Unbelizeable!

Well not quite, but it's pretty nice!

We eventually managed to tear ourselves away from Bacalar early in the morning a few days ago. Crossing the border into Belize was really quick and simple, and after a few hours we found ourselves in the capital Belize City. It's hard to believe that a country the size of Wales can only have a population the same size as Brighton's, and that the capital city only has about 60000!

Still, it manages to be a noisy, hustle-bustle place and according to our guidebooks not a place to stick around in after dark, so we took a ferry straight to Caye Caulker. It's mainly a backpacker island and although I've never been there, it feels just like the Caribbean probably does.

After a panicked half hour or so we found a place to stay at the end of the island with the help of a rasta called Gilbert. He spoke in such a strong Creole accent that we could only understand about half of what he was saying. After walking us to our place we gave him a couple of dollars and he went off to find more tourists, and judging by the state of him later on a beer and some smokes.

Caye Caulker is supposed to be a great place to dive and there's tons of tours you can take. We spent a while browsing around what was on offer, but everything seemed like the same package, so we went for a beer on the beach at the Lazy Lizard "A sunny place for shady people" to think things over. As luck would have it a brightly painted rickety boat was docking right in front of the bar with a smiley family getting our thanking the two rastas who ran it. After a little inquiring we decided to join them on their next trip the following day.

They made a point of telling us that their trip was much more laid back than the others and that they were happy for us to bring beers along with us. Unfortunately the weather wasn't great for snorkeling but they managed to let us out in a few places. The first was shark and ray alley, which was teaming with rays about 2 feet across. They were very curious too (probably because they get feed by the people running the tours) and would crowd around you, but I found it difficult to put the crocodile hunter out of my mind. It didn't seem to bother the kids who were with us, they were happily stroking them and with the help of one of the rastas were holding onto them for photos.

The rest of the trip was very lazy, we did a little more snorkeling and dove down for conch shells that the rastas cooked up for us. On the way home we circled the island and scared a small crocodile out of the mangroves, unfazed one of the guys jumped straight in to pluck out some sea horses and pass them around in a big jar.

Anyways, at the moment we're back on the mainland in Placencia after a very hairy bus trip, but I'll write about that another time and hopefully add some photos!