Heading north to the border and town of San Ignacio
 
Back in our truck we headed out of the jungle (after seeing no jaguar boo hoo!) and sat on the side of the road waiting for a chicken bus to pass to take myself, Adam and David north to San Ignacio and the rest of the guys south heading for Honduras/Guatemala! Saying goodbye from the other side of the road, the other guy's bus finally arrived and then after an hour and a half wait ours did too . The journey for a claustrophobic like me was not the best.... Basically in Belize there is one main road from north to south and one from east to west and that's it, every 90 minutes ONE chicken bus rattles along these highways serving the entire country waiting on the side of the road for a lift so you can imagine the outcome. Thankfully I managed to eventually sit near the front but stop after stop more and more families were waiting and not only was the bus chocker, but I also had about 10 people crammed standing next to the driver just in the stairwell area, it was hideous! The lovely bust and large belly of a local lady in my face was nice too, god knows how I stayed on the thing it was hell!!
 
Eventually we stopped in Belmopan and changed to our next chicken bus for the ride to San Ignacio the last town before the border to Guatemala. This part of the journey was new to us and in contrast we passed a slightly more populated countryside, I even saw my first Belize school! The houses seemed slightly larger and it felt at least like this part of Belize was slightly more developed than previous . After a long day of 7 hours travelling we reached our destination. San Ignacio was a small town based amongst wooded hills lined by the Maca River and all in all was quite cool. We donned for the cheapest bed in town, 'Central Backpackers' where we met the owner, Kenny G, apart from being slightly stoned and drunk, he appeared a cool kinda guy with lots of advice for us and the wooden shack style room was cool too. That eve we all had one thing in mind, food, and finally sat down to our first proper meal in 3 days, bliss! Feeling rough again after though I chilled whilst Ads and David sampled the local pub with a few beers for our last night in Belize...

Our last day in Belize saw us sucked into an old scam, not good, we thought we were wise to the old tricks but we had dropped our guard and our supposedly 'nice' landlord Kenny G took advantage of us. How the three of us didn't see it I will never know we did have some revenge but only realised it much later....
 
The day began with a trip to some more maya ruins called Xunantunich near the border set in the most beautiful surroundings . The area has so much you can do, from kayacking to exploring the many cave systems that are so famous in Belize but time short we opted to see more ruins and we didn't regret the choice. Catching a quick breakfast we caught the local bus for a short trip and then onto a short hand crank ferry crossing, then up a pretty steep hill in the sweltering heat to the ruins where on hiking we saw the biggest Iguana we have seen to date! We spent a couple of hours wandering round taking lots of photos, these ruins were dominated by the Castillo which sat at 130ft overlooking the surrounding landscape with Guatemala in the distance. Partially restored and with hardly anyone there, they really were impressive and one of my favourites definitely, a lot less tourists than Mexico thank god!! We could have spent so much time chilling here taking it all in but time short we hiked back down again ready to catch the next local bus back into the town for our so called 'Kenny G private tranport 'to the border!!!

The border crossing....see next entry!