14th December – Flores, Guatemala – San Ignacio, Belize

Another day, another country. This morning we were off to head to the border of Guatemala and cross into Belize. Belize has long been a place that we have wanted to visit and we were hoping that it would live up to our fairly high expectations. However, in true Guatemala style, a new office (OK walls and a roof) had been built as we were queuing, a dozer was demolishing the old building 50 metres away from us and there were rubble piles everywhere. Compared to the Mexico-Guatemala border crossing which had been so chaotic, the border crossing into Belize was smooth and painless (perhaps it was helped by the fact the markets weren’t outside the immigration door). A couple of more stamps to the passport and we were in and on the road to San Ignacio. We arrived at our accommodation which was a cute little cabana that looked a little like a dolls house in the Midas Resort. We wandered into town for some lunch and after having to navigate around in poor Spanish for the past few weeks it was strange to go back to English signs and English speaking people. Whilst we were so close to Guatemala, Belize has a decidedly Caribbean flavour. Reggae music plays everywhere, rastas with huge dreddies were floating past and nothing happens in a hurry. A very relaxed kind of town. We decided to go tubing down the local river for the afternoon as the sun was out and it was warm. We launched into the river on the side and we were off. A lazy float down watching the iguanas in the trees (we also found out they are good swimmers) and being bitten on the bum occasionally by small fish (our new term for a little fish bite is "piscadores". It wasn’t explained to us that this particular river had small rapids in it. We only realized when off in the distance we could hear the roar of the water. We successfully held on for the first rapids. The next set of rapids the guide fell out (not a comforting sight) and Dan did to getting pulled under for a moment. We held on for the third set of rapids and I fell out of the final set which was actually termed a water fall. A few hours later we reached the end of the river for us to walk up to the pub for a drink as the sun was setting. The pub also had strangely enough, a number of dogs, geese and turkeys – neither of which liked each other.
Back to town we headed out for dinner and had the best curry we had encountered since leaving Australia. Now if we can only find a meat pie to satisfy Dan’s cravings we’ll be fine. The beers are funny here as they are always served with a serviette wrapped around the neck of the bottle.

We saw some Schofield scale topping "Habanero" chilli sauce which was okay in moderation, that is one small drop.

14th - 15th November - Vancouver, BC

Planning. Most people will agree it’s really not one of our strengths. We never really seem to know what on earth we are doing from one week to the next and love to fly by the seat of our pants. However, that’s about to change because we now have a plan that takes us up to 22nd December and it goes something like this.

17th November – Drive to Seattle – USA

21st November – Fly to Phoenix, Arizona – USA – we’re going to see the Grand Canyon… woohoo


24th November – Fly to Cancun – Mexico – spend a week relaxing on the beach on the Mayan Riviera… bliss…

1st December – Drive to Playa Del Carmen to begin a 22 day tour taking in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Check it out here.


22nd December – Fly back to Vancouver… all going well head for Whistler for a white Christmas… yeeha

Then, we think (remember we don’t like planning) we will spend the bulk of the next few months in Vancouver with some side trips thrown in, but most weekends we’ll be heading to the snowfields and then heading home in March. That is the plan, for now, but remember, it’s subject to change!

So lots of blogging to come.