We had a long trip from Playa Del Carmen in Mexico to Caye Caulker in Belize, taking about 12 hours, involving a coach, taxi (where 4 of our group managed to get dropped at the wrong place, but thankfully they got found in time for our bus!), a 5 hour bus and then a ferry for an hour to the island. The bus to Belize City was good preparation for our chicken bus journeys in Guatemala and was pretty cramped and hot, so it was a relief to get off that! I've never done a border crossing by land before, so it was an interesting experience. A few of us had some spare Mexican pesos so to exchange these you had to go to these guys and just poke your money through the metal fence to them. It was very bizarre. They could have been giving us the worst exchange rate ever for all we knew! We arrived here early evening, although the sun sets at about 6 here so much earlier than in Mexico.
Arriving on the island
We all went for dinner on the island at Fran's, which had great home cooked food. It is just benches located on the side of the island, and you go and get your drinks from the local store! Being an island it's quite a bit pricier than Mexico. Everything is very relaxed here, so meals are quite long and leisurely.
Yesterday we all went on a great snorkelling trip - our boat for the day was the Ragga King, and there was lots of reggae music and rum punch as we sailed back in the afternoon. We had 3 stops, the first one we mainly saw fish and coral, so was a good introduction. The second and third stops were in the Hol Chan Marine reserve. The first was the shark and ray alley - as soon as our boat stopped they fed the nurse sharks and they swarmed around our boat, just to scare me even more! I got in after they had calmed down a bit and gone to the other boat. There were huge rays as well, which were amazing to see!
Sharks (so wish I had an underwater camera!)
We sailed on for about 30 minutes to our final stop, which was my favourite of the day. We had a guided snorkel of the area, and saw rays, turtles, eels and many different varieties of fish. The current was pretty strong in the water but it was such a good day of snorkelling!
The Ragga King!
We were dropped back in time for the sunset at the Split. Caye Caulker was split by Hurricane Hattie in 1961, so this area is now called the split. There is a bar there where a lot of people hang out in the day and you can swim in the water there. The sunset was so beautiful here last night.
After dinner we went to I&I, a bar which had an upstairs full of swings and hammocks! I love how relaxed and casual everything is here! We leave the island tomorrow, so I'm just having a chilled day today, but will probably head out to the Split soon. We're heading for San Ignacio next, where we're staying in an ecolodge. I'm excited to see more of Belize after such a great time on the island!
***Good Luck with the trek in Jordan Mum :)***
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