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Hello. I'm in Guatemala City right now. I've been here for a few days. I had to renew my visa on Monday but I ended up hanging around longer because of this dratted persistent sickness. Luckily found a really great doctor who I think fell a little bit in love with me! Not entirely appropriate but perhaps if kisses came with all medication we'd be a lot healthier! He was pretty old and harmless and seems to have given me the right medication so I'm happy! I did have bloody amoebas again after all. They're tricksy b*****s. They went undetected in the last couple of tests I had but after yet more relapses into sickness and more tests they made themselves known. So even though Guatemala City isn't the best of places to be hanging around I decided to make sure I was fully better before I started travelling again because it's so nasty being stuck on a stifling bus wanting to vomit then arriving in a strange place and having to find yet another doctor who may or may not be any good. I've been perfectly content in the capital though. I returned to the funny faulty towers hotel with the pigeon and the overweight sausage dog! The family who run it are so friendly and I'm starting to feel like part of the furniture! I love it even though when it rains outside it rains in my room as well! They seem genuinely amazed and grateful every day when I say I want to stay another night! Most people just pass through.
So all going well on the stomach front I'll get moving tomorrow to Livingston on the Caribbean coast of Guatemala. It's only reachable by boat and will culturally have a distinctly different feel to the rest of Guatemala. It's populated by Garifuna people who descend from a mixture of the african slaves us lovely brits brought over, indigenous maya and european settlers. I think it'll be similar to Belize. Actually I found out something interesting the other day... I have seen lots of maps of Guatemala around that include Belize as part of Guatemala. I knew that the Chiapas area of Mexico was once part of Guatemala but was lost when Guatemala gained independence from Spain but I never really knew how the area of Belize came about... I knew that the Brits had colonized after the Spanish too but not much more than that. Well apparently around the time that Guatemala gained Independence in 1800s the Spaniards in power in Guatemala did a deal with the Brits and said that they could take control of the area of Belize on the condition that they built a highway from Guatemala City to Belize City... so the Brits took control of the land but never built the road and there have been disputes between the two countries ever since! Our guide when we visited the Lamanai ruins in Belize told us that when the first Brits came over to produce Rum for export they built a shoddy distillery which fell to the ground and 30,000 of the 50,000 barrels that they did manage to produce were drunk before they even made it to export!! Following which bad dancing, moony pulling, street vomiting and syphilis spreading ensued!!! Just the start of a long history of embarrassing Brits abroad!
So I'll relax there for a few days (do my utmost to disprove the cliche!) then make my way across the boarder to Honduras. So I'll be saying my goodbyes to Guatemala which I am a little sad about. I've been here for so long now and I love the place. I'm excited about exploring pastures new of course... but I very much hope to return here one day.
So fingers crossed my next post I?ll be right as rain and soaking up some sun by the sea!
Lots of love as ever.
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