From Flores, we took a collectivo in a rather lively bus station. Drivers were running around and shouting different names of destinations. We were the only tourists to get on board the mini-van to Melchor de Mencos, the border town between Guatemala and Belize. When we got there a few hours later, we were literally assailed by money-changers who tried to convince us to change our last few quetzals into Belizean dollars. We ignored them for a little while, bought some tasty fried chicken with chips and tortillas, made our way to the immigration office and got another stamp on our passport before crossing a bridge leading to the Belizean side. Everything was rather different past the bridge… Signs were now written in English and people also spoke to us in English for Laura’s great pleasure!

We jumped into a taxi to the nearest town, Benque Viejo del Carmen, where we took a chicken bus to Belize City and another one to Dangriga, on the Caribbean coast. We arrived a few hours later and stayed in the tiniest room (a wooden box with a noisy and uncomfortable bed) for the night. After a difficult night, we made our way to a little platform where we were told boats would take us to Tobacco Caye, a little island lost in the Caribbean sea. We bought some food, some water and some rum to take with us on the island and waited, and waited… and just after lunchtime, we finally got on a little boat, driven by Captain Hakim.

Tobacco Caye just looked like a piece of paradise, crammed with little colorful houses and palm trees… It was possible to get on or off the island only twice a day and there were only about 15 people there, mainly fishermen…

We met Mike, a local Belizean, who rented us a room and offered us to use his kitchen. We did a quick tour of the island… Well we did try to take our time, but it only took us about 2 minutes to get from one side to the other… The views were amazing with 360 degrees of sea and blue sky…

At first we thought we would get bored on such a little island… And we did feel a bit bored… So we decided to have a drink with Mike and his friend… And one drink turned into 2, 3 and 4 etc… As the rum went down, we slowed down, the Belizean way… We had long conversations and Quentin was so tipsy, he started talking like the locals (really slow…) and could understand everything they said in Creole… So we passed time like the locals do and we were in bed before the sun went down… After a little siesta, we had dinner and tried one of the local delicacies: fried fish with coconut rice. We then went for a beer outside the one and only shop on the island. A few locals were sat there, watching ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ on a portable DVD player and we stayed with them for a while before going to bed…

The following day, we just chilled out in the sun, Quentin snorkeled a little and we weren’t as naughty as the day before and stayed away from rum…