Laura´s budget bender in Belize

My route through Guatemala vaguely shadowed Rebecca´s, so I’ll skim over it – I travelled through relatively fast, just hitting the highlights in order to catch up with Rebecca.

On the shuttle bus to Antigua I bumped into not one, but FIVE people I knew from Utila (a pattern that has continued all the way to Mexico, to date…), and we travelled on together and checked into the same hostel. Antigua was pleasant, it felt good to browse large markets again (I bought a belt with a pirate buckle, just a week or so too late, and the second overflow bag of the trip), and I too booked a trip to Pacaya volcano. This was possibly one of the most TERRIFYING trips of my LIFE. I’d bought marshmallows to roast on the lava up the top, and was determined to do this, despite my phobia of all things FIRE. Reaching the lava rivers was tricky enough (scrambling over jagged stones of dried lava that slid from beneath your feet), but at the top you had the added concern of not standing on one foot for too long, lest the soles of your shoes melt, so you had to hop from one foot to the other on this unstable slope, all the while keeping an eye on the fiery balls of lava that came rolling down the hill every now and then. Call me a wuss, but I was too scared to actually stick my marshmallow into the lava stream (as it flowed downhill towards us at an erratic rate), but I definitely got close enough for comfort. A kindly American farmer in our group gallantly toasted mine for me, and I posed for the photo before running away. By this time it was dark (and the fire looked even more spectacular than by day), so we climbed back down, about one torch between five, to the sound of the volcano’s rumblings, turning back to watch it spurt lava up into the night sky, and listening to a Guatemalan guy in our group´s tales of local folklore and mysteries, such as the road nearby where cars roll uphill when in neutral. Apart from this my time in Antigua was spent wandering the pretty cobbled streets, and harassing every new face in our hostel to find someone that was Honduras bound… I still had about $400US worth of lempiras that I hadn’t changed at the border and that not one single bank in Guatemala would change… it would be nearly 3 weeks before I finally got rid of it all… lesson learnt, change ALL money at borders!

From here I went to San Marcos de la Laguna, on Lake Atitlan. Despite its reputation as a new age hippie meditation retreat (yes, there were meditating hippies, but they were inoffensive and charming to chat to), it had a very stayable feel to it, and I had a very relaxing time there, much needed after Utilaparties. The lakeside part of town was little more than a maze of narrow paths winding through trees sheltering vegetarian cafes and organic food shops. I stayed in a little wooden place called La Paz, complete with a sauna, and spent a few days jumping off rock platforms into the lake and swimming, eating lots of healthy foods, and visiting a handful of the other lakeside towns, such as Santiago, where the Catholic church’s altar is adorned with carvings of Mayan deities, and where three 4 year olds took us to the ever changing secret location of Maximon (for a small fee), a statue of a devil like figure, much like El Tío in Bolivia, who sits next to a Jesus statue in someone’s front room, and has offerings of alcohol, cigarettes and money around it, from people praying for favours or better times. I made one chicken bus trip (ok it was 7 buses in total) to the famous Chichicastenango market (yes Rocío, all the bus conductors call out Chichi, para Chichi, sube sube, por aquí), where I saw the same handicrafts as everywhere else in Guatemala, just in vast quantities. Still it was colourful, and obviously I didn’t leave empty handed.

From Lake Atitlan I travelled to Lanquin, where I had a fleeting glimpse of Rebecca as I checked into El Retiro. After an EPIC buffet breakfast I went on a tour to the Grutas de María caves nearby, which was very fun… swimming through stalactites and stalacmites and climbing up waterfalls whilst obsessively trying to protect my candle from getting splashed out… jumped off a 12m bridge into a turquoise river… went tubing… and visited the beautiful natural swimming pools at Semuc Champey. Tikal was my next destination (reached on a very temperamental bus which happened to be full of Londoners!), and it’s impressive Mayan ruins which I got up at TEN TO THREE AM to visit on a sunrise tour. This was so worth the effort though – climbing up a huge temple in the darkness and waiting for the sun to rise (less of a burning orb and more of a slow lightening and clearing of mist), revealing other temple tops which just peeked above the jungle canopy. You could hear howler monkeys, watch parrots fly low and raccoons come and go… very atmospheric.

After another brief RDV with Rebecca I excitedly set off on a last minute budget bender in Belize… I had resolved to blow the sterling I’d earned from the travel writing on a week of diving off the Belizean Cayes. I bussed south along the Hummingbird Highway to the coastal Garífuna town of Dangriga (after one slightly leap-of-faith bus change, the driver leaving me in the middle of NOWHERE - ´the Dangriga bus comes by here´), and hung around for a few hours waiting for a boat over to Tobacco Caye. The boatmen kept me company however and we got on to talking about the creatures of the deep I was soon to see… my favourite tale of theirs was that of the forty foot, no less, manta ray, that the captain once saw jumo over a fishing boat. With his very own eyes, he swore to me. Eventually two more passengers showed up and we set off, the captain now on his 5^th beer and 4^th joint of the afternoon. Tobacco Caye is a tiny blip of an island, just a few hectares in total, covered in sand and palm trees, and with a few places to stay dotted around. There were far fewer backpackers, as the cheapest place on the island is $25US a night (all meals included), although we managed to find somewhere for just $15 a night, since the kitchen was out of order. This meant we had to eat all our meals in the only shop on the island, and the only thing they served was chicken and chips. It was tasty, but after the third day I craved vegetables…! The first night was spent drinking Barrel (Belizean rum) on the beach with the guesthouse owner and his improbably young girlfriend, playing with her small children, listening to his tales of working for the ahem, Italians, back in the day, and working out a plan with the island´s resident divemaster, Eric. Unfortunately I was the only diver on the island at that moment, so the 3 sites I wanted to go to were off limits… they needed a minimum of four divers to make such far away boat rides viable. I settled for a couple of shore dives the next day and crossed my fingers and hoped that more divers would turn up. Luckily the following afternoon two Swedes arrived, Ullrika and Katarina, who wanted to do exactly the same dives as me. We settled on a price with Eric (this took HOURS) and finally agreed on a 3 tank trip to the pristine Glover’s Atoll the next day. A heavy storm that morning eventually cleared and we set off late, but excited, to the Caribbean’s ‘most perfect atoll’ – it’s almost an unbroken ring of coral, and teeming with marine life due to its relative remoteness and lack of divers. There are 4 cayes here, home only to luxury upmarket resorts, and it was here we spent our surface intervals, mooring at a bar on stilts over the water and allowing vacationing Californians to buy us Belikins (Belize´s national beer). Diving with Eric was jokes, and very refreshing. As much as Utila’s policy was eco friendly don’t-harrass-the-fish, Eric´s was interactive: we squeezed the sea cucumbers, wore the sponges as afros, stroked the turtles´ shells, played with the shrimps, held the starfish, poked the lobsters and made them fight one another. As much as I appreciate and respect the rules of and necessity for eco friendly diving, it was good to be shown which things you can touch and play with, without annihilating the entire reef system or incurring poisonous sting wounds. The following day we made 2 more dives, the first an unforgettable one at a site called Shark´s Cave. Here you descend to the sandy bottom at about 60ft, where there is an eye shaped opening, about 10 by 20ft at its widest. You drop down this hole, which is like a bottle neck for another 10ft, and then it opens out into a huge underground cavern, vaguely dome shaped and with a domed sandy bottom where (nurse) sharks are often found resting. Since this would have been my first encounter with sharks in the Caribbean, I was ever so slightly nervous (descending into a deep cave with jaws… only a skylight exit to the top…), but as it happened, we found no sharks there, just a huge ray, some starfish, huge crabs and a grouper or two. The top of the sandy domed floor is at 120ft; we spent a few minutes here before dropping to the bottom edge of the cave (140ft) and then making a slow ascent, spiraling round the cave´s walls, looking at stalactites. Disappointingly I didn´t think I felt any of the effects of nitrogen narcosis (slightly drunk feeling divers experience at depth), but I’ve been told it’s like having 10 beers when you´re 13 and saying you don’t feel a thing, compared with having one or two now and recognising that it does have an effect – with more experience you are more in tune to your body. The second dive here was at ´the Stadium,´ a shallow ring of coral around a sandy cottom, which we circled inside for about 45mins, and found two huge nurse sharks snoozing under an overhand. We watched them for about five minutes until Eric got a little too close and they came out! Two pretty awesome dives! That afternoon me and the girls set off for Belize City on a rasta painted school bus. A sunset trip back up the Hummingbird Highway saw us arrive in town after dark, and we knocked on many a door and turned down many a cockroach infested bed before finally finding a place for about $15US each… in Bolivia this would buy you five star luxury!!!

We took the first water taxi over to Caye Caulker the next morning, an island in the north famous for its laid back rasta atmosphere and more world class diving! I got in two dives that afternoon, in the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, and they were amazing!! Countless big (2m long) nurse sharks swarmed around the boat whenever we stopped (some tours feed them so they associate the sound of the engine with food) – these are harmless and we snorkeled with them during the surface interval. We saw hawksbill turtles, sharks and more sharks, morays, lobsters, vast (tasty) groupers, and huge shoals of fish… but the biggest highlight was on the second dive… the divemaster suddenly started rapping on his tank and shot off into the blue. We followed and then hovered there for 5 mins wondering what the fuss was all about… and then suddenly, and quite literally out of the blue, six BOTTLE NOSE DOLPHINS came zooming past!!!! They were moving so fast we stood no chance of keeping up with them, but the average visibility meant we were watching them for about 10 seconds… then I realised I’d been breaking the cardinal rule of diving (never hold your breath!! – to avoid lung overexpansion injuries) and started exhaling like mad! The next day me and the Swedes went on a day trip to dive the Blue Hole. If you´ve ever seen a tourism poster for Belize you will recognise this… it’s a huge underwater sinkhole, formed when a volcano collapsed (I thiiink!), which plummets to down to thousands of feet. We were picked up in the morning (5am… ugh) from Caye Caulker on an ENORMOUS boat carrying more divers from Ambergris Caye (Belize´s answer to the Costa del Sol, and the subject of Madonna´s La Isla Bonita). We had our briefing on the 2h journey to the hole… these DMs were horrible! More suited to the military than to tourism; at the end they asked if we had any questions – Katarina said ‘Are we going to have fun today?´ prompting laughs from the divers and stern looks from the divemasters. My buddy was a super nervous young British claustrophobe who told me after he felt reassured to be buddied with a rescue diver… until seconds before we descended I announce to the girls ‘Let´s get naaarked!´ We made a quick descent to 40m, swam through some of the huge stalactite formations, and then ascended, followed closely (10m away!) all the while by a pack of 9 Caribbean reef sharks… I mostly kept my eyes on them shall we saw! The dive finished up at 30ft on the surrounding reef, with some more VAST grouper and other reef fish. I’d heard the Blue Hole was overhyped and that the real highlights were the following two dives on the nearby Lighthouse Reef… had we not seen the pack of sharks I would definitely have agreed – down at 40m there was much less coral and far fewer fish. On the other dives we saw sharks, turtles, barracuda, lobster… and many many fish (attracted by the RICE the DM was feeding them…), as well as playing in some nice swim throughs. On the ride back to CC we sunbathed and drank our fill of included post dive rum punch…. These were to be my last dives for a while!

Leaving Belize involved an uneventful stopover in Ambergris Caye, where I toyed with buying a Tshirt saying ´Feed the crocodiles, Ride the sharks, Climb the coconut trees and raft the waterfalls: Support Belize paramedics,´ and ate lunch surrounded by aging bronzed Italian tourists (many more of these were to follow…), before a bus ride into Mexico, land of QUÉ PASÓ and piñatas, where I would soon see Rebecca´s smiling face on her NINETEENTH BIIRTHDAAAY!!!!!!! (duuuuuude! spring breeeeaaakk! roooock ooooonnnnn!)