On the 14th June we left Belize and returned to Guatemala. We caught the bus down to Punta Gorda (Fat Point) in Southern Belize and got a tiny 'international' boat to Livingston in Guatemala. The boat was the worst we had so far - we were unlucky to be at the front of the boat which came crashing down every time we went over a wave. I (Simon) took off my life jacket and used it as a cushion to ease the pain.

A minute after getting off the jetty we bumped into Mark and Julia from Spanish school in Xela - small world or everyone goes to the same places? We met up with them two hours later to watch the England - Italy game which was disrupted by frequent power cuts, due to the heavy rain, but we caught some of what we missed on a wind-up radio. Unfortunately we lost.

The next day we took a river cruise up the Rio Dulce (Sweet River). It's a beautiful river which starts (at the coast) with a wide steep forested canyon and then opens out into a large lake. The boat doubles as both a commuter boat and a sightseeing tour so when we went slow for photos and stopped part way up to visit the hot springs and a cave, I felt bad for the locals. The cave snaked its way into the cliff and was pretty standard apart from the chance to see a couple of bats at the end of it. Katy didn't like it as it was hot and tight in parts. When we (and the commuters) eventually got to the end of the river we were left at an old Spanish castle, which was used to defend the plundered goods from pirates before being taken back to Spain. It was very hot and we jumped from shade to shade as we explored the castle and the park around it.

It started to rain when we were on the return boat so the pilot tried to get back as fast as possible so we had a pretty uncomfortable and wet return journey. We used our last evening in Guatemala to work out the 2 boats, 6 buses and 1 taxi we would need to take the following day to get to the Bay islands in Honduras the next day.

Simon