Reluctantly, we had to leave Belize today to make our way back up to Mexico. It has been an amazing country to visit so we were pretty sad to leaving. We rode the 'chicken bus' the three hours to Corozal on the Belize border, which only cost £2 (I still can't believe how cheap and efficient public transport is, even after a month of being here!) We had to get off the bus twice: once to leave Belize, and once to enter Mexico.

Going through Mexican customs, you have to press a button to randomly determine whether your belongings will be searched or not: a traffic light turns green if you can pass through, or red if your bag must be looked through. OBVIOUSLY, both mine and Matt's lights went red! Matt's bag was given a cursory search by a pretty indifferent security guard, but my officer was pretty damn thorough! He pulled literally everything out of my rucksack (which had took me about an hour to pack just right), and put it all on the table - talk about airing your dirty laundry in public!! He went through all the medicines I was carrying as well, and as my motto when travelling is 'always be prepared', there was a lot of them!! I then had to repack my own bag, which was a bit of a challenge, but with Matt's help I managed to cram all the stuff back in. When we finally emerged from the other side of the border, we thought the bus driver had got fed up of waiting and left us, but luckily we spotted a bus about half a mile down the road which turned out to be ours!

We stayed in Chetumal, a town just over the Mexican border for one night, to break up the travelling time, and also so we could see a bit more of the country. It's quite a busy town and has lots of shops, I think a lot of business people come here for conferences. Trying to find somewhere to eat was a bit of a challenge - some of the places looked a bit dodgy, with kebabs on the pavement outside the restaurant, heating in the midday sun. However, we managed to find a restaurant with English outside...but it was a Chinese buffet! So we resigned ourself to the fact that we had to eat our third Chinese in as many days - the spring rolls softened the blow! I don't think I can look at another noodle for a while though!

There's no beach in Chetumal, but the pavement runs right alongside the waterfront, so it was really nice to stroll down there in the sun. There's a lighthouse, and there are manatees in the water, but obviously they were too far out for us to see them from the shore.

We then got the five hour bus back to Playa del Carmen, to the same hotel that we stayed at before. It was so sad to leave Belize, it's been amazing.... so sad that tomorrow I may have to console myself by going back to see my old friends, the sea turtles!!