8: from jungle to coast

Caye Caulker

Having been to bed at some unspeakably early hour the previous night, we got an early bus from Flores to Belize City, befriending a nice German couple along the way. The bus took a good few hours, but as we crossed the border from Guatemala into Belize, we saw an immediate change in the environment. Houses were more cement and stone than shack, and cars were just a bit shinier. Also, all the supermarkets seems to have Chinese names denoting ownership. Actually, on the car note, I have to say that throughout my whole trip I must comment that most people have been driving, well, very nice cars. Lots of shiny pickup trucks. Getting off the bus in Belize City was like arriving in an (admittedly rather run down) Caribbean island. People´s faces were no longer hispanic, but black Caribbean, and as English is the predominant language in Belize there was a soft lilt to the men´s voices when they shouted "this way for the ferry!".

The ferry was less of a ferry and more of a speedboat, and of course, it started to rain the minute they were loading bags and passengers on to it. We zoomed across the shallow waters to Caye Caulker catching glimspes of marshy islands, and the odd house that seemed from a distance to have been just built on the water. On arrival on the island I left Clare with the bags and traipsed across the sand to Tina´s hostel, right next to the dock. The lady showed me the room. There was a kitchen in front of the bedroom that was filled with dirty cooking pans and a table covered in fag ends and half drunk bottles of booze, and lying on the sofas in the kitchen were two American girls that seemed to be unconscious. "Lovely, I said, we´ll take it. Erm, just for one night at the moment please."

We spent the afternoon wandering about the island, and booked ourselves in with Frenchie´s to dive the Blue Hole the day after next. We ran into Matt, the German bodybuilder, on his way back from diving the Blue Hole. He invited us to come and have a drink (coconut rum and pineapple, sweet but dangerous) and while he went to have a shower we drank most of his bottle of rum, but he didn´t seem to mind. Clare said he was getting a bit flirty but thankfully he´d met his English quota earlier in the trip so, while Scotland was ready for conquering, I was safe. Thankfully, Clare resisted.

That night there was a party in the kitchen, and one of the American girls had a chronic tummy bug throughout the night. The room had no windows, no fan, and was stinking hot. We moved hotels the next morning to the Tropical Paradise Hotel, which although not an eden was at least not hell.

We had breakfast at a lovely place called Amor y Café. It was pouring with rain outside and the combination of a proper cup of tea and the blissful smell of bacon cooking made me feel as though I was at home. Although oddly, I don´t really eat bacon at home, but that´s stereotypes for you.

Wentworth Miller wearing his tiny acting hat

By this stage in our trip, I had gone too far to turn back down the road of something I would live to regret: watching series 4 of Prison Break on Clare´s laptop. Now I must put a paragraph aside for this and for Wentworth Miller and his incredible eyebrow acting, which I believe can only be bettered by Richard Gere. Now without spoiling it for anyone who is an actual fan, series 4 is simply .... utter shite. Unfortunately it is also annoyingly addictive. Every plot line has a twist, every ending has a cliff hanger, and as it goes on they get more and more preposterous. Michael Scofield can only speak in a gutteral voice and, well, he´s got a bit fat, so they don´t show his tattoos any more. So I spent the rest of the afternoon watching that, and then we went out and ate loads of seafood, watching an american competition show about cupcake baking on the TV in the bar, and came home feeling a bit fat ourselves.