From Copan we hit the Rio Dulce in Guatemala, the plan being to take a boat ride along the river up to the coast, spotting manatees and all sorts on the way, and catch a ferry to Belize. When we got to Rio Dulce (unbelievably easily compared with our recent bus trips) it was peeing it down and a look at the ferry timetable told us we couldn't get to Belize until several days after we had planned to leave. Coupled with the fact that none of the boats seemed to have roofs we thought better of a rain soaked trip and instead just stayed one night on the lake. The place we stayed was pretty cool: lots of huts connected by wooden bridges all suspended in the water but had a seriously poorly thought out sewage system. I won't go into details!

The river trip abandoned we instead went up to Tikal, some more Mayan ruins in the north of Guatemala. Tikal doesn't have as many sculptures as Copan but what it lacks in artwork it makes up for in pyramids. The entire site is covered by huge temples and residential buildings. It is even more impressive because most of the jungle surrounding the site hasn't been cleared and you can almost imagine having stumbled across them while on a hike through the rain forest (if you ignore all the other tourists!). The weather wasn't great and there were hundreds of bity insects but it was nevertheless an interesting trip and helped us to appreciate the sophistication of the Mayan empire.