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Published: July 17th 2009
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Leaving San Pedro was extremely hard, none of us wanted to go at all as we´d had such a wicked time there. But as it was pretty expensive we decided it was for the best to move on so on Tuesday morning we headed for the boat with tears in our eyes. The scenery from the boat as you wizz down between the Cayes and the coast is amazing, dense forest vegetation on the mainland side, the trees hugging the shore line. The country seems so untouched, we were traveling for miles without seeing a house at all, giving an amazing impression of what it has been like for years and years. To the other side were the Cayes, beautiful tropical islands, some big some tiny, with pure white sands and palm trees and tiny piers. Some of the Cayes are so small that they are just a house, a jetty and a few metres of white sand surrounding them. They look like floating houses as you sail further away from them. Belize is truly the most beautiful country I have ever visited!
We had originally planned to spend the night in San Ignacio, the western Border town of Belize
before crossing over into Guatemala, but as we started to come in to the piers in Belize city, we changed our minds as what welcomed us was a bustling, colourful seafront, packed with people and with music blaring. Off the water taxi, we immediately found a sign directing us to the office that sold direct bus tickets to Flores in Guatemala and this sealed our decision as we had thought that we´d have to make a few bus changes to get there. So after checking into a cutie family run hotel, with the nicest granny ever (of course she was, this is Belize after all, everyone´s lovely!!) we heading back toward the harbour to find the lively waterfront. Unfortunately, Belize city had decieved us!! The waterfront is actually a gated ´tourist village´. It took us ages to find it and when we did we found out that to get in you had to leave you passport at the desk with security and have a full check. Out of curosity we complied and found ourselves in a mini Belize theme park full of American tourists just on an hour´s leave from the cruise ship we could see on the horizon. It
wasn´t nice and it was horrible to think it´s there and that your normal Belizean doesn´t seem to be allowed in. I had read earlier that these cruise ships are putting enormous strains on Belize´s natural resources and that a lot of Belizean´s aren´t happy with this. It reminded me of a conversation I´d had with one of the locals on the islands that Belizean´s are being led to believe that tourism is the answer to their problems, but how he didn´t think they needed to depend on it at all. I can emphatise.
The rest of Belize city was nice enough, a bit shabby in places but that was it´s charm. Again everyone was friendly and it´s nice for a stroll. The lady of the house told us that it can get a bit rough at night so we got a taxi there and back to the restaurant we were going to that night. The following morning we got to were the bus was leaving at 9am for the 9.30 am bus. But of course everything is extremely laid back in Belize so by 10.30 the bus still wasn´t there (like many´s an Irish bus). Finally at about
11 we got on the oldest bus in the world and headed for the border. Again the landsape was so impressive, sharp pointed peaked mountains, which really made me see how the Mayans decided to take this form for their temples (as explained to us by the lovely Alex on our tour round the Pyramids in Teotiochan outside Mexico city in what seems like years ago now); mist rising lazily from the rainforest after a heavy shower, just beautiful and the twin towns of San Ignacio and Santa Eleana seemed ripe for exploration (along with so many others I want to see in Belize, but they´ll have to keep for next time....).
Once across the border (me and Aoife for a minute thinking we´d totally lost the bus, but it was just parked a bit further away than expected) we had our first experience of Guatemala. Lots of rainforest, but a complete feeling that you´re back in a central american country, whereas Belize has a feeling of a Carribean island. We arrived in Flores about an hour and a half later. Flores is a litte island village sitting in Lake Peten Itza. A causeway links it with the maintown
of Santa Elena (same names popping up everywhere, we´re going to another San Pedro soon) and the general inhabitants of this twin town seem to live there. Flores is more of a tourist village in a way, it´s just full of handicraft shops, restaurants and hotels and hostels. Our hostel is great, it has a lake view. The lake is beautiful, with lots of little islands dotted in it. The village itself is built quite like Mont St Michel in Brittany (though not as dramatic) with a church on a high central ground and little cobbled streets slooping down to the shore away from it. I´ll definately be doing some swimming in the lake. There are brilliant restaurants here to as I was worried about being a veggie in Guatemala, but no probs so far.
Tomorrow we go to Tikal, the Mayan site I´ve being really looking forward to visiting.
(photos for this blog will have to come later unfortunately, computers are playing games with me again and I can´t seem to up load anywhere!)
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