Livingston

Kind of on the way to Honduras, Livingston is a fairly popular stop off. Taking a boat from Rio Dulce down to the coast I found myself sitting beside two guys from Dublin, which is quite unusual this trip as it seems the Paddys are staying home this year. Normally I can't move without bumping into some.

We got soaked as the boat was a bit overladen, but the sun was shining and the vista breathtaking as we carved our way downstream in canyons surrounded by the thickest rainforest I have ever seen.

Livingston suddenly appears at the mouth of the river and is a cool little place. Just like Belize it is full of english speaking Garifuna. So it was back to chicken and rice and 24/7 reggae, but this time with cheap Guatemalan beer and some Paddys.

Perfect.

Flores & Tikal

Placencia to Flores was a simple 3 bus and 2 taxi number. Passing through Belize's capital - Belmopan on the way. Fact to impress your friends: Belmopan is the world's smallest capital (pop: 16,000). At the Belize border I met some other travelling folk and we shared a taxi to Flores for the princely sum of 30 dollars. The journey was fun, as the paved road stopped at the Belizian border and on the Guatemalan side it was an extremely dusty track. We had no aircon so with windows wide open we began to resemble fish-fingers after about 10 minutes. A puncture didn't help matters either.

Battered (literally) we arrived in Flores a couple of hours later. Flores is a cute town, on a peninsula in a lake which ensures drop dead sunrises and magnificent sunsets. But the main reason for coming to Flores is to visit Tikal, a mayan complex close by.

So after a lakeside sunset and accompanying beers with a Canadian vet (Banked story: Moose are dangerous), it was a 5am start to Tikal. The road climbs steadily out of Flores and the vegetation becomes denser. Dropped off the bus, it is a long hike through the rainforest into the complex itself and you begin to wonder if there are really any temples hiding out there. After a bit of detective work and figuring out the signposting, I finally hit the first temple - Temple V. It was really like an iceberg coming out of the mist as you are walking through dense foliage and then this 50m monolith appears in front of you. There are rickety wooden stairs on the side so you can climb up to the top and it really is a test of your faith in Guatemalan carpenters as it creaks and groans but somehow holds together. At the top the view is sensational - rainforest as far as the eye can see with 4 temples tops in various locations peaking out above the canopy.

Palenque was carved out in the middle of a rain forest, Tikal is carved into the rainforest. Absolutely stunning, I spent about 7 hours roaming around, playing Indiana Jones and scurrying up and down temples, jumping over iguanas and avoiding the 6 inch spiders.

Placencia

White beach, blue waters, general walking speed 1 mile and hour. Friendly natives.
And that completes Belize. Nice place, pity about the prices.

Photos of Belize here

Caye Caulker, Belize it or not

2 buses a taxi and a boat ride saw me make it from Tulum to Caye Caulker, Belize. Country number #60 for me. The 3rd English speaking country in the continental Americas, the difference to Mexico is immediately noticeable upon crossing the border. The signs change, the music changes from Mariachi to Reggae and the skin tone gets about 3 shades darker.

Caye Caulker is Belize on steroids. Non-stop reggae, dreadlocks is the hairstyle of choice and chicken, rice and beans is the staple diet. I had hooked up with some people on the way and we managed to get a cool apartment for 5. The days took on a familiar pattern involving beaches, beer and beans. Did a bit of diving which was a bit unspectacular except for our boat captain - "popeye" who was funnier than a bottle of crisps.

Good Friday was spent drinking beer and lying on the beach and I'm sure Jesus would have done the same if given the chance. Met a group of English people who had been out in the rainforests of Belize on volunteer work. They mentioned that most of them had been infected by botflys. I shouldn't have asked, but they showed me their scalps and indeed there were little bumps that were moving. Click here to read more (on an empty stomach please)

Easter Sunday involved no Easter eggs or bunnies for that matter, but did involve Captain Steve's magical sailing & snorkelling trip. First stop Shark Ray Alley, where we swam with stingrays the size of small cars (no joke) and nurse sharks the size of small sofas. Our dive guide (Steve preferred to stay on board and smoke ganja after the stressful sail out) took great pleasure in stroking the stingrays and hugging the sharks. It was a veritable underwater adult petting zoo.
The second stop was the marine reserve - Hol Chan. This time we discovered a 2m Moray Eel, which I saw outside a hole for the first time. Frightening creature with the sharpest teeth. Just before getting back on board a green turtle swam by and starting grazing on the seaweed on the sea floor.

Back on board it was time for some more reggae and Steve's famous rum punch. By the time we got back to dry land we were all half-cut. Truly unable seamen.

Tulum

Tulum sports some funky beach side ruins, some amazing turquoise water and white powdery beaches. It is also a fragmented place (beach being 3 km from the town), full of tourists and completely overpriced. So after 2 mosquito plagued nights it was time to head into Belize.

Photos

Complete photos of Mexico

Chichen Itza (not a Mexican KFC)

On the way to Tulum I stopped off at Chichen Itza, which was recently honoured with the title of one of the new 7 wonders of the world. It is unfortunately also only a short air-con bus ride away from the tourist meccas of Cancun and Playa del Carmen, which meant that by the time I arrived at 9am (2 hours late due to aforementioned shenanigans in Merida) the car park was full of buses and hoards of grossly dressed tour groups.

The temples are without doubt impressive, especially the main one - El Castillo. Unfortunately unlike Palenque you cannot climb the pyramids as some silly tourist had gone and killed themselves whilst climbing it a couple of years ago.
All in all a worthwhile excursion, but nowhere as breathtaking as Palenque.

Photos here

Merida and the Cenotes (not a pop group)

If Palenque was hot then Merida is satan's crotch, wearing tight y-fronts in a hot kitchen in summer.
Normally a breeze is something welcome but in Merida the breeze was actually hot. I'm not talking warm summer breeze (like all those pop songs go), I'm actually talking about someone holding a hair-dryer in your face hot. To cool off it was time to take a tour of some of the local centotes, which are basically ex-caves which due to a bit of tectonic disco dancing have come close to the surface and are filled with rainwater.
The guide took myself and an English girl out into the middle of nowhere and down a dusty lane. We got out and just when I thought we were going to be murdered he pointed to a hole in the ground and told us to climb in.
Ever the obedient one, I climbed down first and lo and behold there was this magnificently blue pool, illuminated only by a tiny hole in the roof of the cave. But it caused significant light to make it look otherworldly. We donned our masks and snorkels and jumped in for a fabulous swim in outer space.

Back to Merida for Saturday night, as Merida is famous for its all-weekend fiesta. The town square (Zocalo), was festooned in bunting and there were riots of colour everywhere. A rake of local musicians showed up with their guitar cases, in fact at one point I was sure I had gotten myself into a Mafia convention. The party was massive and I ended up dancing through the night with some Sri Lankans, an Australian and a gang of people from Tabasco. Hot stuff.

Photos

Palenque

Onwards into the rainforest. From a cool, temperate San Cristobal it was on to a refrigerated bus and out 10 hours later into tropical, sticky as a toffee apple Palenque.

Palenque sports some of the most famous Mayan ruins and is truly stunning. Hacked out in the middle of the rainforest replete with howler monkeys, Palenque sits calmly in the middle and its pyramids tower above the adjacent canopy.

Whilst scaling the various pyramids (great fun in 35 degree heat, Jane Fonda eat your heart out) I met an Irish girl who had travelled for two and a half years starting in 2003. Working her way back from Australia to Dublin overland. Various highlights included living with a tribe in Indonesia and hitchhiking through Siberia. My hardcoreometer had to be recalibrated.

On the way back we passed by the impressive Misol-Ha waterfalls and the gorgeously blue cascades at Aqua Azul.

Photos here

San Cristobal de las Casas

Next stop was San Cristobal de las Casas, which is famous for being the centre of the Zapatista revolution in 1994. I will save you the gory details, but the indigenous people of Mexico, especially those in the southern state of Chiapas, the poorest state in Mexico, felt [rightly] that they were being hard done by by the government and started a mini-uprising on New Year's Day 1994.
Extremely long story short, their leader - Subcomandante Marcos, was an awfully nice pipe smoking, poetry writing chap. He proved to be very patient with the whole situation (and the various Mexican governments turned out to be lying ba*tards) but at the end of the day the Chiapans and the indigenous people are still, 15 years later, no better off. The only remnants of the uprising are the EZLN logo spray painted all over the place and Marcos t-shirts on sale in every shop.

Whilst in San Cristobal I took a trip up to Chamula, which is a town of about 50,000 indigenous Tzotzil people. The town looks fairly normal from the outside, but you soon realise that it ain't Kansas any more.

First of all everyone is speaking Tzotzil, which sounds unlike anything I have ever heard. Secondly 90% of the people wear native costume, which means fairly natty sheepskin pants for the men and black wool aprons for the ladies. The other interesting difference is that there is no "normal" police force. The locals nominate people to be police, normally ex-criminals (don't ask, it just works) who have to do community service. They carry BIG sticks around with them, but that is about it. Surprising really in this violent country, where the police patrol the highway in Hummers with gattling guns mounted to the roof.

The other interesting part of their lives is religion, which is practised in the local church (built by those nice Spanish chaps 300 years ago), but which is more like voodoo to the casual observer. First of all the marble floor is covered in pine needles which makes for a slippery entry and nearly had me skidding into the congregation. The next part is the abundance of candles - fairly standard you say, but these candles are actually affixed to the floor in little groups of 6. Cue westernised health and safety people worrying about the fire hazard posed by candles and pine needles in close proximity. The next quirk is that all the Mayans (who sit down on the floor around their Shaman of choice) are drinking coke or Fanta. Our guide explained that the ensuing burping was associated with a purging of bad spirits. This also explained the constant firecrackers around town, whose loud bang was also meant to ward off bad spirits. Finally when it couldn't get any more surreal the Shaman pulls a chicken out of a bag, wrings its neck (yes, choking a chicken in church) and starts slapping a person in need around the head and shoulders with it.

On a more sober note there is apparently a constant push by various American missionary groups to convert these pagans to a more sensible religion. Using downright nasty tactics - donating medical equipment to the village, on the precondition that they provide Jehovah Witness bibles to all patients.

Photos of San Cristobal here
Chamula here