Unravel the Travel Babble: Chapter 3 - Belize in me as I Belize in you

Hello merry fellows and merry fe-lions. Thanks for joining me for yet another roarrrring chapter in a tale of highs, a tale of lows, a tale of guys, a tale of foes, a tale of pies and a tale of good ol’ tally-ho’s.

If you’ve read the previous 2 chapters and become bored of Guatemalan chinsmack (invented combo word consisting of ‘chinwag’ and ‘smack talk’), than you will be relieved to see that this chapter (mainly) sees Cat and I move on from exhausting Guatemala and escape to Central American coastal relaxing paradise happy fun sunshine place named Belize.

Here's a little time-lapse to set the mood for this chapter:

Happy fun sunshine country Belize

All it took was a 1-hour boat journey from Livingston, Guatemala and BANG, we had hit the territorial boundary of Belize. Belize is quite randomly a country whose official language is English on the coast of otherwise Spanish speaking Central American countries. Arrival to Belize was immediately a mega relief as we could throw away our Spanish phrasebook and perform everyday transactions and banter in a language we kind of know.

Here's an aerial demonstration of the mood upon reaching Belize:

Geronimooo!!!

Aqua face plant

Placencia

First stop was Placencia, a coastal town engulfed in a hotel construction frenzy. Thoughts and happenings below:

Relief reached maximum levels when we found a cool bar on the beach Carribean style that served a massive feast of BBQ cooked Chicken with live reggae music played by mega-chilled Rastafarians.
Visited a street which 10 years ago was proclaimed by the Guinness Book of Records as the smallest street in the world. It’s actually just an ordinary pedestrian sidewalk with a few fake street signs. I think Guinness probably stripped the street of its title after they actually had a look at it and realized it was a path.
While having a quiet sunset beverage on the beach and pondering whether we should spend heaps of money on an island hopping tour of Belize, we saw a bloke who had just disembarked from his yacht. He had a puppy with him so we thought that this was a great opportunity to initiate contact by playing with his dog, build up some rapport with the yacht owner and then see if he would offer us an epic (and free) sailing trip. When we began playing with the dog and talking to the man it quickly became evident that his puppy was likely rabies ridden and had more flees than hair, the man did not in fact own the yacht, and that we would not be getting a free ride on the waters of Belize.

Cute, but yuck.

We hired bikes and consequently underwent the obligatory ride until exhaustion to make sure we got our moneys worth. Of physical note on the bike were the massive, ultra fat and bossin’ tyres, which resulted in Belizeans yelling out their appreciation for them as we rode past.

Tyres bigger than me biceps; you wouldn't belize it.

The owner of the hostel we stayed at was one of the biggest space cadets I’ve come across. One example of this conclusion is that she was not aware of the fact she had overbooked her hostel, which only consisted of 5 beds. That fact became realised when an unfortunate German, upon retiring to what he thought was his bed, found a sleeping Israelite in his bed. Cat and I solved the bedding crisis by sleeping in the one bed and consequently receiving a solid discount.

Hopkins

After hitching a ride a few km’s back to the one and only highway that runs the entire length of Belize, we jumped on a bus and headed north to Hopkins.

The unthinkably unpredictable occurred in Hopkins. Let me set the scene:

It was a hot and humid afternoon in sunny Hopkins. Cat and I decided to have a leisurely dip in the ocean close to the hostel we were residing in. Before entering the water, we had quite cleverly kept our belongings on dry land, thereby preventing the combination of moisture with belongings.

As we swam about the refreshing scene, soaking up our newfound coastal lifestyle and keeping an eagle eye on our belongings on the beach, the extraordinary occurred. An oversized coconut, rage infused and gravity bound, plunged to the ground, confirming Newton’s 3^rd law of physics. Upon hitting the ground it connected with the outskirts of Cat’s shoulder bag, resulting in an audible crack. I immediately feared the worst for the health of Cat’s camera and/or my GoPro. However, when we rushed to shore to get a visual on the damage, it became clear that it was my innocent iphone that was the luckless victim of this zealous coconut. My iphone screen was more cracked than a chapped set of lips on a winter’s day. As perplexion subsided (I’ve decided perplexion should be a word), it became clear that the unpredictable combination of coconut with iphone had taken place.

Other things that took place in Hopkins:

I played drums made from turtle shells at a beach shack bar jam session: As I was on stage the crowd was like: “oh that’s cool but what about Cosmic Therapy’s latest track?” So I played them this:

But not really. What did go down is that the turtle drums were indeed played to some sweet reggaeton music. Here's a short vid:

We went to a Jaguar Reserve with a couple of hilarious French Canadian lasses. We saw 0 jaguars. We did, however, do some mad tubing and waterfall swimming.

Tasty Toobin'

Guatemala relapse immigration debacle

It was convenient to re-enter Guatemala as we headed north up Belize in order to see Tikal, one of the biggest and best Mayan ruin sites in the world. However, as we attempted to cross the border from Belize back into Guatemala we had a major issue…

For some outrageous reason, when we had originally entered Belize a few days earlier we were given a stamp to stay in the country for no more than 4 days. We were given no indication of this timeframe when we entered Belize. So of course, the day we tried to head back into Guatemala to see Tikal, it was our 5^th day in Belize. We had both officially been illegal persons in Belize for about 12 hours…

The immigration officer at the border of Belize and Guatemala was not impressed. The first thing he said to us was that we were illegal aliens in his country, a crime punishable by 2 years imprisonment and which comes with a price tag of $10,000. Upon hearing this Cat and I were completely bamboozled and shocked, and after a few heart pounding seconds of keeping us hanging, the immigration officer finally told us that we had to hand over $50US each to apply for a temporary extension.

We handed over the money, waited in immigration for about an hour, got the day extension and were on our way to Guatemala. It was definitely not the greatest of experiences.

But Tikal was awesome. Apart from the amazing ruins the whole place is deep within a forest where there are heaps of howler monkeys frolicking in the trees, jaguars lurking in the bushes and weird lookin' birds strolling around:

Tikal me this, Tikal me that

Caye Caulker

When we headed back into Belize (drama-free) we went straight across to the island off the mainland called Caye Caulker. Caye Caulker was a really cool, quite touristy island with heaps going on.

Here’s what went down there:

A local legend of Caye Caulker, known only as ‘Coco Loco’, is infamous for selling rum-filled coconuts on the streets of Caye Caulker. Coco Loco’s antics on the island of Caye Caulker had been foreshadowed to us by Alex Russell, who had met Coco Loco a couple of year’s prior. The first time Cat and I walked past Coco Loco’s stall on the main road of the island he immediately ran up to us to offer his product. We couldn’t resist the advertising spiel and so paid Coco Loco $8 for his famous coco loco. To make the drink he climbed up a nearby coconut tree, cut down a coconut, then ran to the shop across the street, bought a $2 bottle of Rum and finally poured the rum into the coconut. It’s a winning business plan.
We went on an amazingly awesome snorkeling day trip where we swam amongst feeding sharks and sting rays. Here's a short video and some pics:

We almost had to save a bloke who had been taken out into the ocean due to a strong current. We offered to give him a lift back in our kayak, despite not really being able to paddle ourselves due to the state of our paddles (see pic below). The bloke refused the offer but ended up getting back to shore after a long swimming battle.

paddles were pretty much crappy old cricket bats

We partied at a hostel named “Dirty McNasties”. Enough said.
Whenever I walked past this one bloke on the street trying to get people to go into a restaurant he would yell out to me “Jesus Christ of Nazareth!”, assumedly due to my physical appearance.
Cat found out that Rustafari is actually a religion where smoking weed is an integral part of the religion. No Jude, she has not converted!
A fellow Aussie got his hair braided and looked absolutely hilarious.

Another couple of odd things that happened during this un-belizable time:

We went to this really fancy bar for cocktails in Flores (a cool town not far from Tikal in Guatemala) because they strangely had the cheapest happy hour. Within a minute of sitting down at our elaborate table, surrounded by fancily dressed people, Cat wet willy’d me – straight to the right earhole. Classic Cat.
Cat was surprised that her backpack felt much lighter on one particular day, she put it down to the fact that she had used lots of things which meant it was much lighter. When I asked Cat what she had used to make it lighter she said: "Well, like I've used heaps of my contacts". Probably the lightest possible item you could think of.
We learnt that you could be fined for walking too fast. We also learnt another rule: