Belizean bikes have no brakes. The Guatemalans only seem to ride mountain bikes. I´m not sure how much you can tell about a country by it´s 2 wheeled transport but the pace of life in Belize doesn´t necessitate reaching a speed that would require brakes whereas Guatemala definitely presents a more off-road challenge...

For us, this manifested itself less than a hundred metres into Guatemala (last Thursday). Having crossed the border and had to bribe the immigration official (neither Claire nor my Spanish was good enough to argue the point and US$5 probably doesn´t amount to extortion) we tried to head for Flores. Trusty rough guide in hand, we first tried the bus company and were curtly told to go away (even my Spanish picked that up). We then searched for one of the minibuses that would, according to the rough guide, be ready & eager to takes us... nope none of them. Having already lost half our bodyweight in sweat, it was time to find a taxi. Having struck a deal with a friendly chap next to a nice official taxi, we were then led to his decidedly unmarked ´taxi´. Not wanting to inflame the situation, we looked at each other and went with it. The ensuing 2 hours were a touch jumpy - our driver spending a lot of time on his phone (we thought calling some back up), the car´s brakes getting stuck on, our driver wandering around with a tyre iron hitting things and then he just happened to know someone round the corner, the random bloke who hopped in the car too... it was starting to fit every horror story we´d heard from other backpackers over the last few days. As it was, every thing that we panicked about seemed legitimate and we arrived on time, no harm done. In fact, the 4x4 made the Guatemalan roads quite bearable and even had air con. But both our knuckles are only just recovering from excessive squeezing every 20 seconds.

Since then, we´ve stuck firmly to the Gringo trail, no more off the beaten tracking for us for a while. We don´t feel a lot of shame in this, it´s been awesome. Well, maybe we´re slightly embarassed about the blow out at Burger King we treated ourselves to after that taxi ride, but it cost us next to nothing and the place had air con and frankly in & around the Guatemalan jungle you can´t put a price on that. Plus it easily has the best view in Flores, looking over the whole island, the lake lapping at the shore, and all the food actually comes up hot and... well we enjoyed it ok! And we´ve eaten plenty of chicken rice & beans!

Next trip was to Tikal, a very old (500BC) Mayan city, that the Spanish didn´t find and so has been pretty well preserved in the middle of the jungle. The scale of the place is what gets to you - we walked (and sweated) our way round over 5km of jungle trail and only saw a fraction of it. We climbed up some seriously dodgy wooden ladders to the top of the pyramids the rulers built themselves, where can see other Mayan cities over the tree tops and the photos should speak for themselves but they´re never going to really do the place justice.

Anyway, that´s quite enough for one blog, we´re still working on the photos but fingers crossed we´re getting there.