San Cristobal to Belize

San Cristobal is a unique and beautiful colonial town. With mild sunny days and crisp to freezing mornings and nights, the cobbled streets and delicious coffees made our few days here a real treat. We spent a day exploring the town, trudging up and down hills and thousands of steps to explore churches and gorgeous artesian stores.

On our second day there, we went on a horseback ride to Chemula Village. First we went to a farm where we met our horses… Mine was a cute brown one. Then we set off on our journey, winding along roads and going cross country, seeing people living traditionally on farms and around the outskirts of the village. My horse and mum’s horse kept having fights because mine wanted to be in the front. Everytime my horse started trotting, mum’s did too and tried to take over. At times I was nearly bouncing right off my seat! When we arrived in the village we went into the church in the centre … It was beautiful inside with other a thousand candles lit up, pine needles on the floor and lovely fabrics draped from the ceiling. There were some indigenous women and kids (and a rather large chicken) sitting on the floor praying and drinking soft drink (they believe the soft drink wards off evil spirits). As I watched I became horrified when the lady rubbed the chicken over her son, offered it up in prayer, sprinkled some soft drink on it then proceeded to kill it right there in the church… Oh, and then she rubbed it over her son again for good measure. Mum explained that this is their culture and beliefs and that it is actually quite nice to pray for a chicken prior to killing and consuming… Perhaps we can try that at home.

After San Cristobal we headed back up to Palenque. Arriving late off the bus, we stayed in a very dodgy hotel which Mum got mixed up with another from her guide book. It was super cheap but felt like a sweat box and smelled like pee… Nevermind, it was only one night. The next day we headed for El Panche, which is a small cluster of cabanas by the river on the way to the Palenque ruins. It was beautiful… We had a rustic cabana in the jungle looking right out over a little creek. I had a ball playing in the creek and pretending I was a jungle princess. We slept at night to the sounds of howler monkeys making their crazy noises. We also had fun exploring the Palenque ruins which are also set in the jungle.

After two days in Palenque, we got up ridiculously early in the morning to head off on a two day adventure bound for Guatemala. The first day we visited the ruins of Yachizilla which are only accessible by boat. We jumped into a motorised dugout and headed down a long river which runs along the border of Mexico and Guatemala. The ruins were spectular and on the way back down the river we even saw a crocodile (although not nearly as big as the ones in the NT). We also visited another site called Bonampax on our way to our accommodation for the night – a hut in a traditional Lancandon village. It was a bit strange being there…. The next day we got up and had a strange cab ride where we were picked up by a bus to boat to bus to get to Guatemala.

After a long trip we finally arrived in Flores, Guatemala which is a little island in the middle of a lake. From here we made a day trip to the spectacular Tical ruins. They were amazing – by far the best we have seen yet!! We spotted lots of cool animals and also climbed up a very high, very rickety staircase to be greeted to a fabulous view over the jungle below.  Unfortunately, Mum freaked out when we were at the top (sans any sort of railing or safety precautions) and had a hard time making it back down again!!  But we got onto safe ground in the end thanks to some very encouraging words from a lovely couple from Israel (thanks guys!!).

After our time in Flores we were undecided as to whether to head south towards Antigua in Guatemala or cut across east to Belize... in the end, we decided we wanted to see what Belize had to offer so off we ventured in search of the next east bound chicken bus...