After saying a sad goodbye to Caye Caulker and our hammocks, we headed off to our next destination: San Ignacio, a town in a jungly area on the opposite side of mainland Belize. All of the public buses in Belize are second-hand American school buses, like the Simpsons bus! We only paid about £2.70 each for the three hour journey, and about an hour in, a man got on the bus with a massive box of coconut and lemon pies selling them for 30p each! We had one each -...

Today I did something I never thought I would do: spent practically the whole day on a boat at sea. We booked a tour with a local company to do a bit of snorkelling off the Belize Barrier Reef, and to try and spot some West Indian manatees. There were only six of us on the trip altogether: us, a European couple in their thirties and an older couple from America. We met our guide, Salvador, who showed us to our transport at the end of a jetty. The boat was way sm...

Today was really windy on Caye Caulker, and there was a strong current in the water, even in the Split which is usually really calm. So after a lunch of grilled Caribbean kebabs and citrus shrimp sitting on swing seats overlooking the sea, I managed to persuade Matt to borrow the bikes from our accommodation to explore the island. (This was after I had plied him with rum and coke!) He didn't seem very keen at the idea, but they were free so he didn't have his usu...

Today we decided to explore the north end of the island, and considering the whole Caye is only 5 miles long, this was not exactly hard. Near the top of the island there is a channel of water (called the 'Split') about 25m wide which was carved by Hurricane Hattie, and then widened by hand by the locals. There is sea either side, but you can swim straight across to the piece of land opposite that used to be joined on. Relatively few people live on the opposite s...

At 6.45am our bus pulled into Belize City bus station. The station was a bit run down, but Matt was impressed to see his first sign for conch fritters (even though there was none available!) The tiny bit of Belize City we saw was very rundown, and it is a designated poverty regeneration zone, so I'm not sure what it'd be like to stay there. Most of the information we've seen online suggests that you are better off staying outside Belize City and just coming back...