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Published: April 22nd 2010
Protest at the border
Protesting for more money for teachers. Firstly I guess I'm still not 100% sure how I ended up in Belize after all it's not really on the way to Nicuragua! It certainly wasn't the prospect of 20 odd hours on buses to get there! Perhaps Dan talked me into it by promising beautiful white sand, and warm water whilst relaxing on a caribean island! Or maybe it was simply that it was somewhere I'd always wanted to visit and since I was so close it felt wrong not to go!
The trip didn't go too smoothly with my first bus breaking down, overheating and pumping out hot air all the way to Flores, (here I hooked up with Mark and ate great street food ;-)) The second bus encountered a protest at the border which was barricaded so we couldn't cross until it settled down a few hours later. We eventually made it to Belize City 4 hours late with 5 minutes to spare before the last boat, and not sure which of the two islands we were supposed to be going to (since Dan had given up waiting for us) we took an educated guess and bought tickets to Caye Caulker, the cheapest one!
Then proceeded the funniest boat journey of my life... in retrospect when you get on a boat and all the locals are sitting on the right hand side it might be best to join them rather than heading to the left where unbeknown to you in a matter of minutes you will be absolutelty drenched by the waves and freezing cold! Luckily the sun came out for the last 5 mins and we only arrived slightly damp and rumpled!!
Having checked in to what was to turn out to be a horrible hotel, with the worst mattresses in the world and showers that smelt like running sewage (nice!), we had time for a quick swim British style in the freezing cold sea before dinner and getting aquainted with 'Belkins!' mmm.
In the morning we checked into a new hotel before having some quality hammock time which was a good opportunity to relax since I was still sick. The next day having managed to keep my breakfast down we headed off on what was to turn out to be the most incredible snorkling trip ever. Having sailed on a lovely raggamuffin boat we took our first of
three stops for snorkling. Here there were thousands of multi coloured fish and an incredible reef. I even got to touch a stingray which felt really slimey, which was kind of weird since I didn't expect something underwater to feel slimey! Our next stop was at a marine park where we got to snorkel with nurse sharks. I was initially a liitle apprehensive jumping into the water with them as their teeth looked so sharp but up close they are incredible creatures. The third stop was by far my favourite as we got to swim with turtles, they were absolutuely amazing. I loved it and felt like I was an extra in finding nemo! The sail back to the island was aslo a lot of fun, and we were blessed with the first properly sunny day in Belize. Back on the island we hooked up with some other friends from antigua which was to be a lot of fun.
Other highlights of Belize, were cruising round the island with Brad on laid back beach cruiser bikes, and taking them off road with no brakes- just having to pedal backwards when we wanted to stop. Late night chats
on the pier with Dan, Brad's cooking and Hawaian hat making, catching up with the Dutch girls, and just simply being on holiday!!
Having left Caye Caulker with Dan and Mark we headed off to Punta Gorda. With our bus driver forgetting to put petrol in we broke down after six hours which I found pretty funny but I'm not sure that the others were that amused!Punta Gorda is not the place of dreams and it was thus a good feeling to leave Belize behind on our tiny fishing boat, wearing life jackets and sheltering under a plastic sheet like stowaways as we headed back to Guatemala and the lovely Livingston.
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