Our three weeks in Spanish school really paid off on the journey from Flores to El Estor when we left one of our bags in the bus and Tom had to chase the bus down the street to retrieve it! We then had to find our onwards bus from Rio Dulce and negotiate a price with the driver, something we would definitely not have been able to do a few weeks ago. We even helped an Austalian girl buy her bus ticket (Tom getting too big for his boots there)! Upon our arrival to...

On the bus from Belize City to Flores the bus driver stopped on the side of the road to buy himself some lovely potatoes. When he got out of his seat his flies were undone and he had to struggle to keep his trousers up, Oh dear! When the bus arrived to neighbouring Santa Elena the bus company transferred us and our luggage to the local mafia's collectivo to transport us to a hostel of their choosing. Trudy does not like to be told what to do at the best of times...

We left Playa on the early bus to Chetumal in order to catch the water taxi to our next destination, Caye Caulker in Belize. Let us say now that Chetumal is a dump, truly God's own toilet! From the second we stepped out of the bus station to the second the boat left Chetumal we were harassed, harangued and verbally abused by the millions of pigeon people hen-pecking us to purchase their useless wares. Karma took a particularly dim view of one gentleman's efforts...

The hostel in Playa Del Carmen was a true throwback to our stay in Washington: it was full of weirdos and the manager was a complete a**e! He spent all of his time flirting with a girl who was staying in the hostel on a language course. She in turn put her new language to good use by 'telling on us' to him when we hadn't washed a pot or emptied the dryer IMMEDIATELY (much as a seven year old might). And like the sexy Iguana at Ezdna he was forced to tell us off i...

In Cancun we unexpectedly experienced rain for the first time since the torrential downpour in Savannah, Georgia (when Tom fell into a puddle up to his knee). The Mexican rain lasted all of about 10 minutes and for us English really was quite a pathetic site to behold. It gave us an excuse to take shelter under the Golden Arches of MacDonald's and to order dinner of Big Macs and fries. There's nothing like eating locally is there? However we were unable to pay a...