Debliz Xpuhil Xpujil Town

After a rather arduous exit from Mexico and a long, dusty bus ride through remote Belize, we arrived in Sarteneja yesterday. Backpacker's Paradise is the hippie hostel it promised to be, very awesome. We help ourselves to fruit on the trees and beer in the fridge, we wake to the sound of farm animals and breeze through the palms--does it get any...

after getting directions from four different people to the post office...and failing to find it...we made our way to the autobus. Choosing the cheapest option afforded us a six hour trip to Chetumal, which caused us to miss the bus to Belize. So, we´re staying at another random hostel...Kim is yet again the keeper of keys...the dog (Kevin!) ran ...

Tikal is an amazing park. The park is extremely big and only about 15% has been excavated. This is worth spending a day at and be sure to get a good map. It would be easy to get lost and they may never find you again. You are still aloud to climb on most the buildings which can give you some incredible views from the top. This is also where they...

We dined in the Restaurant at Los Cocos for breakfast this morning, ready to pack up and leave after coffee and fruit. Well, what a surprise we discovered over breakfast, as we overheard some Belizians at the next table. Mr Barry Bowen died on Friday crashing his Cessna plane on the South of Ambergris Caye! Nick and I cannot get over the coincid...

We're still heading east, spending some time in the (dry) jungle of the Rio Bec. We were beginning to think that our stuff would never dry properly but we have finally caught up with the 'dry season’. Upon getting here we immediately set about hanging most of our clothes; some in the trees, some on our deck railing, some around the room. W...

On the way to Pelenque we visited Xmel, its even bigger than Chichen Itza and has fantastic carvings. Pelenque is set in the Chipas jungle, we saw toucans and heard howler monkeys. The site has parts under gound that you can walk through and you can climb some of the pyramid temples. Its similar, but different enough to be well worth the visit. ...

We´re now on the Yucatan peninsula, a flat, jungle covered area. Xpujil is a one street town from which it is easiest to visit the remote ruins at Calakmul (although they are still 150 km from the town). We stayed in a "rustic" cabaña - bed, mosquito net, door, but cheap. Got up at 5am to go to the ruins with a taxi, arrived there at 8 (in the r...

We headed off pretty early to go off to what we had heard was one of the best mayan sites in Mexico. It is literally lying right in the middle of the jungle (Biosfera Calakmul), and so was quite a trek to get to. Calakmul is believed to have been one of the superpower sites - probably being even bigger in size and power then the neighbouring Tik...

We weren't quite sure how far we would get today....we knew that we wanted to head to Xpujil since it was the only real base for Calakmul etc. We had been told the previous night about a place called Laguna azul (?) by an intensely blinged up fisherman. It was apparently near Bacalar and so basically on the way. Unfortunately, we couldn't actual...

so.. i´m just going to write down what i have in my notes.. a river we passed called rio de chokohal has a lot of minerals such as cobra and sulfur which is why it´s so blue.. same for agua azul!! pretty cool huh_ the border between guatemala and mexico is the usamecinto river, and it was interesting cuz for baths, women and men just strip and t...