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.

5th September, Gros Morne, NF – Halifax, Nova Scotia (NS)

Packed up this morning to head over to Deer Lake airport to yep, catch another plane – and another prop plane at that. We still can’t get any coverage for mobile phones or internet even at the airport which is kind of nice but kind of frustrating because we know when we get to Halifax we have to update the blog and respond to a tonne of emails. It’s amazing how much you take technology for granted until you don’t have it!!

So onto the prop plane (another Dash-8) for the world’s most expensive flight and we were off to Halifax in the province of Nova Scotia. Why Halifax? No idea really. It looked good and was on the way to Quebec City and Montreal which will be our final destination before heading to either Sudbury, Vancouver or Tent City (otherwise known as North Saskatchewan). So after a fairly quick flight we arrived. We organized our shuttle into town which was leaving in 5 minutes after we arrived to see it drive off full. Four of us missed the bus and the lady kindly provided us with a limo into town at the same cost. Now when I say limo, its not that kind of limo (although that’s what they call them here), it’s a luxury car with drinks, mags, leather seats but perhaps most importantly free chocolate provided. The windows were black so no one could see us, we felt very famous and did the queen wave out the window! The driver must of thought “what do we have here” with two Aussies with enormous backpacks climbing into his car giggling like children! About a half an hour later we turned up to our lovely old Victorian Bed and Breakfast with yes, wifi!!! The B&B is on South Park street although alas no Cartman or Kenny!! We updated the blog (yes you can stop reminding us we are behind) and caught up on our email and enjoyed the pleasant view of the cemetery from our window. Our email appears to be working again so you may find some of the them delivered that we wrote almost a week ago.

We headed out after this with one thing in mind – where is the best local pub? The lady at the counter provided directions and didn’t let us down. About a 20 minute walk to the waterfront and into an underground pub and we were at the Lower Deck, a maritime kind of pub. Anyway, the local beer and wine were good and we met some interesting characters such as Jeff, the loud American who told the whole pub his view on American politics and refused to remove his sunglasses although it was dark. He was brash and from Tennessee and full of crap, but he was amusing none the less. We decided that it was probably time to head home after sitting in the pub for four hours. Dan tried three different types of Keiths and two types of Oland and then went back to Keith's in his quest to drink Canada dry. So the only thing we have seen in Halifax so far is the pub (oops!!). We had an awesome time and have a list of locals to try out over the next few days.