was talking at 100 miles an hour and was
sweating profusely).
Good thing the sniffer
dog and the six guards were distracted with the sticker.
The boat then stopped
in San Pedro where we had to go through Belizean customs. The office looked
like a sand pit (the floor was actually sand). When asked to declare items,
Kris stated she had peanut butter. However that was OK, because the customs
official also liked peanut butter. At this point we realised that Belize was a
pretty relaxed place.
After a bumpy first
half of the journey we jumped on another boat to Caye Caulker. The boat was
very “James Bond” but sadly Alice at this stage was brewing the Mexican Egg
Virus and looked like this…
And not like this..
We arrived in Caye
Caulker to our humble lodgings at “Dirty McNasties*” Hostel (*actual
name). After two nights in a
swampy sweatbox with a toilet in the kitchen and a truck that drives past every
day and shoots insecticide into the air, we moved into Lena’s guesthouse for
the next four nights.
Here are a few key
words and pictures of our time in Caye Caulker…
Rastas...
Laziness...
Cocktails...
Prolonged breakfasts...
Barefoot...
Lena’s...
Paradise...
Starfish Fights...
Afternoon beers with friends
on our veranda!...
Wish Willy’s all you
can eat seafood buffet, including…
Swedish neighbour (who
talked your ear off, greeted you in his underwear, listened to death metal, had
a very long goatee, long hair, drank all day, vomited all night, and fell down
the stairs before heading off snorkelling (DRUNK) to find the moray eel). He
kind of looked like a cross between these two people...
We then headed off on
our three-day sailing and snorkelling tour with Ragamuffin Tours. This tour was
absolutely amazing. We camped on Islands (Rendezvous Caye and Tobacco Caye),
snorkelled, went spear fishing, avoided being speared by twenty amateur
spear-fishers, swam, ate and drank rum punch. This was definitely a highlight.
Here are some pictures. (Don’t be jealousing!- Ok be jealousing!)
After finishing up on
the “Raggamuffin Queen” we spent one night in Placencia. To our delight the bar
right next to our hostel room was doing karaoke that night and turned it all
the way to eleven. The next day we got up at 4.45am and got the 5.30am* Express
** Bus*** (*actual time 6.30am; ** Not express; ***chicken bus).
On the second leg of
the journey we were beaten to the best seats* (*all of the seats) by a large
clan of locals and Amish people (We felt like telling them to go back to their
buggies and give up their seats but it sounded rude).
As a result we stood
at the very back next to a bucket of Conks (clams/ shellfish) in water that
splashed over Kris’ backpack. At
least we had a bit of extra space back there (until people started entering from the back door of the bus).
It kind of looked like
this...
We arrived at our destination
“San Ignacio” – a town famous for two things:
1. It’s
closeness to the Guatemalan border
2. The ATM
tour – an adventurous unregulated cave climbing/swimming tour that takes you
into a Mayan sacrificial site...
The ATM tour was
fantastic- at the end you get one metre from an unprotected skeleton that is about
1000 years old and dodge Mayan artefacts as you slip around mossy rocks and
avoid falling to your death. Here are some pictures (not ours- the company's-
this is because on two separate occasions tourists dropped cameras on the
skulls of the 1000 year old skulls)
We still can’t believe
that the skeletons and artefacts are still in the cave protected only by an
orange ribbon on the ground (that often you can’t see because it is very dark).
Here is a souvenir we
stole from the cave...
The next day we headed
into Guatemala (and got stung again by that apparent non existent “departure
tax sting” STUPID GRINGOS)
We are having a great
time in Guatemala (Guatever!!!) so far and will update the blog in a few weeks.
Lots of Love
Kralice
P.S. off to roast marshmallows
on top of a volcano today!
No comments:
Post a Comment