As soon as you cross the border from Belize things change. You are offered the chance to pay the immigration official a 3$ bribe to stamp your passport. Its an illegal charge and you don't have to pay it if you don't mind waiting a few hours before they let you into the country. The road becomes a sea of mud on which the bus slews around as it tries to miss families of pigs.
The other big change is that people don't smile. It comes as quite a culture shock after Mexico where you hear the sound of laughter everywhere. Maybe if I lived in a country that had suffered under a string of vicious dictators and military rule I might not smile much. It was only 11 years ago that a peace treaty ended an internal conflict that claimed 150,00 lives and resulted in 50, 000 people 'disappearing' - all in a country of only 12 million.
Tikal is an amazing Maya city in a magical setting middle of the jungle. We went there for sunset and sunrise. At 6am we had the place completely to ourselves for 2 hours as the jungle creatures stirred, especially the howler monkey whose unearthly roar would terrify if you didn't know what it was.
One of the weirdest things we have done is to swim across a cold jungle river to a steaming hot waterfall. There was even a cave behind the waterfall that acted like a sauna. If this had been in a developed country it would have been one of its biggest tourist attractions. Here, there was just a little man who looked after your things for you
I managed to negotiate us a cheap bus ticket when Marilyn wanted to pay a bit more and travel by luxury bus. Our bus was very old, visited every town on the way turning a 3 hour journey into 5. The roof leaked so we got soaked and the driver let on a series of mad preachers who gave sermons, read from the bible and then explained why you should give them lots of money. They did this at the top of their voices partly because the driver left the blaring music on. I think Marilyn agreed that this was all worth while given that I had saved us 50p each.
We stayed in a jungle lodge that you could only get to by boat. If you went to town one of the bars would call up the boat by radio to get you back. It was 3.30 at the hostel and very hot. About 10 people where reading or playing chess and I had the best spot, the only hammock. Eventually I drifted off to sleep only to be woken up by an enormous fart. As I came too I realised that everyone was looking at me!!
The Garifina are descended from slaves abandoned by the British after a failed uprising. They mainly live in an isolated village only accessible by boat. One of these guys came up to us and said ''where do you come from''. Our stock answer is always ''England near London'', its too complicated to explain about Suffolk. This guy responded with 'Do you know Ipswich'. Apparently many years ago a guy from Ipswich went there and helped with the local school
Despite all the warnings about crime in Guatemala (The Rough Guide '' there still isn't a functioning police force and lynchings of suspected criminals is not uncommon'') we felt safe and will be going back to visit the south of the country.
We are now in Honduras
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