Livingston is not connected to any roads - the only way in and out is by boat. We took a boat up the Rio Dulce to the town with the same name. This journey is the attraction around here, it goes through lovely jungle and Garifuna villages. Birds were a plenty and there was a very scenic spot where vast numbers of water lilies lay in the water. Rio Dulce sits in a lovely setting by a natural lake surrounded by jungle and then distant mountains. For yatchers this ...

Bye bye Belize - loved ya. First stage was to catch an ex American school bus to a road junction, where we waited only 10 minutes to pick up another local bus going to Punta Gorda close to the border with Guatemala. The scenery was lovely, thatched clap board houses on stilts, palm trees and blue mountains behind. Punta Gorda is where the road ends and where the boat to Guatemala starts. It is a sleepy Garfuna settlement surrounded by jungle and has a symbolic l...

We got up at 4am to get the bus to the Mayan ruins at Tikal about an hour north. This is a tourist magnet so to get any chance of seeing the wildlife getting there early was the only option. At Tikal we headed straight to the Grand Plaza through the jungle that is all around here. The jungle was alive, Tucans, and loads of other birds plus the distinctive howls from the Howler monkeys. We later found out that their cries were used as the basis of the T Rex sou...

One of the best things about Central America is the abundance of hamocks. They actually have a kind of hamock camping here with the addition of a mosy net for comfort. Most of the time I am in a hamock I am doing something I have been catching up with the blogs - I want them to be like a diary to look back on. Other times it would be learning Spanish or taking in a place whilst listening to music. Once I got off the hamock we headed down to cool beens for a cof...

It's been a funny day, dominated by some bad news from home and doing necessary chores. This however only accounts for a fraction of the time. The rest of the day has been filled and glued together by those moments that make travelling special. Moments are those things that you look back on in years to come. Things like having a cute little girl excited about lots of kites in the sky and looking puzzled that we spoke strangely. Or sitting up on the terrace catc...