Later we took the bus to Belize City. The bus was an old American school bus, which was practically crumbling...Except for a couple Belizians, the rest was all gringo. We passed through the customs without any problems and entered Belize. The bus was real fun, the Belizian crew on the bus was very nice to us, the soft Caribbean Music was relaxing, the wind blowing through the windows was nice...The highways did not seem very good quality...I saw both English and Spanish on the road signs but it was mostly English. After a bumpy journey, we arrived in Belize City at 5:30 pm...As soon as we arrived there, we got disappointed with the number of homeless people in the town, the tiny size of it, dirty streets, the crumbling ugly buildings, lots of huge cars with polaroid windows, lack of restaurants and closed shops. It looked like one of the smallest towns we saw in Peru or Mexico...After taking a walk around, we got a little afraid of the people staring at us, so we decided to look for some food. The only attraction in the town was the Cruise Ship Port and it was closed. We lost our hope to find a place to have dinner, so we ended up at Brodie’s Supermarket which was full of American products and even magazines...Their money is Belizian Dollars and there is the picture of Queen Elizabeth on the money. We got some feta cheese, some bread, fruit and juice to fill up and decided to watch TV which was practically a US TV with US Channels like ABC,TNT,NBC etc...Our hotel was like an old colonial house, the windows were so sold that all the noise was coming inside and remote control was not working. It is pretty hot there, we decided to visit the islands of Caye Caulker and San Pedro the next day. 
We took the speed boat to Caye Caulker and San Pedro for 20 USD. The first stop was Caye Caulker which took about 35 minutes to arrive. The boat trip was pretty bumpy. Later we arrived in San Pedro which is also known as “La Isla Bonita” because of Madonna’s song. It is an island which is practically designed for tourism, everywhere is dotted with hotels and summer resort complexes. Most of the tourists coming to Belize usually go straight to San Pedro or Caye Caulker. The islands are also famous for their long coral reefs (second after Australia) and blue hole which is one of the deepest holes in the world for diving... We were wondering why Belize City is left that ugly and after we saw the islands, we knew the answer...All the investments were done to the islands... Caye Caulker was my second stop. I walked straight to “The Split” which occured after a huge hurricane that split the island into two...At the point where the split occured, people started a new beach club and put the tables and seats into the sea! 
I decided to swim in that turquiose color wonderful water but the current was amazingly strong. I could not stand still in the water without swimming... If you just stand in the water, the water takes you out to open water within only 5 minutes!!! Even I think I’m a good swimmer, I decided to stay near the beach as it was not a good place to test my swimming skills:). I had a cold Belikin Beer which is their national beer and headed back to Belize City. I bought our tickets for Flores, Guatemala for the next day for 20 USD each. Our bus for Flores was at 9:30 am but we were told to be there earlier, so we went to the boat terminal at 9:00. Our vehicle was a small one and it was full of gringoes like us! The Belizian – Guatemalan Border was about 3 hours from Belize City. The formalities were easy and we entered Guatemala without any trouble. Flores, the place we were heading was a little island which was located in the middle of Lake Peten.
We arrived in Flores, Guatemala at about 2:30 pm and realized the sweet girl sitting in front of us in the bus...Her name was Pamela, she was Argentinian from a German/Italian descent family, 24 years old and traveling Central America for 15 days....She was going to stay at Mayab Hotel, so we decided to try that hotel too. The room cost us 23 USD per night with cable TV and private bathroom as usual...In the evening, Piril stayed in the room and I went out to a restaurant overlooking Lake Peten to have some cold Gallo Beer...The town was very nice, with its cobble stoned narrow streets, lots of shops and restaurants...While we were talking with Pamela, she told us that she bought a tour to Tikal for 300 Quetzales which was worth 40 USD, with lunch, guide and transportation back to Flores...We bought the same tour and decided to go together...The next day, they came to pick us up at 7:30 and after a short waiting for the other members of our tour at Tıkal Airport, we headed to Tikal. Tikal is one of the largest Mayan Settlements in the middle of a jungle, its weather is pretty humid and hot. Our guide, a Mayan descent, Benedicto said that the temperatures may rise up to 40 C from time to time, but thank God, we did not have such a high temperature. We entered the National Park of Tikal and drove inside the jungle about 10 kms more to get to the entrance of the Mayan Site. Benedicto told us about the trees, plants and animals living in the jungle and
told us about the monkeys which jump from tree to tree around. We saw many monkeys, tiny, big, brown, black, babies...They were joyfully jumping from tree to tree...Later slowly we started visiting the temples which were numbered as 1,2,3...They built huge temples in pyramid shapes and some of them were restored by the American and British Mayan Researchers. Finally we saw a huge temple which was overlooking the jungle and without going up to it, one can hardly imagine the site’s location within the jungle...After the tour has ended, we met a Peruvian couple living in Guatemala City and had lunch together.
They were very sweet, we chatted on the way back to Flores and later we traveled with Natalia and Pamela together that night to Guatemala City. Jose Carlos, who was the husband of Natalia stayed there for some more company work. We bought the bus ticket from the company ADN which claimed to have great buses but the bus was a Chinese made one and it was not comfortable, besides being a fridge:).When we arrived in Guatemala City, we said goodbye to Natalia and went to the hostel of Pamela to accompany her. She was going to travel to El Salvador the next day, so we went to pick up her bus ticket and later had a great breakfast together. We had decided to head to Antigua without staying in Guatemala City and Pamela decided to come with us too. We took our backpacks and went to the bus station for Antigua. The bus was a “Chicken Bus” which was an old American school bus and the driver was a psycho who competed with another bus driver on the highway!!!!....Another weird thing which grabbed our attention was the women insisting on sitting on the front row next to us!...Although half of the bus was empty, these women wanted to squeeze their bottoms right next to us and while I fell to sleep at some point, Pamela said ok to one of the insistent women while we drove about 15 mins like this!.... We thought it would be a tradition and just laughed at it!...After praying to survive from that bus, we came to Antigua....
Next chapter: Colonial and beautiful Antigua...Lake Atitlan, Panajachel and Guatemala City...
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