UNBELIZABLE!

  Caye Caulker and Tikal, Belize
Tuesday, June 17, 2003

Managed to actually leave Tulum on Tuesday, spent 4 days in "Caye Caulker" in the Caribbean off the Belize coast.

Man, am I glad I made it, was a total shock coming from Mexico though, everything is in English, everyone spoke Creole or Garifuna (carib dialects of English, though incomprhensible to me!) or just English. All the people are a mix of English-Spanish-Caribbean-African so v.interesting culture mix. Big Rastas cycling around on rusty old cruisers, all signing reggae in top tune, most of them up to no good, no cars, just big fat yanks scooting aboot on golf carts. The whole island is no more than 3ft above sea level and you can stand on one beach and see the beach on the other side at the end of the street.

Caye Caulkers main business is the tourism which comes from the amazing coral reefs which sit just off-shore. Went on two sailing trips round most of the reefs and the cayes. Snorkelled through some of the best coral in the world, unbelizable diversity of fish, huge, small, multicoloured, parrot fish, even scary barracuda. Snorkelled Shark-Ray alley and fed these table sized Rays like puppy dogs who loved a good tickle under the chin and were so tame. Fed nurse sharks who were also very friendly, something not quite right about feeding sharks out of your hand, but they are harmless!


The island got hit bad by hurricane mitch and it actually got cut in two by the huge waves which hit the island. Now there's the Split between north and south, only way across is to swim the 30m of rapids that are now there.

Only a few people live there now, one old lady who does these amazing cheap lunches from her shack. She´s been wiped out by hurricanes three times, once the roof blew right off with her lying in bed! The crazy old wifie, just keeps on going, rebuiling her house every time in the same spot cos she don't wanna move!

Left for Tikal in Guatemlala which used to be the centre of the Mayan empire, where all the kings used to live. It took a million people a thousand years to build and is the size of Paris. Got there afternoon time on Sat and met these two English blokes I'd met on the sailing trip in Belize. They had this hairbrained plan to sleep overnight on the stone towers in the jungle at Tikal.

This used to be possible only a few years ago, but now they have strict opening times and it's actually impossible to watch either sunrise or sunset. The reason for this being was that people kept falling off and killing themselves, bloody spoilsports! These guys had heard of a few people who had tried it without success, always getting caught by the guards. Anyway, so we got into the site, went for a quick walkabout, then went for a long walk into the dense jungle and waited for dusk. My god, when nightfall came, the jungle came alive. We were surrounded by so much noise, things were scurrying through the undergrowth all around us. A snake slithered under the boy next to me and over my boot! There were howler monkeys swinging around and fighting in the trees above, falling down right beside us. Lucky we had a compass and our Lonely Planet site map for the way back, otherwise we'd have been lost for good.

When we got back to the main site, we climbed the first of the many Pyramids to discover it was a full moon - immpecable timing! These are not like the pyramids anywhere else, almost vertical and much higher than all the other ones I'd seen. You are not even permitted to climb most of these during the day as they're meant to be so dangerous (not really). They are surrounded by trully vibrant green jungle, toucans and other birds flitting through, monkeys everywhere. We met a Spanish guy up one of them who'd had the same idea as us. He joined us for sunrise on the highest tower. When it came, it was like Jurassic Park, the howler monkeys started roaring and screaming at each other for miles across the canopy, they sounded really like dinosaurs or wild cats. So, in the end we never got caught - a rarity indeed. Even rarer to see such a place with no other people in that amazing moonlight, just like the ancients would have. We even cheekily joined a guard for coffee after sunrise! Later that morning, in the crowded "Gran Plaza", we bumped into quite a few folk who had been caught and chucked out, I guess they didn't walk far enough into that jungle...

So now I'm in Antigua,

another real pretty colonial town in south Guatemala. Just checked into my homestay which is again really nice, nice big family and a big bed room. Tomoz for more Spanish lessons.

Yood betta Belize it...
cos Jah se so!