Tikal ruins and rest of Belize (it´s a long one...)

Well I keep saying that we are blogging too much but we’ve been a bit stuck due to weather problems recently and internet is cheap right now, so we’ll update on the recent (and very dramatic) goings on.

First of all, Rob didn’t mention Tikal (Mayan ruins) in his last update, which was our last stop in Guatemala. We got up at 3am in order to get there for sunrise. We arrived in the dark and climbed to the top of one of the ancient Mayan temples just as it started getting light. Unfortunately it was far too cloudy to see a proper sunrise but we were above the jungle and mist as it got light, and we could hear the birds and howler monkeys waking up as the cloud began to disappear. It was quite magical and eerie to experience the jungle waking up, and definitely worth the short nights´ sleep to do so. We spent most of our morning monkey-spotting and wandering around the ruins. Also saw several brightly-coloured toucans.

After that we went to Caye Caulker in Belize, which Rob wrote about. A little more on the diving: we both really enjoyed it but the learning experience was not without hiccups – namely Rob getting seasick from swallowing too much water, and me being a scaredy-cat doing the exercises… but apart from that it was fun and we got to do it in clear, warm water on a coral reef instead of in a swimming pool, which was fantastic.
Caye Caulked itself was fantastic. There were no cars on the island, just golf carts and bicycles!The ´roads´were made of sand and there were just two of them: Front St and Back St.

Having left Caye Caulker (sniff), we headed south down the coast to Hopkins. We thought we’d get a little way off the beaten track… you could tell we had done so when we arrived on the bus and nobody approached us to offer a place to stay. After seeing a room with about 30 bats hanging from the ceiling (the proprietor’s comment: “oh…we’ll just leave the door open for them to fly out”) we found a half-decent room but soon realised there was not a huge amount to do and so left the following day for Placencia, our ultimate Belizean destination.

We had a lovely few days on the coast at Placencia – the main ´street´ is called “The Sidewalk” and was built in order to make walking through the sand easier. It is only about 3 feet wide and obviously not really a street, but is in the Guiness Book of Records as the narrowest street in the world. Certainly would have been hard work without it as most of the hotels, bars etc. were on this walkway. The school playground is entirely sand, as are people’s gardens. Imagine a sand playground in a British school, paradise!

It was here that we first experienced the tropical storm that was developing (Gamma) when we went on a diving trip with 3 others we had met. The dive shop told us we wouldn’t go out too far as the weather didn’t look too good, so took us out 18km to Laughing Bird Caye (see this link for an aerial pic: http://www.laughingbird.org/). The ride out there was pretty rough in the small boat and we were drenched by the time we arrived at the island to drop off our lunch. Having done the first dive, we returned to the island for an extremely windy lunch, and watched on while 6 guys tried to save a boat that had been moored on the wrong side of the island from sinking due to broken steering. By the time we surfaced from the 2nd dive, the weather did not look pretty. As we began to return to the mainland, the weather got worse and worse – we were being battered by the waves and I was holding on to the flimsy tent-like roof so hard that it came off, so we were completely open to the rain and spray from the sea. With 4 of us huddled under a towel to keep in some of the warmth, the driver shivering and no land in sight because of terrible visibility, the giggling soon turned to worrying… not for long as the storm soon blew over and we eventually reached land again. Walked home still in our wetsuits and laid our things out to dry: EVERYTHING was wet, and I can say for certain that that was the wettest day of my life, with a little fear thrown in for good measure. Little did we know this would not be the last of our experiences with this storm…

Our boat to Honduras was supposed to leave on Friday morning but was cancelled due to the weather (they were on red alert down there apparently) so we were pretty pleased when we went back on Saturday to be told we would be going; the weather had improved, wind now coming from the right direction. However, during the course of the ride, the conditions went from mildly choppy, to large smooth waves, to downright huge choppy waves and torrential rain. It was worse than we had ever imagined. They handed out life jackets, people were not very well and it really was the scariest thing we have ever been through. At one point the waves were higher than the (pretty small) boat and it was crashing down so hard I thought it would split open. The one thing that was good was that neither of us felt seasick, despite being tossed around by the massive waves. I am finding it hard to convey how awful it was and how scared we were, but we were relieved to reach land!

We have certainly had enough of boat rides for now…