Trip Pic of the Day: Laughigh Bird Caye

One of the seven named locations on Belize's barrier reef World Heritage Site (1996), Laughing Bird Caye is situated at 16°27' North latitude and 88°12' West longitude, 11 miles off the coast of Placencia.

The caye is effectively an elongated ridge of reef known as a faro - an angular atoll located on top of a continental shelf - and got its name from the species of gull (Larus artricilla) which used to nest here until they suffered a sense of humour failure when all of us snorkelers turned up.

The faro or shelf atol structure is quite unusual and supports a range of different coral habitats. The caye was designated a National Park in 1981 ans as such is home to permanent Ranger. I had to sign his guestbook along with all the other visitors.

The Eternal Biker

Surely the most interesting character I met on my recent trip to Belize was a bloke called Ian - a retired Yorkshireman who has been systematically riding through almost every country in the world on a Honda motorbike since 1999.

Having done Africa the hard way - as opposed to the "poofs'" way favoured by certain celebrity poseurs - he arrived in Tierra del Fuego back in 2003 and is, as I write, heading for that detached northerly state led by a certain moose-hunting/hard-shopping Governor.

He had predictable horror stories about a recent pit-stop in Guatemala, where mechanics had insisted on fitting the only Honda shock-absorbers they could get their hands on, even though they clearly knew they weren't the right ones for his bike. More fun was had, he reported, treating the dusty road around the edge of Flores as a speedway track before biking around the whole of the lake itself.

Ian also had some great tales from Chávez's Venezuela and related how former-SAS soldiers now act as private mobile security units down in Jo'Burg, which means police responding to burglar alarms (a little more slowly...) tend to find the robbers stretched out cold when they arrive on scene. I believe the BBC braodcast a Louis Theroux programme this week on this very topic so I will have to look it up on iPlayer.

I asked him how his wife was taking this incredible hobby of his. "She has grandchildren to look after now," was his cleverly guarded response to this little probe.

From Alaska he will start to traverse the great land Sarah Palin can see from her window before turning south and commencing an extended tour of South-East Asia. It seems he really has no idea when he'll be back home in the Dales.

Here are some more commentary from Ian's drive north through Belize after he left Placencia.

Trip Pic of the Day: Paw Print

Spotted beside the Macal river below Cristo Rey as the mists went wispily on their way.

Not sure what kind of beastie left it, but it would surely have been big enough to get my attention had I surprised it on its morning errand. 

Trip Pic of the Day: Tikal

There weren't many of this kind of visitor to Tikal back in '88 when I first came here. I'd braved a bus journey twice interrupted, first by the genocidal local commandos known as Kaibiles and then by AK waving adolescents, most probably insurgents.

Nowadays sitting cross-legged at the base of the Temple of the Grand Jaguar is possibly the best way of experiencing it. At some point in the early 90s the staircase was closed off to clamberers.

This time I discovered that Temple II opposite is no longer open to frontal assault either. Instead a winding wooden staircase has been erected on the south side.

At present Tikal's Temple IV, the highest in the pre-Colombian world, is under-going a bit of nip and tuck and consequently, visitors are also unable to make it up on to the roof cone for the best view in the Mayan biosphere.

Some more pics of Tikal here.

Trip Pic of the Day: Flores

What happened here?

When I first came to Flores back in '88 it was - sin ofender - the culo del mundo.

Now this little island township on Guatemala's second largest lake has a charm sharpened with incipient sophistication; a mildy Mediterranean mood one might even suggest.

There are even loads of pretty girls buzzing around the place on mopeds. Ok, some of them are carrying new-borns and have other-halves at the handlebars...but this is surely progress.

Flores was not only the first proper town I visited in Guatemala, it was also the only such place I'd heard much about before I came to these parts. This was because it was the axis around which the revolutionary fantasies of my soon-to-be travelling companion turned. Once known as Tayasal, capital of one of the last independent Maya polities, he rather optimistically conjectured that a limited amount of sponsored insurgency, camouflaged as a Cambridge University archaeological expedition, might restore the autonomy of this region and reestablish indigenous sovereignty in the Petén.

In the end I was to enter Guatemala alone in April 1988, because my revolutionary comrade by then considered me a potential rival vis-à-vis his somewhat asymmetic romantic assault on a young English teacher in Belize, and had duly plotted to remove me from the scene by way of the three day solo excursion to Tikal that he had been strongly recommending to me!

Having arrived in Santa Elena on a late bus from the border which had been stopped en route by both army and guerrillas, I crossed over to Flores on the narrow rough earth causeway that in those days linked it to the southern shore of Lake Petén Itzá. This has since been replaced by a fine raised highway, a gift it seems of Alvaro Arzú Irigoyen, former President of Guatemala and world's best mayor. (Honestly, who cares if he knew in advance that they were going to clobber the bishop? Can't we put that one down to a bit of healthy anti-clericism?)

Cortés visited Tayasal on his way to discovering that Honduras wasn't really worth discovering. He left his sick horse with the Indians he found there, promising to return, but never did. Iberian missionaries later found that the island's inhabitants had given themselves over to a cult of equine worship - it seems that they'd accidentally killed off the Conquistador's mount by feeding it flowers and, uneasy with the idea of being responsible for the death of such a deity had, by way of atonement, constructed a stone statue of the defunct steed, naming it Tzimin Chac or 'Thunder Horse'.

Some more pics of the lovely Flores here.

Trip Pic of the Day: Omoa

Omoa. A pretty name, but basically a godforsaken little seaside stop-over on the northern shore of Honduras.

There was a motley collection of buitres and chuchos - vultures and street dogs - sitting outside my bedroom door when I opened it on the morning of Saturday the 8th.

The Rough Guide claims that more and more travellers are choosing to spend some time in Omoa, but I saw little evidence of other transient foreigners, though I did get a ride from a resident of Maltese origin who had come here many years ago to pursue an interest in sailing following a career as a London cab driver. Food and accommodation is no bargain here either.

Omoa's most noteworthy feature is the fort of San Fernando de Omoa completed in 1775 to defend the area against English pirates. Five years later the Brits, aided by Miskito Indians thoroughly sacked the town. They initially failed to capture the fort, because the Baymen in the vanguard had somehow misplaced their scaling ladders in the first assault, but after a long bombardment from the Royal Navy ships Lowestoffe and Charon, the garrison was eventually overrun and $2m of treasure filched from Spanish coffers.

This part of the Caribbean is fronted by a line of moderately imposing peaks separated from the shoreline by a narrow plain, perhaps not much more than a mile wide around Omoa. A decade after Mitch the bridges along the road from the border with Guatemala have all now been repaired, but the effects of the hurricane are still visible in the disfigured, boulder-strewn banks of the various little rivers which penetrate through to the sea here.

Large-scale agriculture is more conspicuous on the Guatemalan side of the border, where the road turns south west before joining the main Atlantic highway to Puerto Barrios: on one side there are vast plantations of banana, on the other, Palma Africana, another non-native crop plant from which 25% of the world's vegetable oil is derived.

More pics of Omoa here.

Trip Pic of the Day

The Sarita ice-cream parlour at Valle Dorado, Guatemala. Sign reads:

No Pets...

No Food and Drink...

No Guns.