After being off the coast for so long it was high time for the Caribbean Sea once again. And where better to reacquaint us with it than Caye Caulker, the island of dreams? Belize is a small country, so our journey from San Ignacio to Caye Caulker wasn't as long a haul as we're used to by now. First roundabout two hours (in a Belizean chicken bus!) to Belize city and then another 45 minutes by boat to get to the island - and of course, that part of the journey wasn't boring at all. I love boats! Caye Caulker itself is a lovely, small (pop. +/- 400) island 30 miles from Belize city and another 20 from Ambergris Caye (/San Pedro). The atmosphere there is VERY relaxed and "Go Slow" (sometimes adorned with "or else ... read more

Finally added the pictures, folks. As promised, although I'm again a day late. ;) --- As I mentioned before we were off early to Tikal, perhaps the most impressive set of Mayan ruins, situated in the just as impressive jungle of Peten. We arrived at the gates of the nature reserve (stretching several hundreds of square miles around Tikal) around six, too late for sunrise, but early enough for it to still be cool and dry in the jungle. Said jungle hosts an impressive multitude of wildlife - bears, jaguars, snakes, tucans, crocodiles, tarantulas, hundreds of different birds and insects, geckos, etc.pp. - it's a nature lover's dream! First off we decided on some breakfast for the group at the restaurant near the ruins - after all, you need to be fit to climb huge pyramids! ... read more

After having such a lovely time in Mexico we were of course a little sad to have to leave that awesome country with the friendly people already - we´ll be back at the end of our trip, though. The first border crossing of our trip was chaotic, but fun. From San Christibal we first took yet another comfortable, fully climatized bus to the Mexican border station, filled out our visa-forms there, piled into three cabs, drove to the Guatemalan border (which, weirdly enough, is about 3 kilometers down the road) and got our new visa-stamps there without any trouble, though the border there is certainly chaotic and full with people, all of them busy with selling things, exchanging money (with HUGE stacks of money they cary around in their pockets) or crossing the border themselves. The ... read more

Okay - here´s an updated version of the blog entry I wrote earlier, since I have more time today. The cenote-stuff is newly added, as well as a little background info on some other things we did. First for the time we actually spent in Cancun: all in all, we went to three different beaches, two of them on the Cancùn Hotel-strip and one of them on the beautiful Isla Mujeres, a couple of km off shore. Isla Mujeres The island itself is neither as hectic nor as "touristy" as Cancun itself, while still having VERY nice beaches and, as we´re told, great diving opportunities (which we didn´t try out, because we´re headed to belize, caye caulker & playa del carmen later on the trip, which are all famous for diving & snorkelling as well). In ... read more