Actually the fancy dress wasn’t to bad! Howard and I went as Poms on Tour – he wore his Boro shirt and I rolled up my trouser legs, wore socks with sandals, put a knotted hanky on my head and stuffed a towel into my t shirt to make a beer belly! Grabbed a bottle of beer and put a fag in my mouth - It got a few laughs, others made more of an effort and Martin went as the Prince of Persia using bed sheets etc with his girlfriend on a leash dressed up as a panther – where she got the ears from I have no idea! Ronnie had arranged for the local dance school to come and do some traditional dancing for us which was nice, even nicer as they didn’t try ... read more

31st October ’11 Antigua to Copan, Honduras 3.45 am and the alarm goes off and we staggered out to get the rucksacks loaded on to the top of the minibus. The seats are meant for two but only actually fit 1 ½! Add Howard’s Asda pillow in with us and needless to say we didn’t get much sleep!! We had a breakfast stop about 8ish and then carried on to the border. Again there were moneychangers there with their big wads of cash and we managed to change our last few quetzals for Hondurian lempira. We got through the border crossing with no problems and now have a Honduras stamp in our passports to add to the collection! We then travelled into the Copan Valley, again with high mountains and hills, all very green and lush ... read more

Today was just a travelling day, we set off at 7.15 am by boat to Fronteras where we caught the bus to Guatemala City which took about 6 hours. We had a 15 minute stop where we were able to get sandwiches etc and use the loo. The scenery is stunning, heavily forested hills, green fields and palm trees. It got increasingly more hilly as we went up into the highlands. The on bus entertainment was a dvd – The Marine, all in Spanish, you didn’t need to understand the language to follow the plot though! Guatemala City – The Murder Capital of the World is a huge sprawling place with lots of slums, there are a few more modern areas with armed guards everywhere. We then waited at the bus station for the next bus ... read more

21st Oct ’11 Flores, Guatemala We spent the morning visiting the local market in the town, watching the ladies making tacos and barbequing meat. We set off at 1pm in minibuses up to the border. There were lots of moneychanger men wandering around with great big wads of notes so we managed to get rid of the last of our belizian currency and got some Guatemalan quetzals. The customs process didn’t take too long and we were soon off again. You could really see evidence of the torrential rain they had been having in Guatemala, there was lots of standing water in the fields and the rivers were really high. Despite this being an extremely poor country we stopped on the way to Flores at a purpose built shopping arcade, complete with ice cream parlours! This ... read more

17th Oct ’11 Tulum to Caye Caulker, Belize Left after a reasonable sleep, again just dived into bed! Then packed up all our soggy gear. In one of the other huts they had been visited by a rat! I blocked our hole up with one of Howard's boots, the 2 Aussie lads had been attacked by ants in their beds, so we probably got off lightly! We travelled by minibus today down to the port of Chetemal in Mexico to catch the water jets to Caye Caulker. On our bus we watched Apocalypto just to get us in the mood for all the mayan stuff we will be doing! At the port – which was tiny we had to go through customs to get stamped out of Mexico, then we had to line up all our ... read more