Jesus loves you, today and always...

So it's been a while since I've written & I'll try my best now to get you all up to speed.

Last I wrote I arrived in Playa & had a fantastic night out. Things got better & a couple of English girls arrived (Isabelle & Anna from Kent) & the last few nights of my stay ended up a mixture of sunbathing, random drunk nights, seeing someone get a BJ in the street, getting the most god awful cold (still have it) & eating A LOT of food.

NYE consisted of a group of us going for a meal in a place that I had spotted before (because of the fillet steak hmmm), now bear in mind its NYE we haven't booked a table (for a group) and everywhere is rammed. We do well to blag a table here after everywhere else turns us down & we all arrive excited for the meal ahead. Unfortunately due to the Waitresses being short staffed, the Chef being short staffed & them doing about 4 covers that night, this meant that our food wasn't turning out as planned. It took about an hour to get our food, 30mins to get some bread & butter, 40mins to get the plates for the bread & butter (we'd already eaten it by then) & once the food arrived it was plain, someone's tuna was cold & my steak was cooked cremated rather than the Medium I asked for. Oh I almost forgot, this came with chips, which they forgot & took another 20mins to bring out, class.

Farah will be excited though to hear that for once I actually complained!! I said I was refusing to pay for my steak, end of. It worked a treat, result! But meant I ended up starving most of the night as I had only eaten half of it. FAIL.

Anyway, we all go out but everywhere is expensive to get into so we drink beforehand & then head to the streets which are completely ramo! We buy a couple of massive drinks to keep us going & then find a spot to dance & celebrate midnight. It was slightly chaotic but also a lot of fun, the cheers ring through the air & suddenly everyone's taking photos & spraying champagne EVERYWHERE. Us being girls we run for cover so not to get our hair wet. We then headed to the beach & had waaay too much fun with some sheets, a coloured light and our cameras (see pics). I headed off about 1am as my head was about to implode from the cold & I needed to mend myself for my trip to Belize Baby!!

Oh I have to mention the BPM Festival. This is something I would LOVE to come back for in Mexico. We turned up at the first event which was a huge pool party, house music blasting, people dancing like loons. It was like Ibiza but with an older crowd. SO much fun. I was totally gutted not to get to goto more and one day I would like to go back & live it up there for that week, even Eric Morillo was playing on the day I left, gutted!

So let's get to today. I'm currently in Caye Caulker in Belize. I've had a fab time so far & tomorrow I'm going on a much recommended snorkeling trip with Ragamuffin Tours. We'll be hitting Shark & Ray Alley plus a few other places, have lunch & then rum drinks on the way back YUM! It wasn't easy getting here though….

So Sunday we've (me, Isabelle & Anna) already booked an 8.30am bus to Chetumal so we arrive 1.5hrs early for our boat from Mexico to San Pedro. We will then get another little water taxi from San Pedro to Caye Caulker. As normal things don't go to plan!

We arrived at the bus station for our 8.32am bus at 8.20am to be told the bus has gone, everything is full till 10.30am which means we will miss out boat across to Belize. Gutted we suck it up & I wolf down an Egg McMuffin to ease the pain. Eventually our bus turns up, to which we realise its over booked, so we force our stuff on & ram ourselves in to find there are no seats whatsoever & we have a 4.5hr ride ahead of us standing up. Man up comes into action & we get into positions gearing up for some severe leg cramps to find that 20mins in people get off allowing us to finally take a seat & get some much needed snooze. We arrive in Chetumal & thankfully out of everyone we've picked up along the way (a couple of English Guys & a couple of Irish guys) I managed to work out beforehand that if we missed the boat we'd have to goto Belize City (danger, danger) & then a boat the next morning to Caye Caulker. So we all arrive ready to book round 2 of our bus ride only to find the buses are finished & the only one left leaves at 4pm (its 3.50pm) from another bus station a taxi ride away!!!

We all run to the taxi rank & find a massive queue, we get in the car & by now we have a car in front, us & a car behind all racing to get to this bus before it leaves. 'Follow that car!!!' we shout to the crazy, one toothed, taxi man. He giggled back like a complete loon & asks us all if we are English Hooligans, nice!

We have some banter with the loony taxi man& arrive to find the US style bus still parked & not going till 4.30pm, phew.

We're near the border to Belize so this is where it gets interesting as they all talk English as it is their first language here. It's with a Jamaican twang but their money all has our Queen on & they are under the British Monarch! It's really interesting to suddenly go from Spanish speaking Mexicans to complete English everywhere & feeling like you're suddenly in the Caribbean J

Anyway, we hop on this cool bus & to keep it short the driver basically blares out Jesus & Music radio station the WHOLE 4 hours. The Radio jockey making millions of shout outs for people, how Jesus will love them today & always. Barf. At first I actually found it kind of comforting & relaxing, the cool US school bus, the breeze coming through the windows, but at about hour 3 I actually think my ears started bleeding.

I've been warned about Belize City quite a lot, from guide books to people just letting me know their opinions. I have to say from experience that it is a very very very scary place to be. Thankfully I had a group of people with me at this point but it was still very unnerving to be somewhere that looks like it's just fresh out of a war. Buildings crumbling, random weird men standing on corners looking dodgy & barbed wire fencing on every single building. The taxi man made it clear once we were in the Hostel we do NOT go outside again, esp at night, so if we wanted food he would take us enroute. I was slightly nervous he was actually going to kidnap us & sell us for loose change but he kept to his word & we got some Chic ken stew, rice & beans from a lady randomly on the street with massive food pots. It was actually a really nice meal & I now have a new found respect for Chicken, rice & beans.

The Hostel is covered in barbed wire, the windows have metal barriers on BUT we have a hot decent shower, food & a TV! I haven't seen a TV in 3 weeks & How I met your Mother was on, so I was pretty much content. You can't get better then being clean, food & some cr*p TV.

In the morning we decide to wake early so we don't miss the boat, as we did the bus. We arrive at 7.40am for the 8am boat to find there's a new schedule, started the day before, with the first ferry leaving at 9am. DOH.

We finally arrive on Caye Caulker & look down to see crystal clear water, fishes swimming & lots of little colourful houses & huts. Now Caye Caulker doesn't have a beach but it does have something called the Split. This was caused by a hurricane in 1961 which tore the Island apart. You can still swim from one side of the Island to the other, which you can see in my photos too :)

Here you have a bar called The Lazy Lizard, where everyone gathers in the daytime for sunbathing, kayaking, swimming and eating, bliss. That is literally all I have been doing for 2 days & it's been lovely. Last night we went to a place called Rose's to eat, it's all very chaotic but the food is AMAZING. We had Chicken kebabs, cooked on the BBQ, with garlic potatoes & sweetcorn for £3! The happening place to go to after your meal is i & I, which is a Reggae Bar down the road. We'd heard this was busy & a lot of fun & got there to find just a couple of old locals & some pissed up Canadians haha. Cocktails were amazing though & they had swings for chairs, which me & Anna had a swing fight in. As more & more people started turning up we were getting fed up of being creeped on & pressure to danceby the Canadians so as soon as they turned their backs we literally we legged it to the next place where everyone goes after, OceanSide.

Oh I forgot to tell you about Austin Powers , haha. We met this guy from Greenwich & his Belizian missus at dinner, he literally talks like Austin Powers & for someone whose about 65 has a amazing black bushy hair, which his fringe wobbles when he talks . He also has these teeth which slightly stick out so I can just picture him going 'YEAH BABY'..I forgot he doesn't know I call him Austin powers & when I bumped into him earlier & said 'Yay, It's Austin Powers!' I think he got slightly offended. Pfft.

So yeah, we get to Oceanside taking the boys with us & it's dead. I mean more dead then dead. It made a night down my local nightclub seem like a haven of hot people & amazing music. What else does a normal person to do in this situation? Why get totally trashed of course! The next hour or so resulted in Irish guy Fraggle (his names Frugile but I prefer Fraggle) looking slightly double glazed & being obsessed with dancing on, around & below the POLE. Doing WAY too many Jagermeister shots, having a dance lesson/dance off with some Belizian dude who definitely thinks he's too cool for school & Anna snogging one of the English boys (& not the one we thought she would, the shlaaaaaag!).

So Anna has two boys chasing her, Isabelle has a crazy local called Lobster King continually asking her to be his Lobster Queen & I'm now feeling a little left out…

Where's my crazy stalker?…where's my Lobster King?……….lol :)x