Belize

Main street, Caye Caulker
Fun times had in here.

So I had my shiny new Emergency Passport and we'd just met up with Chris & Jake again in Tulum. Caught an early bus down to the border at Chetumal and things started going right: ate an awesome torta outside the bus station (bread roll filled with beef, onion and lime juice.. made up for a gross one we'd had in Mexico City) and then the bus driver came and told us the bus was ready to leave (more than an hour earlier than expected.) This got our hopes up that we might make it in time for the last water taxi to Caye Caulker this evening, so we didn't have to stay a night in Belize City!

BC was a slum. An impression of tarpaulins, market stalls, dirty broken buildings, people laying around the bus stop, broken vans parked precariously along the canal. Luck seemed to be with us, we jumped into one of these van 'taxis' to go to the ferry dock and were just in time for the last water taxi to the island Caye Caulker.

The hostel we wanted was booked out so we settled for two wooden cabanas outside another Backpacker's place. Chris, Jake and an English guy Sam they'd met in Tulum took one cabana and Scott and I were in an adjoining one. They were so flimsy and bare, but we could lock the door, and we didn't even think twice about looking for another place to stay. After dinner we had an early night, locking the door from the inside and automatically taking our valuables up the ladder to the mattress on the top floor. Left our big packs on the bottom floor. I would like to return to this moment and drag the whole thing up the ladder.

So round 5am we both woke up to a deafening wood banging sound, I thought it was Scott falling down the ladder. It was a bump bump falling sound. He thought it was coconuts on the roof. But as the minutes went by with no other noises we started forgetting what it sounded like, how close it sounded.

We didn't notice anything else and I went back to sleep but he stayed awake and heard rustling outside our window about 20 mins later, looked out the window and saw a balaclavad man moseying around! Scott started climbing down the ladder- to do what? something heroic?- but I said we should just turn the light on to scare him off. So we did, and then realised with the light on we couldn't see outside anymore, too dark. It was quite scary. Turned it off. He had gone. Then discovered that Scott's whole big pack was not in the room anymore. And mine was ransacked. And the window was broken open.

Where we were sleeping when our stuff was stolen just down the ladder (that I'm standing on to take the photo)

Luckily when we looked outside we found his pack all ransacked on the ground. And through our dedusive dectective skills we reasoned: the noise was the burgler trying to lift Scott's pack through the window, but the flimsy bed had broken and all the planks hit the ground, waking us up. Then he scrammed out the window. And as we hadn't investigated after hearing the noise, he came sneaking back 20 mins later to go through the pack he had dropped outside, and that's when Scott saw him (but couldn't see low enough to see the pack.)

So what we lost: Scott: camera, toiletries, medicines (inc. malaria) Jess: camera gear like chargers, cables, battery, memory cards, etc which were all in a mesh bag in my big pack. And my underwear bag. I guess he thought I could have put valuables in it? But nope, just annoying for me.

Thank God I'd had my cameras, new passport and wallet up on the top level in my daypack, and Scott had his iPhone, passport and bank card up there too. That could have been a real disaster if I'd lost my Emergency passport. It was so frustrating though. We'd just caught up to the others and were ready to be backpackers again, not to spend the next two days in Police Stations first at Caye Caulker and then at San Pedro (another island) to get police reports. And for this being an English speaking country, it took even longer than the Mexican debacle.

Snatched the end of the sun up at the Split

Long story short, Chris & Jake were snorkeling and sunbaking and drinking beer up at the Split while Scott and I were sweating on broken plastic chairs in a tiny office while the un-uniformed police officer chowed down on a fish burrito and typed with one finger. We were constantly interrupted by people bringing him things for lunch, trying to work out who could do the next shift -"Naw, he sleepin"- And a Rasta guy kept asking if they'd found his dog yet. The document looked a bit like this:

"I am Scott Sayers I am an Australian Student at Victoria State which is in Australia. I want to say that I arrived for the first time in this country and this morning I was awaken by a massive noise. I saw a male person with a beanie over his face with holes for eyes covering his face. And I saw my room had been Burglarised and ransackled."

We couldn't quite believe this document was going to be taken for real, and then found out we had to go to another island for an official one. The second one was better grammatically and on official paper but mine starts "Jessica Hoadley, 22 year-old Austrian lab technician." Not sure where they got that from!

Cooling my jets after frustrating hours in the police station. Quite a nice spot.

Anyway. Caye Caulker was pretty. It's a tiny island a couple of km long and about 800m wide. The motto was 'Go Slow' which would have been fine if we weren't trying to get things done. There were no beaches so the place to swim was up at the Split where you could jump off a jetty. We ate both nights by the water at a place called Jolly Roger's where Roger himself (one of the fattest men I've ever seen) serves you. There's no menu but the choice of chicken, lobster, or just vegies which are all bbqed in some amazing sauce and served with mashed potato, garlic bread, rum punch and chocolate cake.

Most of the restaurants/ bars had signs up saying 'Happy Hour: 3pm Until Everybody Happy!'

Obviously we moved hostels to the good one which had been full the first night, and that new place was great.

Got up really early on the third day to start our journey to Guatemala, new police reports in hand, hope we're not making this a Central American tradition!