Everyting's gonna be al'rite...

Reggae, rum, 'relax man', big mommas, and Marie Sharp's flaming hot sauce...that about sums up what Belize is all about. Guatemala is pretty chilled too but the difference between the two is marked even on the border. As soon as we arrived in Belize it was sun, smiles, dreadlocks, that Jamaican lilt on the tongue, reggae beats on the decks and the smell of BBQ chicken in the air. I loved it! Even though we were many miles from the sea in San Ignacio, the Caribbean spirit was still very much in evidence and only became more pronounced as we made our way down the coast to little visited Hopkins beach.

Hopkins and Placencia, two southern sea side towns in the Stann Creek district of Belize, were the two highlights of our trip to this sun drenched corner of the world. Very different from each other, they provided an  interesting insight into life in Belize and its development as a tourist destination.

A brief stop in Bali...

I've recently been reviewing all of our photos and blogs from the trip in a bid to put together some sort of tome cataloguing our adventures. During this process I realised that some of my posts had been left unfinished and whole countries undocumented. I aim to rectify this with a new flurry of activity on the blog that will hopefully continue long after the records are up to date!

I recently watched Eat, Pray, Love the terrible hollywoodised version of the book with the same name; the story of an American woman who goes off travelling for a year to find herself post-divorce...blah blah blah...you get the picture. The book was equally bland and self-indulgent, but one thing that did catch my eye from my Sunday afternoon perch on the sofa, was the beautiful cinematography, the stunning scenes of Ubud's terraced paddy fields, the unmistakable Balinese village streets...it took me right back.