Day 6 & 7 - Heading south on the local 'chicken' bus to Placencia and our first glimpse of Madison India! via skype.
 
Today was time to leave our paradise isle (boo hoo) and head down the coast to an equally tropical part of the coastline called Plaencia, all dreading returning via Belize City though! After dropping a local off on another island which consisted purely of a golf course,(not a bad life eh!) we eventually reached the mainland and headed via taxi with Sandy, James and the Yorkshire couple we bumped into again. Going via the backroads my impression of Belize city was still pretty grim and unsafe and on arriving at the bus station I saw the same guy from when we arrived so walked very fast with my head down so he didn't see me! Then onto our 'chicken bus' it was, this consisted of an old yellow n black striped 1960's American 'Bluebird' school bus, pretty cool eh, made in Kansas with all the mod cons.....not! Being a school bus the seat width was designed for two 6 year olds not 33/35yr old adults (well if you can call us that!) and the comfort zone for the bum was padded to last for 5minute school bus journeys of 4-5 stone children NOT 6 hours with a weight on the butt of 8-11 stone!!! We were in for a fun ride which was also highlighted when after just 5 minutes our bus driver had already stopped 5 times to ram more people on, we could now see why the book said that although we may just travel 30 miles in Belize, it normally takes 3 hours!!! I suppose this is all part of the experience but for me as the bus got crammed and crammed, the heat rose it wasn't what I would call the most relaxed of experiences but at least I managed to stay on....  
 
The journey again saw us passing scattered shacks, the occasional wooden church and miles of lush green fields, the poverty of living conditions enhanced by the women washing their clothes in small streams on the side of the road. Again we could drive for miles with almost no human existence or village. Bizarrely though we went through one village which stood out, as white men with long beards/fedora hats and women with bonnets and aprons similar to the Amish inhabitants were riding on horses and old carts...... random and interesting to know how this village evolved in Belize of all places.   

Mid route the landscape started to change with tropical mountain forests all around us as we rode through the stunning Blue Hole National Park and Maya mountains, if only we had had time to explore here it looked beautiful! Every now and again we would see to our surprise quite large plush houses but mainly the habitation consisted of shacks or tin/concrete huts and not a lot else. Crossing many muddy water rivers we came upon a bridge that had been completely washed away by a flash flood just 3 weeks before, the bridge could still be seen lodged down the valley, sadly a local lady on the bus told us that 2 people had died. The river was still high and I wasn't too confident with the temporary stone 'dump' line they had attempted to make instead which also looked like it would wash away any minute but thankfully our overloaded school bus made it!
 
After a couple of stops, bad toilets, dodgy side of the road sandwiches of chicken bone...yuk!, we finally arrived with the numbest of bums ever at Mango Creek, where from here we had to catch a boat to the peninsula Placencia. Our taxi ride which would take '15-20 minutes to walk' typically lasted for 2 minutes, then the boat cost us 'gringo's' double that of the locals! Hanging off the edge of the crowded boat, we journeyed through the small creeks towards the lagoon of Placencia, a cool ride despite being rammed and Adam getting completely soaked! A tad tired we hiked with Sandy and James along the beach and finally found a nice place to crash directly on the beach called Sea Spray, this place had no ants and clean smelling water, we were all in heaven! 
 
First impressions of Placencia were pretty cool, it consisted of quite large and colourful wooden houses in good condition with tiny small lanes running between them, randomly one of these is classed as a 'high street' and sits in the Guinness Book of records for the worlds narrowest street! The white sand beach was lined with palm trees with choppy blue water so we were looking forward to some more chilling and swimming the next day. That night in true Belize style the four of us bought a bottle of rum and sat drinking and chatting till early am, the plan to go on a tour the next day was now definitely out the window!
 
The next day unfortunately saw all our plans go out the window in that it was absolutely throwing it down and in the storm overnight it looked like the entire rubbish of Belize had come ashore, the beach was just horrible, 200metres of plastic bottles, needles, you name it it was washed up! In the end we ended up bumping into the Austrian guy David and his two swiss friends so just sat chilling and chatting, something that just makes the travelling life even more perfect. 

We then wandered through the small backstreets, admired the beautiful lagoon now that the sun had come out then fortunately found skype so that we could phone home to see how Madison was doing!  


To our surprise Sasha and baby had just arrived home and we got to see Madison and the proud parents and grandparents on web cam which was just brilliant, if not a tad emotional!!  

Madison is just beautiful with lots of dark hair (like her father of course!!) at just 3 days old. Sasha looked amazing too, you would have no idea she had given birth only a few days before! Congrats again Sasha and Andrew, she is adorable and that's coming from the non maternal idiots Betts and bro Hogarth!!  

Feeling a tad homesick we cheered ourselves up with a beer of course,(plus a very funny sign in the village made us smile, seem pic!) a homemade tuna sandwich (!!) and then more rum in our room till late with Sandy and James, obviously a good idea with our 6am start the next day!!