My first night in Guatamala I was taken into the jungle by two strange men with one gun and I didn’t have a torch. It was everything that my mother would have warned me about if she knew I was in Guatamala.
At the gates of Tikal (the most spectacular Mayan ruin of Central America) [...]

My crossing into Guatamala went relatively easy other than the women in the photocopying shop being out at lunch forcing me to walk over the bridge in full motorcycle kit in the noon sun.
When Guatamala gained independence they claimed Belize as theirs. The British which had been plundering the land of hardwood trees (mahogany [...]

I am heading into Guatamala today and for the first time on my trip I am not meeting anyone in the next few days so pretty much on my own from here on in, so I am quite nervous. Also I found out that people are allowed to carry guns in Guatamala. Like [...]

Belize is still in conflict with Guatemala but it has been going on for a while. Caracol is a large ancient Mayan city in Belize which was once defeated by Tikal in Guatemala and once conquered Tikal.
A couple cool facts are that the ancient Mayans had a complex reservoir system that [...]

ATM Cave (the Cave of the Stone Sepulchre) is a vast cave system that has been left with all the Mayan artefacts intact and is strewn with sacrificial bowls and skeletons. But what is really fun is the three hours of wading up underground rivers, scrabbling up and over rock formations, the pitch black [...]

Riding around on my motorcycle we went to Barton’s Creek Cave and canoed a mile into a cave used by the Mayans for the ritual sacrifice of virgins (children). They were high born as their foreheads had been flattened at birth.
I don’t blame them for thinking the cave was a holy place as the [...]

Unfortunately due to meeting some Canadians the night of arriving in San Ignacio (20,000 people town in the west of Belize, 9 miles from the Guatemala border) and consuming 1 too many Belize beers we had a day lying around the room reading ‘The 8:55 to Baghdad’, a travel book following Agatha Christie’s journey to [...]

Hummingbird Highway was a lot brighter on the way back up north. I also clocked my 12,000 mile.

There was two things I was really looking forward to seeing Dangriga. A crocodile sanctuary that is also an eco-lodge with a zip line (flying fox) that turned out to have closed a few months ago. And Shark Cave – a underwater cave that sharks hangout in. We went to the only [...]

I didn’t see any hummingbirds riding along the highway (it might have helped if it wasn’t raining) but after a warning of a highway full of trucks with steep curves and no shoulders I had a lovely ride along an almost deserted highway through jungle and misty mountains. Passed a lot of citrus [...]

Today we are staying at the Monkey Bay Wildlife Sanctuary which was recommended by a few people. We did a half-day cave tubing learning about the Sapodilla tree which apparently chicklets (American chewing gum) is made from and that termites are full of protein and taste like peppermint but I didn’t put it to [...]

Belize Zoo was started as part of a film project and is now a self funded animal rehabilitation centre. The some of the cool native animals we saw were tapirs, spider monkeys, howler monkeys, deer, toucan, macaw, hawk, ocelot, anteater, crocodile and a jaguar. Cool bananas. Steve is figuring out what [...]

We stayed on Caye Caulker an extra day to go and do a Manatee tour. The ‘Sea Cows’ closest relative are elephants and they hang out in shallow coastal waters munching up to 50 kilos of sea grass a day. They have a snout and a weird round flat tail but I didn’t [...]

We ended up having wait another three days before we could go diving as a tropical storm came in so we were stuck in a cheap ($15/night) but leaking cabana. When we finally dived the Blue Hole it was a bit of a anticlimax as other than going down to 40 meters and seeing [...]

Until 1981 Belize was a British colony and called British Honduras until 1973. It would have gained independence from Britain a lot earlier but there was border disputes with Guatamala which are actually still ongoing. There are about 300,000 people and the country is about 280 kilometres north/south and 100 kilometres east/west. [...]