The bus from Flores at 5am was a little late, but otherwise fine. Our 'vegetarian' sandwich from the hostel had ham in it, which we had kind of expected, but we got a free juice box out of them. We also got a free coffee, which was both good and bad. Good, because it kept us awake until the border crossing to Belize; and bad, because it kept us awake until the border crossing to Belize. The bus was big and comfortable, and was meant to arrive at 10am into Belize City, for the 10.30am boat to Caye Caulker. So far, so good.

The border crossing was also straightforward . We filled in a form and left Guatemala to the tunes of Rammstein, being played over the music system. One hundred metres further on, we entered Belize with no paperwork, no fingerprinting, no searches, and no costs involved. We also managed to get our remaining few Quetzals changed into Belizean Dollars. The Belizean bank notes have a young British Queen's head on it, as the Queen is the head of state. Now Belize is an independent Commonwealth realm, and was formerly a British colony. The change back to speaking English again was surprisingly difficult. For whatever reason, we were left waiting at the side of the road just after the border crossing for the bus to drive to 100 metres across the border. We figured the driver was having a second breakfast or something. Forty minutes later, we were on our way again.

We napped for the remainder of the journey and arrived at the dock in Belize City at 10.30am; greeted by signs telling us what the hurricane warning flags mean . We'd missed the 10.30am boat. The whole point of getting up at 3.30am for a 5am bus was to get the 10.30am boat, so we were a bit miffed by the bus' inability to arrive on time. Ken got drenched by a torrential downpour whilst finding a nearby cashpoint, and received quite a lot of hassle from people on the street. We grabbed some breakfast (curry, possibly not the best choice of a very limited selection) just in time for the 12pm boat. We joined a massive queue and were on the last boat to leave, which had to return to the dock because it's engine wasn't working. We finally got underway to Caye Caulker at 12.30pm, and thankfully the crossing was fast and pretty smooth. On arriving, we still had to wait for the luggage to arrive, and tried to hide from the blistering sun under a signpost. Replete with luggage, we were set free on Caye Caulker to find what we needed - coffee, coffee and more coffee. Oh, and some accommodation as well.

Caye Caulker is a limestone coral island, covered in sand, off the Caribbean coast of Belize . It's pretty small. It used to be larger, until the villagers dug a trench through the island to create a waterway, effectively creating two islands when the tidal action made the trench significantly bigger. Known as 'The Split', it is the place to be seen, apparently. We were only too happy to see rum being sold everywhere. Caye Caulker is the jumping off point for many watersport activities. For us, the main draw was diving the Blue Hole, a submarine sinkhole that is famous for clear waters, and sharks. Awesome.

We went to find some accommodation as listed in the Lonely Planet. It didn't exist, so Jayna drank rum and pineapple juice whilst Ken did the rounds of the local accommodation. We could easily have blown our budget just on accommodation in Caye Caulker, but Ken managed to find us a reasonably priced sea-front (nearly) cabin on stilts, which was private, quiet and awesome. The downside, which was the same across the whole island, was an all-pervading smell of something between fish and sewage . We suspect it was actually rotting sea grass, piled up on the seashore. Still, the place was nice and surprisingly cheaper than many other places we've stayed, though the downside was the internet didn't work for two days, and the mattress on the bed was incredibly uncomfortable. After checking in, we drank some more rum, and wandered down the island. It didn't take very long. We got some food, more rum, and made it to the Split in time for sunset. We were too tired to do much more, so walked back to our cabin and had an early night.

On Thursday 23rd, we felt much better after a good few hours of sleep. We ventured out for an expensive breakfast – food was expensive in Caye Caulker – and headed to check out the dive shops. There were loads of places offering dive services to the Blue Hole and other reef based dive spots around Caye Caulker, but only two of these places were registered with the PADI website. Always with safety being of paramount importance, we restricted our choice to these two dive shops, having also checked the reviews on Tripadvisor . We went to the first, which looked super professional, and enjoyed the air conditioning whilst we got some information about the package on offer. It was expensive. We headed to the second dive shop and did the same. We went with the second dive shop, Frenchies, only because it was cheaper. It was still very expensive to dive the Blue Hole, but something we really wanted to do. We agreed to spend as little as possible on anything else whilst in Caye Caulker, to try to recoup the money spent on diving. The package we got was three dives on Saturday 25th, the first to about 21 metres depth in the Blue Hole, the second off the reef wall in Half Moon Caye and the third off the reef wall in Long Caye. The Blue Hole was a long way from Caye Caulker, so it was going to be a long day of diving, with lots to look forward to.

After signing up for the dives with Frenchies, we headed back to the cabin, and realised that just from walking in the sunshine before 11am, with intermittent shade, for half an hour, we were really quite sunburnt . Whoops. We moisturised, suncreamed and relaxed on our balcony for a while, before heading off the Ignacios pier for a snorkel. The island is surrounded by sea grass so we floated over this for a while, spotting a couple of big fish, followed by two yellow stingrays, which were incredibly well camouflaged. Later, we headed out for dinner, bought rum and pineapple juice from the shop, and drank merrily on our balcony. We found that the local Belizean rum, bought from the shop, was the same price as a bag of crisps and much more tasty! Madness!

On Friday 24th, we again woke early and made the most of the day, before the blistering sunshine really set in. We headed out for a less expensive breakfast, and then straight to the swimming beach at the Split. We spent over an hour checking out the baby fish around the edge of the sea grass, and the much larger fish hanging around the base of the piers and at the edge of the Split. We saw trumpetfish, sergeant majors, angelfish, crabs and a starfish . After leaving the water, we got chatting to a lovely couple from Dallas, Victor and Luz. They were kind enough to buy us a drink and give us some suncream, and we had a lovely time swapping travel and dog stories. (Please give Cowboy Winston a big hug from us when you guys get home!)

We headed back to the cabin to tend to our sunburn and showering needs, before chilling on the balcony some more. Later, we headed to Frenchies to sort out our dive equipment for the following day. We also booked a boat ticket to get to Chetumal, on the border between Mexico and Belize, for Sunday 26th.

On Saturday 25th, we didn't go diving to the Blue Hole. We woke up at 4.20am and were at the dive shop for 5.30am as planned. We had some bread for breakfast, plus free coffee, grabbed our equipment and climbed on board the boat. Unfortunately, the boat engine didn't work. We went out to sea a bit to try to get it going, and it wouldn't work . So we went back into dock and a mechanic was called. After an hour, he fixed it, but as we pulled out to sea again, it broke. There was no diving for us. As we'd booked our boat for Mexico for the following day, we thought we were done for. But the dive shop offered to pay for our boat tickets, meaning we were not out of pocket. We checked that there were spaces on the boat for Mexico the following day, eventually got our refund from the dive shop after a bit of hassle, and decided to trust that the engine would be fixed in time.

This gave us another day in Caye Caulker, so we went to the Split, arriving just in time to witness a man bludgeon an octopus to death, badly. It was horrible. We swam across the Split to the north island of Caye Caulker. We did some snorkelling off the Split as well and saw quite a few fish. We went back to the dive shop for a free lunch (rice and coleslaw, not fantastic, but free) and headed back to the cabin to arrange to stay another night, and get clean .

On Sunday 26th, we dived the Blue Hole! It was another early start, and this time, the boat engine worked. It was a two hour bumpy boat ride to reach the Blue Hole itself. Without the aerial view it was difficult, but not impossible, to tell what it was we were floating over. We got our equipment in order and jumped in. As Jayna is qualified to PADI open water standards only, the maximum depth allowed for diving is to 18 metres (Ken can legitimately go to 30 metres with his advanced open water qualification). The company said it would take us to 21 metres anyway, but we actually went to 30 metres depth. Which was pretty cool. As soon as we got into the water, we saw some big fish, and as we descended we quickly saw three grey caribbean reef sharks - quickly because we descended past them at a fast rate. Jayna saw a ray at that depth as well. We kept going down and reached a stalactite formation, which we swam under. Due to decompression limits, we didn't have long at the 30 metres point and came back up slowly, looking at the reef and wildlife on the edge of the limestone wall, including a flamingo tongue (a kind of nudibranch), and a spotted moray eel, looking badass . Due to the breathing of another dive group beneath us we also swam past streams of tiny bubbles floating up the limestone wall, which looked like a waterfall in reverse. The visibility was not crystal clear, and at one point we descended through some murky stuff. But it was still pretty good. All too soon - 27 minutes later - the dive was over. It was an experience for sure.

We had some snacks on board and headed to our next dive site, called Half Moon Caye Wall, near to Half Moon Caye. This was a reef wall site, and it was beautiful. Unfortunately, Jayna was having problems with her eyes and mask, which severely limited her ability to see the beauty of the place. Despite that, we saw southern stingrays and a huge barracuda and Ken saw black durgeon and loads of other kinds of fish. The dive lasted 45 minutes and was to the standard 18 metres depth. After the dive, we went to Half Moon Caye for lunch (rice and coleslaw again). We had an hour to eat and go explore. We made our way to a bird watching tower, and it was like a mini Galapagos - there were nesting frigate birds and red footed boobies everywhere . Apparently this is the only other place in the world where the red footed boobies nest. We watched them for a while, before heading back to the beach, spotting giant lizards and hermit crabs of varying sizes along the way. Just like the Galapagos!

The third dive was at a site called The Aquarium, off Long Caye. We'd had a while to shed the nitrogen in our bodies, and had a super cool dive off another reef wall. With no eye problems this time, we both really enjoyed it and saw a quickly moving brittle starfish, a huge shoal of creole wrass, black groupers, a swimming and massive green moray eel, a fire worm, coral banded shrimp, an arrow crab, a spotted moray eel hiding in his hole, parrotfish, queen, grey and french angelfish, and a flamingo tongue. This was amongst huge fan corals and sponge corals, which was so beautiful. This dive was for 55 minutes and to 15 metres depth. We had a long and bumpy journey back to Caye Caulker, where everyone on the boat (bar the captain) napped . We were woken up to an offer of rum punch and tacos and dip, which went down very nicely. After arriving back at Frenchies, we didn't have to sort out the dive equipment, and they gave us some more rum punch to take away with us. We headed to the Split and felt absolutely euphoric as the sun went down on what had been a stunning day. The music was a mixture of styles but included a song which took us right back to Trinidad and Tobago (a previous holiday) - Kerwin du Bois's "I wanna wine but it could be dangerous"!

That evening, we had some very nice dinner, went to bed early and slept extremely well! In the morning, we were ready to pack and head to our next destination - Tulum Pueblo, Mexico!

As for Belize as a country... as we spent almost all our time in Caye Caulker, we can only really talk about Caye Caulker. It was beautiful, though a bit smelly, the locals were friendly and would often stop us for a chat, the diving was stunning, though there wasn't a lot on the caye itself to do. We had a great time relaxing, and we got sunburnt there like nowhere else on our travels. We can see why people fall in love with the place. We had a great time, but were happy to move on to our next destination after a few days.