Miss Maps Goes Solo

Having made it over the border from Belize and changed up our Belizean dollars into Guatemalan quetzales we headed for Flores. An amazing 1.5 hour journey in a collectivo (16 people shoe-horned into a minibus) through very rural and poor areas of Guatemala. People would hop off the bus every now and again to be greated by 5 or 6 little kids dressed in rags. These people live in huts with a few turkeys and perhaps a horse. This is the first real poverty I´ve seen on this trip and it feels horribly voyeristic to be driving past staring at it. Flores is a beautiful island in the middle of a lake. It´s all cobbled streets and pretty buildings with loads of restaurants which back on to the water. The main reason for stopping here is to visit Tikal, something which we plan to do tomorrow when my elephant ankle will hopefully be small enough to be squeezed into my trainers. We´ve been travelling pretty hard for the past few days so it´s good to chill and this is a fantastic place to do it. The feel of Guatemala is quite similar to Mexico and totally different to Belize. I´m hating the language barrier again and really need to get some lessons. Last night we ended up drinking a lot and chatted to a local guy who was playing guitar in the restaurant we went to. He was a real character, he had the bushiest moustache I´ve ever seen and I couldn´t help but stare at it. The rivalry between Belize and Guatemala is worse than the English and the French. His take on the creole spoken by Belizeans is that they´re incompetent in two languages - English and Spanish! On the way back we bought some beers and Petal used her fluent Spanish to enquire as to whether the security guards gun was loaded! Our hotel has a roof terrace overlooking the town and the surrounding lake, absolutely beautiful. This afternoon we plan to take a 1 hour boat trip around the lake and probably take it easy this evening. I need to keep my foot aloft otherwise it blows up again, last night I had to get a piggy back from the bar to the hotel!

Tomorrow will be a big day in Tikal, we may take the guided tour which heads off at 3.30am to get there in time for sunrise, there should be some fantastic photos out of this.

As for the hurricane, we´re getting tropical rain down here and quite a bit of cloud but we´re well out of the danger zone now so there´s no need to worry about that.

Probably the next time I write will be from Antigua or Chichicastenango, further South.

Take care all

After a few missed busses we eventually left Chetumal and headed for Belize City. I had bad memories of Belize and was a bit scared of it, I needn´t have worried. 20 mins after getting on the bus we all piled off to go through the border. The border guy was mad, chatting up all the girls that went through. They´re very laid back about border crossings, they didn´t check my bags, didn´t ask whether I had anything in it which I shouldn´t have and didn´t worry about how long I might stay. I felt totally different as soon as we hit Belize. You know when something amazing is happening and when you breath in it feels like it lifts your heart up? That was me coming in to Belize. The houses are beautiful, brightly coloured and high up on stilts. The bus guy put some Belizean punta rock on the stereo as we cruised past green fields, palm trees and people chilling out on their verandas. It feels totally different to Mexico, much more caribean. We arrived in Belize city at about 6pm, it was dark by then but even being in this most feared of cities after dark didn´t feel in the slightest bit threatening. I couldn´t stop myself from starting to dance when buying a snickers in the bus station, the music is amazing. We got a bus straight out of Belize City to San Ignacio in the west, right by the Guatemalan border. This bit was actually a drag, because of the storms everyone had headed in land and we almost didn´t find a bed for the night. Eventually we got a lift up to a hotel just out of town (someone´s mates, nephews, dogs, friends place) and couldn´t believe our luck. Compared to the night we´d just spent in Chetumal (dorm room complete with roach and rat) this was absolute luxury. Fluffy white towels, free soap and an amazing view over the town. The owner was a bit surprised when we insisted on all piling into one room with 2 double beds, we´re such tight backpackers. The town of San Ignacio is beautiful, very small, but then all towns in Belize are, and surrounded by the most amazing wildlife, ruins, caves, rivers and waterfalls. Petal and I decided on a tour to see the local ruins which are the highest in Belize, followed by a medicine trail and green Iguanas. The son of the guy who´s the uncle of the owner of our hotel said he´d take us, that seems to be the way it works here. The boys went for an all adventure trip through caves and rivers. The caves had only recently been discovered and still contained mayan pottery and human remains, it sounded amazing. There are some great photos from the ruins, you can see both Belize and Guatemala from the top. The medicine trail was great, we ate leaves from plants that do everything from natural viagra to the contraceptive pill. In the evening I was all up for dancing to some punta rock and had found out the best place to go. Unfortunately my 650th bite turned into a nasty one and my ankle was so swolen that I had to hop everywhere. Eventually I admitted defeat and we all piled into a taxi to the local hospital which, I was told, doesn´t have a phone, hmmm. I was absolutely terrified and had to work very hard not to cry, my chin wobbled a lot. The doctor didn´t seem too interested in listening to me or giving me his opinion, he squeezed it a bit gave me some ibuprofen and told me to put ice on it. That was a couple of days ago and it´s still swollen but gradually getting better.

The next day we were all stuck as to what to do, I could´ve stayed in Belize for a month and plan to go back in from the South but it is extremely expensive and too much for some of the guys´ budgets. So we got a bus over the border to Guatemala and headed for Flores…

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