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 to sell us overpriced boat tickets which saw him approach us several times, despite our refusals, and then follow us to the taxi rank to try to sell his tickets to us through the taxi driver. As we approached the taxi rank Trudy inadvertently trapped this man's head between the metal gate and her heavy backpack and the clunk of skull on metal could be heard for miles around. Tom was directly behind Trudy and could see what was about to happen and in the weakest of efforts to prevent a potential head injury muttered "Tru-dy", much as you might mutter the name of a naughty child who has eaten a chocolate and gotten it on their face. The man's pain was clearly visible (but still not enough to convince us to buy boat tickets from him).

The boat to Caye Caulker was bumpy in the extreme, however did enable us to watch the classic film 'The Tooth Fairy', starring The Rock (in the title role). We also met Ella, an ever so slightly crazy Australian girl who saved us from being hen-pecked by more pigeon people once we arrived on the island. One particular guy, when he saw the three of us walking with our heavy rucksacks in the general direction of the island's hostels told us "I'm a writer for Lonely Planet and Rough Guides and I can tell you now that every single room on the island is booked out. If I was you I'd just book the two rooms that are left in this hotel ". Lo and behold, the very first hostel we got to had three beds available. An absolutely blatant lie if ever there was one!

This time the hostel really was full of complete idiots. We were ignored by all the people staying in the hostel and in the morning when the coffee machine had finished making everyone's coffee three American guys sorted themselves a vat each for what felt like an hour, leaving us a cold thimble each. Luckily we were leaving anyway to go to our new lodgings, the Caye Caulker cat sanctuary! We settled in to our cabana, a glorified garden shed (Trudy's dad could have built a better shed in his sleep) and tried to get on with enjoying our enormous hangover. This day saw Tom utter to Trudy the immortal line "Yeah, well although this place might be most normal people's idea of paradise, this is actually my personal Hell. It's too hot, everything's outrageously expensive and we're getting bitten by all manner of creatures great and small". Little did Tom know that in a mere matter of days a mangy, flea-ridden cat would try to poo on him but only manage to expel a tapeworm onto his hand. Tom literally ran screaming to Trudy and her ever-handy hand sanitiser.

We went back to the world's unfriendliest hostel to meet up with Ella. During the evening we were discussing travelling in America and an American guy took it as a personal attack when we said that American public transport could do with some improvements. Tom diplomatically tried to end the argument with the statement "Well, one thing we can all agree on is that there is no down side to a good public transport system". You'd have thought that that would end the discussion, but oh no, this idiot immediately jumped up and started trying to argue the case for bad public transport actually being desirable (to prevent poor people and tourists from getting to national parks, thus spoiling them for everyone else - honestly, his words). This guy was spectacularly stupid and it turned out that when we spoke to the hostel manager a few days later he had been ejected from the hostel for espousing offensive views while brandishing a machete (we were safely tucked up in the cat sanctuary at this point). I rest my case, Your Honour!

When we decided that we'd had enough of island life (after two days) Tom Blodgett (a friend from way back in Lafyette, Louisiana) decided that he'd meet us there. This meant that we had to hang around awaiting his arrival, which ended up being about a week. But don't feel too sorry for us - we spent all our time swimming in the completely crystal-clear waters with the tropical fish (there was more than one fish swimming around the island, Trudy just thinks that fish are like sheep) and walking up and down the main street (which Trudy is keen to point out was sand all the way down to the sand of the island i.e. no concrete). You could almost call this a land of sand, a Sand Land if you will. However Tom won't; he will call it Hell!

For some reason unknown to the rest of mankind Tom Blodgett was absolutely fascinated by the fact that people drive around the island on golf carts. He questioned pretty much everyone we met about this aspect of island life and never appeared satisfied with their answers. With Tom on the island it became less a lazy tropical paradise and more of a hectic Louisiana drinkathon. By the time we left we were in need of a lazy break away from the lazy-break-away destination!