After 3 weeks of Costa Rica for Stefan and my little excursion to Perth we made our way South from Cancun to Belize. A 6 hour bus ride and a 3.5 hr ferry trip (including the 1.5hrs we spent at the Belizean immigration, the word 'fast' does not exist here) later we arrived at the small island paradise Caye Caulker. Everything goes really slow on Caye, there's no cars and no proper streets, it's all just sand with mud crabs crossing the street.
Besides relaxing on the beach, eating and drinking we of course also went diving. A 3 hour boat ride away lies the 'Blue Hole'; pretty much the same structure as the cenotes in Mexico. It's a 400m deep sinkhole with huge stalactites at about 40m depth (that's how deep we went down). Very impressive! There's not much marine life down there except lots and lots of Carribean Reef Sharks, with 3-4m in length pretty impressive and also a little bit scary to be honest. The sharks we usually see while diving are maybe half that size, so we definitely had some respect :) The lunch break in between dives was at a little "Robinson Crusoe" island, paradise indeed. Stefan's photo safari became a "near-miss" event. A coconut fell down a few seconds after he took a shot leaving a sun-struck local repeating the same words over and over again: "You so lucky, so lucky.." :-)
After 3 days on Caye Caulker we took the water taxi to Belize City on the mainland. We thought about spending a day there but it was raining so heavily so we decided to hop on a bus to San Ignacio. On the first day we visited yet another Maya ruin site Xunantunich (very nice again) and ended the day with a number of beers with fellow travel companions. It sometimes feels like you are travelling in a group as you meet the same people over and over again ("Thank you Lonely Planet").
The highlight though was our visit to the Actun Tunichil Muknal cave, which was used by the Mayans for ceremonial purposes. To get there we had to hike 45min through the jungle, crossing 3 rivers and then swim to the cave entrance through pretty cold water. We then spent another 2 hours venturing further into the cave, always being in water, sometimes shoulder-deep. Amongst beautiful stalactites and flowstones, you can seeI lots of ceramic pots, ancient tools and also skeletons of people being sacrificed in there. A very cool adventure!
Together with 2 Australians and 2 Norwegians, who we had met on the tour, we had then planned to drive on to Guatemala straight after the tour ended. Unfortunately we came back a lot later than expected so by the time we arrived at the Guatemalean border it was already dark. And the bus we had planned to take from the border to 100km away Flores was pretty much non-existent. So we were pretty much stranded, at 8pm, in the dark at the border... hmmm... I think we all were really happy it was the six of us, at least that gave us some 'strength' against potential thieves and muggers ;) After some time standing around debating what to do, a couple guys offered to organise a taxi for us which we very reluctantly accepted. Were they really organising a taxi or were they planning to rob us? But in the end it all turned out okay, the taxi driver was a really nice guy and safely brought us to Flores. Flores is actually a little island in a lake and offers a great atmosphere. The floodings don't affect the tourist areas ;-)
The town is very close to the mother of all Mayan sites, Tikal. It was supposedly the real Mayan capital (at some stage in history) as the Guatemalan claim but definitely the biggest Mayan city ever. As we've already seen so many temples we opted for a tour that promised to be a bit different, a sunrise tour, pick up 3am...! We arrived at the site when it was still dark and made our way to the tallest pyramid. On top of that pyramid we waited for the sunrise and also the surrounding jungle to wake up. And although the weather was far from perfect it was still magical.
We were really lucky as we visited on Columbus day, 10 October. We were told that the indigenous people see this day in a sceptical way due to the changes that were brought by the Europeans. Therefore a special event was held at the site with hundreds of Indigenous celebrating rituals, dancing in old Mayan festive clothes. By chance we ran into cultural event.
Our next and last stop in Guatemala was Rio Dulce and closeby Livingston which you can only reach via water taxi. The boat ride on the Rio Dulce is an attraction by itself in beautiful surrounds.
Livingston is a funny mix of Mayans, Latinos, Africans and people from the Caribbean which makes for some very interesting cuisine. Tapado, a seafood soup with coconut cream, is delicious; Guifiti, a local drink, is not, if you ever come across it, stay away. Beautiful beaches? Well, unfortunately something different here:
We also did some further travel planning and realised that we didn't have much time left before the start of our Inca tour in November. So rather than hurrying through Guatemala and trying to see as much in as little time as possible, we decided to put the rest of Guatemala on the list for our next travels. This list really is getting longer and longer each day...
The last item on our Central American bucket list was the island of Roatan off Honduras. Roatan has been recommended to us by a few fellow divers so of course we had to go there. Getting there from Livingston was not an easy task and became one of the most memorable days on our travels. We started the trip with the 6am ferry from Livingston to Puerto Barrio. Then we walked a few hundred meters searching for a 'collective' (a minibus) to take us to the Honduran border. We then walked across the border to the next bus stop to take us to Puerto Cortes. In Cortes we ran out of the little Honduran Lempiras we changed at the border and had to search for an ATM. Funny thing in Honduras, there's lots of banks but most banks don't have ATM's... so finding one took us a while. Once we had money, back to the bus station to find the next bus to take us to San Pedro Sula. We only found out later that San Pedro Sula was the most dangerous city in 2012, lots of gang wars, murders and rapes. So lucky for us we only spent about 1minute here, changing buses. This final bus then brought us to La Ceiba where we arrived at 5pm - 11hours from when we started in Livingston. As the ferry to Roatan had already left we had to spend the night in La Ceiba. So in the morning, a taxi to the ferry, ferry to Roatan and another taxi to Half Moon Bay - our final destination on Roatan. Mission accomplished.
But this mega-long trip was absolutely worth it. Roatan was absolutely beautiful and although more developed than Caye Caulker still not touristy. It was just perfect. The recommended dive center (Sun Divers) was right next to a cute little beach bar (Sundowners), so as you can imagine we spent our time either under water, on the beach with a Monkey Lala (yummm) or in a hammock on our balcony.
The diving itself was truly amazing and we're already checking airfares from Europe to Roatan. This was definitely not the last time we were here.
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