Caye Caulker at Christmas, Sharks and back into the Jungle

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We hope everyone at home had an amazing Christmas. It was great to speak to those of you who we could get hold off and apologies to anyone we couldn´t.

The technology on Caye Caulker was not so great so we tried our best.

Christmas was lovely. We went to the beach, had a piggy breakfast and lunch and then went to a barbecue Christmas dinner party at night (we still had turkey and cranberry sauce!)

On boxing day we did a full day snorkelling trip. We got to snorkel along the second largest coral reef in the world. We swam with sharks (I touched one) Stingrays (we all touched one) and sea turtles (super cute)

Rum Punch was included and Mark and I made sure we got good value for money and both ended up plastered about 4 in the afternoon.

From Caye Caulker we took the water taxi to Belize City. In Belize City the water taxi deposits you in the bus station and the bus collects you from there. There is no need to leave the safety of the terminal. UNLESS the card machine is broken and then you have to go into the ghetto to use the ATM (which by the way is inside the Radisson hotel and protected by armed guards)

The journey to the ATM and the bus out of there was all we saw of Belize city and probably all I ever want to see. In the 5 minutes it took me to get the the ATM ( I left Mark and Staiz min the safety of the bus terminal and got the bus ticket seller to escort me) I had been offered every type of drug, every type of gun and a job as a prostitute. Mark is well pleased with his new AK47!!!

From Belize city we took a bus across the border to Guatemala. We are getting a bit better at the whole dodgy border crossing thing and only got stung for about half as much this time. A small illegal entry fee and some comission to a money changer. Much better than our last effort.

Guatemala is beautiful. We are in Flores. We left at 4.30am this morning to go to see sunrise at Tikal (the biggest Mayan city) It was amazing but deep in the heart of the jungle and I was terrified about big hairy spiders but so far so good.

Tomorrow we have an 8 hour chicken bus ride to Lanquin where we are going into an underground cave system.

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Photos

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Jamar - he was in love with Staiz.

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The view from our terrace in Flores over the lake at sunset

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Tikal, at the top of the temple above the rainforest canopy

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Staiz and Mark at the top of the last temple. I had given up by then and stayed on the ground to take pictures and of course hold the bags