I’ve just arrived in Caye Caulker, Belize. A caye, also spelled cay or key, is a small, low-elevation, sandy island formed on the surface of a coral reef. And that’s exactly what Caye Caulker is – a small sandy island in the Caribbean Sea off the Belizean mainland....
I took a look around Belize City this afternoon, the biggest city in Belize but not the capital – that’s a place called Belmopan (reads like a dangerous chemical). Even though it’s the biggest city Belize has to offer, & even meandering as slowly as I...
If you ever find yourself paying a visit to the Lamanai Mayan ruins in the Central American country of Belize, it’s quite likely that the trip to and from the site, via speedboat on the country’s New River, will end up being the highlight of the outing. It...
I had one of those travel moments today, a few minutes after stepping off the bus from Chetumal in Mexico & weighed down with my bags, when I found myself questioning what the hell I was doing here, here being a place called Orange Walk in northern Belize. Orange...
It’s 6 p.m. on my last evening in Mexico. I’m just about ready for tomorrow’s departure to Belize, & thus Central America, just a few kilometres from here. Tonight will be my second night in Chetumal, the capital of Quintana Roo on Mexico’s Yucatán...
I’m coming to the end of my time in Mexico. So soon. It only feels like yesterday when I crossed over the border from San Diego to Tijuana. But it wasn’t yesterday, it was 19 days ago. Anyway, I digress. Tonight is my second & last night in Tulum, my...
Now for something different, a Mexican Yucatán anomaly. There’s the fascinating pre-Columbian history & ruins. There’s the beautiful colonial legacy of the Spanish. A then there’s Cancun. You won’t find much history here – modern-day Cancun was only built in the...
Chichén Itzá is the Yucatán’s, and thus Mexico’s biggest Mayan draw & was voted in 2007 as one of the New7Wonders of the World. Like most Mayan ruins, Chichén Itzá was settled in about 600 AD & abandoned mysteriously in about 900 AD –...
Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula is Mayan land. It is today and it has been since pre-Hispanic times. The Mayan, members of an American Indian people native to regions of Mesoamerica (Mexico & Central America), had a culture which reached its peak between 300 AD...
Oh boy. It’s hot here, here being Mérida, the largest city & capital of the steamy Yucatán Peninsula, the Mexican state occupying the northern part of the Yucatan, the Central American peninsula extending into the Gulf of Mexico between the Bay of Campeche...
