Belize

It’s still November, the 26th, and we are up very early to catch the 7am ferry from Cozumel back to Playa del Carmen on the Yucatan mainland. As the first ferry is operated by Ultramarine we have to get new tickets, remembering the dodgy ticket seller we had coming here!

The ferry ride is simple, a little cold first thing in the morning, but uneventful. We walk from the ferry pier to the bus terminal, buying some bananas for breakfast as we wander through the back streets of a quiet Playa del Carmen. We had tried for a taxi but again they wanted a rip-off fare for what is just a 5 minute drive. Impression of Playa del Carmen is its loud, brash, full of rip off merchants, catering for the USA market and best avoided!

We take an ADO bus to Chetumal - which we have passed through previously. This time in Chetumal we get a taxi (good prices!) to the marine terminal. Ticket purchased, about an hours wait then we clear Mexican emigration and get on the water taxi to San Pedro in Belize! The water taxi is a high speed enclosed boat with 16ish people on board and therefore plenty of room to sit and watch the coast slip by.

The journey takes about 2 hours before we arrive in San Pedro and clear Belizean immigration. We have an hour in San Pedro, enough to explore the small town, see the beach, admire the gold golf buggy taxis/local transport, look at the bars and a couple of shops and get some of the Caribbean vibe, then it’s back to the water taxi. It’s another 45 minutes high speed in the failing light before we arrive at our destination, Caye Caulker.

We walk the sand streets from the ferry pier along the ‘main street’ to our hotel. The town is an eclectic mix of board faced houses in typical seaside pastel colours and really has that ‘Caribbean’ feel. However, when we get to the hotel after a 10 minute walk, the hotel says the booking is ‘pending’ so we don’t actually have a room. But every cloud has a silver lining and just down the street we find a small place for just $60 per night and it has air conditioning! The very friendly landlady helps us settle in and then we wander the Main Street and end up at “Roys” to eat watermelon ribs with Beli Kim beer - lovely! Talking with our table neighbours Amy and Todd we try the local rum punch, which is cheap compared to the rest of Belize so far. Emma also contacts a snorkelling tour organiser called Black Hawk and fixes us up with a tour tomorrow.

The following morning we go down the Main Street - which is just compacted sand, to “Ice and Beans” for a breakfast of waffles and coffee sitting under the palm trees. It’s the place to go to judging by the queue and the food is delightful and quickly prepared. Must be the influence of US tourists! After brekkie it’s just a couple of minutes stroll to the snorkelling outfit where they fit us with masks and flippers and then off to the boat for the start of an amazing day.

First stop is tarpon feeding, just through “The Split” which is a watery short cut through the island. A Tarpon is an enormous muscular silvery fish, about 2 metres long, and very quick. We all hold sardines below the palm of our hands and the fish leap out of the water to grab the bait. Brilliant fun, captured on slo-mo video, with the memory of the fish bashing into your palm but not biting being really weird. If you miss-time it you could end up with your hand in the fishes mouth - Amy from last night has a great slo-mo video of a Tarpon with her hand completely in its mouth! Luckily Alex still has both hands.

Our next stop is out into the lagoon close to the reef to get used to open water snorkelling over the ‘Coral Garden’. Alex does really well and even I get used to snorkelling. Our reward is amazing fishes, a nurse shark and then Guy gets buzzed by a Manatee just gliding along. We move further along the reef (the reef off of Belize is supposed to be the 2nd largest in the world) to the marine reserve area and start on a long guided tour, where the guide is in the water with you. Emma is a fish and a natural in the water and Alex is showing all the signs of following in his mum’s flippers! Although the sea is quite rough we all complete the swim seeing so many different fish and rays. After the swim it’s a bite of picnic lunch on the boat to restore energy ready for the next ‘thing’.

Which is, feed lunch to the sharks!

Emma and Alex are back in the water, not me as I’m feeling queasy, whilst the crew are putting pieces of sardine in the water. A whole shoal of nurse sharks are there, around 20 ish, just sucking up the food whilst Alex and Emma and the others are swimming amongst and around them - an epic adventure! On the boat all I can hear is the sucking and slurping as the sharks feed, nurse sharks are relatively gentle and suck their food in rather than biting, …. you hope!

Our final stop is over the wreck of a boat, supposedly driven by our captain, but with quite a swell going on not too much time is spent in the water, but the fish are large and beautiful. Once back ashore and feeling euphoric with the days snorkelling we head to a hotel called “Iguana Reef” for a cold beer and more fishy adventures. This place feeds rays by hand. The rays know what time is feeding time (4pm) and duly congregate in the shallows for their reward. Sitting on the side of the dock with your feet in 5 cm of water and large rays cruising over your toes is a great experience! Add in a cool beer in one hand and the other hand having a ray sucking a sardine from your fingers is sublime.

The hotel also feeds some nurse sharks off their jetty - bit sobering when you realise they were hiding in the dark under the jetty just waiting for their food…!

And as Alex really loved feeding the tarpons we go just a couple of hundred metres along the coast to the Tarpon feeding area and finish off keeping the marine life of Caye Caulker happy, entertained and fed!

We walk the streets (sandy strips) of Caye Caulker to a well recommended restaurant. So well recommended that there is a big queue for the 10 tables. Looking for an alternative we find a pizza joint where some of the other people on our boat are eating. We go decadent and order lobster pizza but massive disappointment as we struggle to find lobster on it. Even when it’s remade the lobster is somewhat thin on the ground but Alex is sooo hungry we go with it. However the rum punch and a free pizza make up for it. And the owner is an ex-RAF admin who had been posted to Belize and came back to teach rugby and run a business.

It’s the 28th November and we are still backpacking. We are up early and walk to the Split but nothing is open so it’s back to Ice and Beans for breakfast yoghurt and fruit bowls. We quickly head to Iguana Reef to see the sea horses and then a final go at Tarpon feeding for Alex and I get two tarpons trying for a single sardine! We’ve loved caye caulker and could happily spend a couple of weeks exploring the cayes and snorkelling.

Next it’s a hour and half water taxi ride to Belize City, which is very low rise and colourful as we arrive from the sea. We bump into Amy and Todd again and then it’s a 115km shuttle bus ride from the city to San Ignacio in the West of Belize. As we drive there is a reminder of Belize’s connection to the UK as we pass several British Army vehicles - the army do their jungle training here. We are staying at Max’s Place in San Ignacio, a small hostel not far from the town centre. We have to cross a somewhat old and rickety suspension bridge which has seen better days and then it’s a short walk in the hot humidity up the hill to visit the Cahalpech ruins which are maintained like a beautiful tropical garden with gorgeous plants and cool (relatively speaking) green tunnels.

It’s interesting to see that the ruins are again situated on a hill dominating the local area - keeping an eye on your neighbours must have been all consuming in the olden days - just in case some pesky other tribe wanted to steal your food and the missus!

Heading back into the town centre, downhill thankfully, we hook up with a taxi driver for tomorrow and then it’s to ‘The Burnz’ for food, cold Belkin beer and rum punch. The place has a lovely ‘vibe’ with locals having cocktails and we end up talking with some young Brits who are also backpacking and share our travel so far stories. Negotiating that suspension bridge again we head back to our room and some much needed sleep.

The following day we are getting breakfast next door, egg burritos and ‘Horchata’ which is a cold milky cinnamon drink (actually quite nice!) and mention to Max that my phone is dead. He has a phone repair shop next door and has a look at it, dries it out even more and gets a glimmer of life but suspects the battery might be beyond redemption! When travelling your phone is your lifeline, especially for banking!

Our taxi arrives and we put all our rucksacks and bags in, remember we are travelling ’light’ with 3 rucksacks and two large hand carried bags, and head to the Maya site of Xuanantunich (Maiden of the Rock). To get there we have to cross the Mopan river, using a hand cranked ferry following a guide cable from bank to bank. The engineering is interesting as it only needs one person to turn the handle, they even let Alex have a little go!

The site is extensive with the tallest pyramid, El Castillo, rising 130 feet and adorned with a range of friezes to the Mayan gods including Chacc and a moon goddess. Emma climbs the tall pyramid with us boys watching on - we get sweaty just watching her in the heat, heaven knows how Emma stays cool!

Having explored the site for a couple of hours we head back down to the river and do the return crossing on the hand cranked ferry. There are a few vendors beside the river and a careful search and superb bargaining from Emma procures us a lovely hand carved Mayan calendar in stone and a mini hanging with a calendar. Then it’s a short taxi ride to the Guatemala border, an opportunity to exchange our Mexican pesos (held in reserve in case we had to pay tourist exit fees, which we didn’t) and get some Quetzals ready for the next country. Goodbye Belize and hello Guatemala!

Guy