Our journey continues in
Central America by taking a bus over the border from Flores in Guatemala to
Belize City. Interesting to drive over a border like that as you could
immediately see the changes along the roadside. In the space of a couple of
kilometres you could see that Belize appeared to be a much more affluent
society. The border crossing itself
is always interesting, we’ve done a few, this one was relatively uneventful
although we were amused that we were charged 20 Guatemalan quetzals ($3) as a
departure fee. It was only when we got to the other side and people started
talking that there were a number of ways to avoid this charge:
1- Tell them
you don’t have any money and ask can you pay by credit card!
2- Ask them for
a receipt!
In either of these
scenarios they either just wave you through or else they get you to fill out
some sort of form. So it slowly dawned on us that we’d just paid our first ever
bribe! Wahoo. Clearly being border security is one of the most lucrative jobs
in Guatemala!
Our bus arrived to
Belize City and from there we took a boat directly to an island called Caye
Caulker for four nights. Caye Caulker and Ambergris Caye are both islands where
majority of tourists head towards- Caye Caulker is much smaller and less
developed so that was our choice. It’s a lovely sandy island where the only
motorized vehicles are golf carts! The other transport options are by bike or using
your own two feet- the B&B we stayed at had free bikes so that was how we
rolled for the few days.
It could be a product of
lack of research but for whatever reason neither of us had looked up the
language of Belize- we got a pleasant surprise when we found out that it was
predominantly English, gave us a chance to put away the remedial Spanish for a
few days! Belize is more like a Caribbean country then Central American
(although we did only see a limited portion of it) and certainly Caye Caulker
lives up to that stereotype. The locals love to shout “Go Slow” at people
because on an island like that nothing moves fast! Everything is just really
chilled out, we realized exactly how chilled out when we were cycling one day
and came across this long straight road across the island- delighted with
ourselves to be off the roads made of either sand or mud we continued on. The
delight was relatively short lived as after a few hundred metres we realized
that this lovely long straight road was the runway to their airport! Sure why
would you need signs or a fence?! Thankfully we didn’t affect any departures or
arrivals on the day, my guess is that there aren’t many but still, put up a
sign lads!
So on some our travels,
we may look for sympathy (and likely don’t receive it!) due to long trips on
buses, unsavory bathroom conditions and just general roughing it- here, not so
much! I’m not going to lie, it was bliss. Relaxing, swimming, snorkeling,
drinking- rinse and repeat. The big rush of the day was for where to watch
sunset! This was definitely not a high stress location. In our defense, we were
just doing what the locals do, take it slow! For example there’s a lovely
restaurant on the island run by an Italian couple, one of the most popular
places on the island. We were amused when we saw that they don’t open on
Fridays or Satudays- when we enquired why not as obviously that’s generally
peak time for restaurants, the answer we received was that they liked to party
too much and those are the party nights! Not a mantra to run a typical
restaurant by but certainly a mantra to live happily on Caye Caulker by!
One of the highlights of
the few days was a snorkeling day trip we did with the main stop of the day
being to “Shark and Ray Alley”. A self explanatory name as the location is
known for having sharks and rays going through it- however we did not grasp
exactly how much activity would be there! When we got into the water we were
literally surrounded by fish, with sharks (toothless type thankfully) and rays
swimming around us also. Amazing. You just didn’t know where to look there was
so much activity in the water. Definitely some of the best snorkeling we’ve
ever done.
We had a few more stops
on the day but from a wildlife standpoint, nothing compared to that stop.
However, we did get to see turtles on another stop as well as lots of coral and
had the chance to swim through an underwater tunnel- maybe 3 metres below the
surface filled with fish. My ears felt like they were going to explode so I got
nowhere near it but my wife showed her skills by getting down to it and
swimming through driving all the fish out to meet us. Fantastic. So proud!
So that was our few days
in a piece of Paradise, now where will we watch sunset tonight?
Our route:
Bus from Flores
(Guatemala) to Belize City, boat to Caye Caulker, boat and bus to Playa del
Carmen (Mexico)
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