Blogs we like

Wow, what a staggering difference.

We didn’t have the best ever first experience of Guatemala.  It began with the Santa Elena taxi drivers, swung through the less than thrilling Flores, nearly ended in heatstroke in Tikal and finally cost us 200 Quetzales in border fines.  Alright, that last one was our fault, but on the other hand when a border official says, “It should be 400, but we’ll just charge you half price”, you don’t tend to feel too good about it.  When they further don’t give you a receipt and fail to sort out your passport so that you continue to have problems the next time you cross the border, you tend to be glad to see the back of a place.

Then we arrived in Belize.  And it’s a whole other world.  Firstly, the taxi driver on the other side of the border gave us a below-the-usual-rate quote straight off the bat – when we realised this we felt pretty awful about trying to haggle him down further, as you would assume you should in any other place in the world.  Then there’s the language thing.  It sounds awful, but it really does make life so very much easier when you’re not fighting a language barrier.  Our fault for not speaking Spanish better, but you can’t help but feel more at ease in a place where basic comprehension isn’t an issue.  And, of course, there’s the music.  Just how can anyone be stressed with reggae beats cruising along in the background?

We stayed in the first big town over the border, San Ignacio.  I say big; it’s all relative.  The population of Belize is 280,000.  A quarter of that lives in Belize city, which makes it just about the same size as the town I come from in the UK.  You know, a typical English small town.  There were about 16,400 people in San Ignacio a few years back, so it’s still a very dusty little place.  But it’s so laid-back, with a few good guesthouses and a couple of excellent restaurants, and more to the point it’s within reach of some amazing caves, lakes and waterfalls.  So much of Belize is wild and jungly, and as yet there is very little that the red tape prohibits you from seeing.  If what you want is some proper wilderness and the chance to get close to it, you could do a lot worse than come to Belize.  And you can definitely get through the rum while you’re here.