Guatemala

Belize city was ok, it was a little more sketchy then i wanted, but sketchyness is to be expected in any large city, we were more interested in the area surrounding belize city. we visited the lamanai ruins around orange walk, we got to go on a really awsome river with tonnes of wild life and some german menonites., the view from the top of the tallest maya building was breath taking but the howler monkeys were really erritating at the maya ball court.

San ignacio was a very beautiful town, the people were all so nice and helpful. everyone spoke english still which was good in the sense that we knew kinda what we were doing, but bad in the sense that we werent learning any spanish. We stayed at a fairly new campsite that wasnt in our guidebook. it was really nice, finally i was able to lie in a hammock. we visited the Mountain Pine Ridge Reserve, there were some neat caves. The first one was ginormous it was interesting because of its grandeurness alone. The second cave was a bit harder to get into. Your had to crawl a bit to get into the entrance but the inside was amazing, even though im not usually impressed with caves it was still pretty cool; there was also a 100ft waterfall and some clifts which was really refreshing after sweating in the hot hot jungle, the bus ride up to the caves was the most fun it was bumpy, there were only half of the plug ins for the seatbelts, it was a blast. We also visited the ruins cahal pech, the ruins themselves were completed, seeing the completed ruins was really interesting. im reall excited for guatimala, where everything is cheaper and we might be able to afford a drink at the bar.

we crossed the boarder into guatemala without a hitch, it was about 2 hours from the boarder to santa elena, we had many taxis competing for our business. The new money was more difficult to convert, every USD is worth 7gd which makes everything very cheap. we got a loaf of bread, peanut butter(which is a bit more expensive), 3 drinks and 10 bananas it cost $7 USD. the loaf of bread cost about $.30USD. everyone is doing fine so far. except for being extremely hot. ive had a hard time sleeping the last few nights because of the heat, hopefully it will be cooler in tikal, which im super excited for.

we have to watch our money more now. we were 225usd over our budget, but thats to be expected because Belize is one of the more expensive countries. when we get to san pedro it will be nice just to sit down on a hammock and sip a cold one as well as be able to afford it.