Embassy Hotel Belize City

... humid urban maelstrom that lies along the Caribbean on either side of a sewage reeking creek. I made my way to the Marine Terminal for the busride to Flores, Guatemala and had an hour and a half to kill. I set off to see what delights Belize City held. A guidebook I had looked at said it was best to just use Belize as a transit point to elsewhere since it is just a ramshackle crimepit. I take that back, it's safe ...

... a rather stuffy parent before finally learning enough to leave their protection. Mostly. There's still a lot of British influence in Belize (they call football "football", not "soccer", as they have no truck with that other game those oiks in the North play, and would still drive on the left were it not for the inconvenience it would have caused to drivers on the Pan-American Highway, prompting them to switch... only to be excluded ...

... play, and even though they've got a good grip on it all now, it still seems very lax (perhaps only because I'm comparing it the strict US laws). The police only have checkpoints on the major highways (1 lane each direction) in which they don't regulate speed or anything, they just check that you have an ID and insurance. The highways feature no painted lines or lights as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed a certain type of tree called the mangrove. In Belize they call them the ...

It was dusk when we found a place to park our little motorhome near a riverside jungle resort. Our dog Zoey was out in the brush sniffing around at the hundreds of smells she didn't recognize. I can only imagine what goes through a dogs brain when she steps out of the familiar confines of her motorhome to be bombarded by the alien smells and sounds of a world she has never experienced. A few days earlier we had ...

... Mayan remains. So arqueology in action...suck on that Indiana Jones! The place was so relaxing that we actually stayed there most of the day, enjoying a picnic on one of the many tables they have for that specific and intellectual purpose on site. We couldnt finish the day better than with a ride back from two US tourists in their rented car. They didnt voluntarily offer though...it appears Vero made sad faces at them when they got into their car as if ...

... the older kids to play "real" soccer across the field, while half of us played red rover and "dog and the bone" with the younger kids. Then we got out buckets of water and sponges and played "over/under" for all of 5 seconds before a waterfight broke out. Quickly we brought out the two hundred some water balloons we filled up over lunch and Dugald lead the way to a pretty epic ...

... seen along the Western Highway because of the tourists that it attracts. San Ignacio was nicer than the rest, but not enough to ease my shock much. Santa Elena is on the eastern bank or the Macal River and San Ignacio is on the western side. They are basically the same town, although San Ignacio seems to be a bit better off than Santa Elena. Selmo drove us in a ring through San Ignacio so that we would cross both the wooden low-water ...

... was up for it too. But for no obvious reason we decided amongst us that the best way to go about this was to form our very own biker gang, and thus was born the "Fiery Ring" - consisting of 9:20, Beastor and Hiccy-Ghost. So we spent the next few hours drinking 40s, smoking blunts, f*cking b*tches, smacking ho's and carrying out other such gang-based activities. That I was riding a woman's bike with a basket at the front for my groceries in no way made me any less menacing ...