Tikal and Belize

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So off to tikal we went.. Leaving flores around 1230 pm we arrived at the park 90 minutes later and took a guided tour. tikal is different to many of the other ruins in central america as its set deep into the jungle with some temples rising more than 61 metres high. Most of the temples have been cleared from trees and vines which has grown over the villages over many centuries. As we walked between settlements, we saw a range of monkeys, squirells, snakes and all sorts of birds. We decided to take the sunset tour as oppose to the sunrise tour and we got to see the sunset whilst sitting on the 60 metre temple. This was by far one of he best sunsets we had ever seen as it was above the rain forest canopy looking out towards the guatamala horizon. Later we spoke to someone at our hostel who had done the sunrise tour and they said it was too foggy to see the sunrise that morning which made us feel a whole lot better!

The next day we headed to Belize on a shuttle bus that left at 5 am arriving 10 am ready to catch a boat to the island of Caye Caulkner. It took about 45mins from the Belize City ferry terminal to Caye Caulkner. Once we got there, we had the locals all come up to us wanting to take us to the hotels and hostels that they represent. They get paid a certain amount of commission for every person that ends up staying at there hotel. We ended up just walking the main street on the island and found a nice hotel called tropical paradise right on the water which had two private double beds and a bathroom for $14 a night (Dan the American was still with us at this point). We loved Caye Caulkner, the relaxed laybacked lifestyle of the rustafarian, the sight of the carribean ocean that surrounded us, the contrast between the chinese people who lived on the island and the belizean and the food of course. Now with the chinese living on the island , the belizean food was either chinese or local carribean curries with heaps and heaps of fresh fish! Laura was keen for some fish after been having chicken for a while and so we all had 3 nights of fish in a row and chinese each day for lunch....after two days of amazing sunshine and relaxing by the ocean the weather packed in and we decided to move on to Mexico!

Scotts top three highlights of this leg of the trip were...

1. Sunset at the Tikal ruins overlooking the rainforest. As mentioned above, this had to be one of the best sunsets werve seen this whole trip. Our tour guide took us to the top of Temple IV which was built around 740AD and was 230 ft high. This is the tallest mayan temple known in the America's.

2. Flores island. This place was recommended to us to stay at while visiting Tikal. It was approx an hours drive away but was very clean with lots of restuarants on the water front and again great food at such a cheap price!

3. Swimming in the crystal clear blue water of the Carribean at Caye Caulkner. We spent most of our time at the split which was at one end of the island and had a bar that played reggae music.

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