San Ignacio and the Belize Botanic Gardens

After Orange Walk we headed south and west, towards the Guatemalan border. From here, we had several days exploring, visiting the ruined Mayan city of Caracol (which has Belize's tallest manmade structure to date - still today) and caving (spelunking!) and camping in the jungle. These photos are from the Belize Botanic Gardens at DuPlooys, planted by an American expat family on hectares of old farming land. Beautiful place.

More photos of San Ignacio to come!

Lamanai

We took a trip up the New River to the Mayan ruins of Lamanai. Beautiful trip and amazing ruins. On the boat we met Lynne, a British expat teaching in Libya. Hi Lynne!

Orange Walk!

Orange Walk Town was our first stop in Belize, just about two hours across the Mexican border.


We were lucky enough to visit our friend Lourdes' grandmother, Miss Tina, who lives in Orange Walk. This is one of the beautiful orchids she has growing in her garden. If you're reading this, Lourdes, thank you very much again, and hi to Jonathan, Isabella and Gabriel!


We were treated to tea with homemade tortillinas and beans - really good!


Miss Tina and Saya.


We also discovered the iconic Belizean beer, Belikin. The Belikin beer truck here featured with Mr Novelo of Jungle River Tours.


Next post: We visit the amazing Mayan ruins of Lamanai, or "Place of the Submerged Crocodile".

Belize!

Hello everyone!

We have finally got around to internetting after aabout a week so far in wonderful Belize.

Since our last post, we took an overnight bus from Villahermosa to Chetumal, on the Mexico-Belize border, then another bus to the town of Orange Walk, in northern Belize.

Here we stayed two days, and were fortunate enough to be able to visit our friend Lourdes' grandma, Miss Tina, who lives there. We also went on an interesting boat trip up the New River to the Mayan ruins of Lamanai ("Place of the submerged crocodile").

From Orange Walk we travelled south and west, to San Ignacio, close to the Guatemalan border. San Ignacio is really intersting, and from there we visited Mayan ruins at Caracol, the Belize Botanic Gardens, and did an overnight jungle camping and caving trip including the amazing "ATM" (has a long Mayan name, Actun Tunichil Muknal) cave, which is full of Mayan relics.

We then bussed south along the Hummingbird Highway (so named because the bus seems to hover like a hummingbird as it rounds corners on two wheels...Saya wants me to tell you that I made that up...) to the village of Maya Centre, on the edge of the Cockscomb Basin Jaguar Reserve.

Now we are on the Caribbean coast, in the tiny Garifuna town of Hopkins. Hot and sunny, and feeling very lazy. Listening to lots of reggae, and we have booked a drumming lesson for this afternoon.

From here we plan to head out to one of the islands for some hard-core relaxing.

Updates with more details and photos! to follow. A bit later.

Hope you are all wonderful.

Villahermosa

Hello everyone!

This is an unusually "real-time" update because we are here now. Hooray!

We have left Oaxaca, catching last night's overnight bus to the city of Villahermosa in the state of Tabasco. And yep, it's hot here.
Closer to the north coast, it is much warmer and more humid than the inland and more mountainous Oaxaca.

It's been fun, getting over the bus-lag this morning, and wandering around checking out the town's "Historical Centre" and its Malecon (or riverside esplanade, currently under a large levee of sandbags in case the river floods). Fortuitously, we have fixed Paul's broken prescription sunnies (welded back together in under an hour and a half!) and got the rest of our postcards off so we aren't left carrying heaps of Mexico stamps! Little things excite us these days.

We have the day here, before heading further towards the Belize border. Next stop is the border town of Chetumal, where we aim to catch a bus tomorrow to Orange Walk, Belize!

More updates soon!

PS. I have just added photos to the first Oaxaca post, the Zihua post, Oporto, some of the Burgundy posts, and perhaps some others as well...so if you feel like methodically checking backwards chronologically, you might see some exciting new pictures.

Oaxaca continued!

This entry (to be filled in more impressively) will tell you about our excellent time in Oaxaca, enrolling in the Academia Vinigulaza Spanish School, our wonderful homestay family and homestay companions, the fun people we met and interesting places we visited!

I almost don't need to write any more, do I?

Janardan

For everyone who was wondering where Janardan has been all this time, and why he hasn't been featuring in any of the touristey photos, we thought we'd start some "Janardan Updates". He's been a bit of a homebody, and likes to make sure our bags are safe and the room is kept clean - so he hasn't really been out and about with us as much as on other trips. That said, he has had time to hit the beach in Cento Buchi.

More updates to come!


Janardan in Eden, NSW, on our road trip in March up to see Helen, Troy, Ashleigh and Dayle in Queensland.


Janardan and Paul in Eden.


Janardan arrives at Graziella's place in Cento Buchi, Italy.


Janardan and Saya soak up some rays in Cento Buchi.


Feeling patriotic, Cento Buchi.