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"What do you mean you don't have a booking! It's the tourist season!" Not an auspicious start to my trip but I did manange to get accommodation for my first night in Belize. After a spontaneous decision to take a trip, picking a country off the map that I did not require a visa for, finding out a week before I left that I needed a US transit visa to visit Atlanta airport, miraculously obtaining said visa which included a quick cross-border trip to the US embassy, and a rather rushed 4-hour drive to the airport I was just glad to have actually arrived. And that is was a lot warmer than Altlanta. In respose to the American border control guy who, on hearing I was a solo female traveller, asked "Have you seen Taken??!?", I survived and within 2 days I was on a local bus to San Ignacio. I didn't know much about Belize before coming, but I knew there were Mayan ruins and the adveturer in me was eager to explore. And they did not dissapoint. Standing in these ruins, looking over the vast surrounding forests and imaginging explorers stumbling over them was fuel to the imagination. The great thing about exploring these ancient places in Belize is that there are so few other tourists there (yes, smile, I'm a tourist who avoids hordes of other tourists). I did take a day trip to Guatemala to see Tikal and was dissapointed that parts were off limits and it was so full, well apart from the part where I got lost in the woods trying to find the ruins. Though it made me realize how remarkable it is that they were found in the first place. And from the man-made to the natural, another highlight in the area was definitely the Actun Tunichil Muknal cave tour. After a short hike though the forest one comes to a huge cave entrance where one must swim across a lake to enter the cave, the first of a number of swims one will take on the tour. Please make sure when they ask if you can swim that you have actually tried this before. There was an unnamed person on the tour before us that had said yes he could swim as he figured "how hard could it be". Of course he jumped in and glug glug glug sank and had to be hauled out. We didn't have anyone sinking but we did get the crazy guide who decided as there was a group going on route A that we'd take a detour. I was behind the guide in the narrow tunnel when it came to a T-junction, he turned left, I followed and almost found myself washed into the vast caverns of nothingness. Forget to mention the current much? Fortunately my arms immediately shot out bracing myself on the cavern walls and the message was passed back down the line. All part of the adventure. The tour is absolutely amazing walking and swimming into the depths with only our headlamps to guide us until one reaches the sacrificial end, quite literally as there a human remains. Speaking of human remains, just joking, but there were guns involved. The next part comes with the disclaimer that these kind of things happen in my life. My time in San Ignacio coming to an end, I was on my was back from the town square listening to some good live music when I decided to stop in for some coffee. I was ordering my coffee when I heard some gunshots, looked out the window to see if I saw anything only to turn back to... oh wait where's my server? Looking over the counter I found her huddling and figured I would go chat to the guys outside while I waited for her to decide it was safe to make coffee. It was a good conversation opener. Made some friends, found out later the gunshots was just a disagreement between rival football fans, eventually got coffee and an invitation to spend a couple of days at the beach. Two days later I was on my way to the beach for the next adventure...