Yesterday we started our way back up from Guatemala to Belize. We booked a transfer with a tour company for the four and a half hour journey, as it was much quicker and comfier than the local buses. Well, it should have been, but I was dying for a wee when we got on the bus at 7.30am, but there wasn't a toilet until after we had got through Belizean customs at 11am, so it was a pretty uncomfortable first half of the journey for me!

We were headed to Orange Walk: a small farming town in northern Belize, where we were going to stay for a couple of nights so we could do a tour of yet another Mayan site, Lamanai. We found the Akihito Hotel in the guide book, and as it was only £15 a night for a double room, we decided to give it a shot. You could pay £7 more to have an 'air conditioned room', but this turned out to just mean that the woman on reception gave you a remote for the wall unit in the same room, so we decided to just cope with the fan and save a bit of money! The room looked ok when we first checked in, but further inspection suggested otherwise. There was a teacher training conference programme on the side that the previous guest had left behind, chewing gum stuck to the wall and dirt in the bed. Better than this was the wide selection of condoms in the top drawer of the bedside table. At first we thought they might be a gift from the owner, but when we saw the old guy on reception, we preferred to think otherwise... God knows what they are getting up to on these teacher training conferences!! Nevertheless, the bed wasn't damp and there was no stink of paint thinner, so we made it our home for a couple of nights - which shows that I really wasn't just being fussy about Rosa's!!

We went off in search of food and found that the only restaurants in Orange Walk are Chinese ones. We gave up trying to look for a local place to eat, and went into about the seventh Chinese we passed on the small Main Street. It was pretty awkward as we were the only ones in there, and the lady put on a CD and turned off the lights to create a bit of 'atmosphere'. We had saxophone renditions of all the classics, including my personal faves 'I Will Always Love You' and 'Love is All Around'.

After tackling our MASSIVE plates of chow mein, we went off to find a tour operator to book a trip to Lamanai. We found a company that has been doing tours for the longest out of all the operators, so we decided to pop in. We were greeted by a round man in a REALLY dirty, ripped and stained T-shirt called Ramiro who worked for the company (what an ambassador for the brand!) He actually turned out to be hilarious, and when we asked him about the Lamanai tour, he immediately launched into a full-blown detailed description of the lunch that was included - Matt's kind of man!! Needless to say we booked with him; if only for the lunch alone!

The next morning we met our driver outside the tour shop (disappointingly it wasn't Ramiro!), and drove the 30 minutes to the riverside dock where we would meet our boat. The small river boat was called 'Smoking Shell', named after one of the Mayan kings of Lamanai. We rode along the river for about an hour, and saw loads of different birds flying through the forests that lined the river, including some HUGE herons. The river twisted and turned through the jungly landscape, with some really narrow parts that the locals call 'Snake Alley', where you have to move the boat really slowly.

We also passed a Mennonite settlement called 'Shipyard', where Amish people have lived since the 1950's. Without electricity or mechanised tools, they build water craft on the land, and then dig the river bank out from under it when it is complete and ready to launch. These ships are then used to transport sugar cane and other crops. Pretty impressive considering they don't even have electricity!

We pulled up into the lagoon that surrounds Lamanai: the site emerges from the water, giving it its name, which means 'submerged crocodile' in Mayan. Walking up the jetty from the boat, you could see the tops of the Mayan ruins poking out just above the trees. We walked through the jungle between the ruins, some of which had had the masonry restored to its original glory. We saw spider monkeys swinging through the trees, and again heard howler monkeys in the distance - you can hear their calls up to a mile away, so you can't really tell how close they are.

You are able to climb the first temple that we arrived at, but it had really steep steps. Although the tower was nowhere near as high as some of the other structures I have climbed on this trip, I really wasn't keen on the look of the rope you had to cling to on the climb back down. So I decided to sit this one out while Matt went up to get photos. I am so glad I did: whilst the rest of the group were climbing, I got my first glimpse of the black howler monkeys that we have heard so many times. There were five in total in a tree, including two babies: they were beautiful, although it's hard to believe that something so small can produce such monstrous roars! Matt was pretty gutted that he missed them when he got back down: it was the one time on the trip that I was glad of my vertigo!

We saw several other structures, including a ball court where the Mayans played a game where they had to pass a ball through a hoop using only their knees, hips and elbows. I didn't fancy a match though - the winning team got sacrificed! Apparently this was thought to be a direct route to heaven, but I'm still not keen to be honest....I hate sports!

We both climbed the tallest building in Lamanai, the Jaguar Temple, although it was a baby compared to the other ones we have climbed! We had lunch in a thatched shelter near the water, and it was just as good as Ramiro promised: more stewed chicken, rice and beans, and coleslaw - I'm going to miss this when I get home! (You better look up the recipe, Mum!)

On the boat ride back, I actually saw a real-life wild crocodile, wish I was pretty excited about! It was about four-foot long, and launched itself into the river from the bank when it saw our boat coming! We also saw a spider monkey really up-close, as the guide let some passengers throw some food onto the river bank so we could get a closer look. The boat motor cut out a few times on the way back to the dock, but we made it back to dry land all in one piece, which I was pretty glad about considering that I had seen that the water was croc-infested with my own eyes!

We stayed for a couple of nights in Orange Walk, but it is pretty quiet, with not a lot to do. But it's here that you can see why Belize is called the 'Melting Pot of Races'; there's people from every culture, with lots of Belizeans, Afro-Caribbeans and Mennonites all living, drinking and eating together. Also, it is the same as the rest of Belize in that everyone has been so friendly; it'll be so sad to leave and go back to somewhere where if someone shouts at you in the street, they are probably crazy, rather than telling you to have a nice day! Also, until Alsager gets a self-service bakery where you can get a cake for 12p, I think I'd rather stay where I am!