Cowboy Country

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A few days in Cowboy country: Rancheros on horseback, bulls fording a fast flowing river,hummingbirds and fireflys - the scene around us at breakfast this morning; and a sample of life on a ranch by the river Mopan, the dividing line between Belize and Guatamala.
And Mayan ruins all around us, thousand year old temples with vertiginous steps leading up and up into the sky from the dense tropical foliage - mysterious and mute, stones from long abandoned cities now populated by a different order of jungle dwellers - howler monkeys ( as Jake says, which sound uncannily like the dinosaurs in Jurassic park), wild turkeys, huge spiders.. certainly more exotic than the roaches and red ants who colonised our cabana last night on the ranch!
Yesterday we crossed the border into Guatamala (once we had completed all the formalities - exit taxes, entry taxes, car spray taxes, car duty, passport stamping (four in all, just in my passport) and import duties - all payable in Guatamalan currency, which of course we didn't possess, since we were still on the Belize side of the barrier!
But it was worth it when some hours of bone crunching driving on unmetalled roads later we arrived at Tikal, the largest of all Mayan sites in Central America. Ruined Cathedrals in a vast green wilderness, and a major tropical storm the offset the whole extraordinary spectacle. Fascinating drive too - dusty streets with mangy dogs, children on ponies, armed guards and brilliantly coloured shopfronts (one with a green parrot who kept screeming out his name 'Pepito Pepito' at us and laughing with a wild and dirty cackle. Maybe he knew something we didn't..

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