It was a long journey from Caye Caulker to Playa Del Carmen - 12 hours of cramped local buses! To make matters worse one coach played the S Club movie... can you believe that made it all the way to Mexico. Very wrong indeed! Our day in Playa Del Carmen was devoted to sun worshiping on the beach and a few drinks in a beach bar in the afternoon. For a change we stayed in a posh hotel with a lovely pool, towel sculpture on the bed and kitchenette in our room! From...

Catching a local bus we arrived in Belize City and caught a water taxi out to Caye Caulker, a small laid back island surrounded by coral reefs. Our hotel was right by the sea and you could walk across the island in 2 minutes flat! We spent our first evening sitting on the pier with the group drinking coconut rum, watching pelicans feasting on fish guts as local fishermen cleaned their catch and enjoying the sunset. Bliss! The following day we all headed out on ...

From Tikal we crossed the border into Belize. Belize is completely different to the rest of Central America in that it is an English speaking country and half of the population are descended from Garifuna people of African decent. The country has a distinctly Caribbean feel, with brightly coloured buildings, chilled out (hungover) locals and a go slow approach to everything! We opted to do a full day caving adventure to the ATM Caves. We started out by hiking fo...

With our new group we headed off to a hotel on an island in Rio Dulce. En route we stopped to have lunch at a Mayan site featuring carved totem poles. In the Visitors Centre we were able to discover our Mayan horoscopes. Kim was a rabbit and `the guradian of fertility`, apparently she would have made an excellent gynacologist and is generally weak and sickly. Mark was a conch shell and while he is decisive he can also be cutting and unpleasant. Needless to say we...

From Panajachel we headed to the largest market in Central America in the town of Chichicastenango. This place was a complete culture shock - a seething mass of market stalls, brightly dressed locals, chickens and people setting off fireworks by hand, miraculously escaping burns and maiming! We bartered hard for some final souvenirs before setting off again for the colonial town of Antigua. Much of historic Antigua is in ruins from an eathquake that happened in ...