Well, life remains surreal for us in Belize. Our work completed for Wildtracks (the conservation organisation we were working for) it was time to move on. We were both ready to move too. Despite all the good times and the worthwhile work we were feeling the need to crank up the bike and ride again.

However we find we're not going to break any distance records though as we have stopped once again for a while. The story goes that while at Wildtracks Chris's family came out to have a holiday with us. While doing all the holiday stuff we stayed at Pook's Hill Jungle Lodge, owned and run by friends of friends, Vicki and Ray. They asked us to call in again on our way to Guatemala, stay for a while and help manage the resort! How is it that we're supposed to be riding a bike round the world and yet of late we spend our time doing anything but?

We have no experience whatsoever of running a resort of any kind, let alone of the nature of Pook's Hill. Have a look at their website www.pook'shilllodge.com One of the best jungle resorts in Belize, it's situated 40 miles or so from the Guatemalan border in the heart of pristine rain-forest and could be described as 'exclusive' Each of the rooms is a self-contained on-suite cabana nestled around a Maya ruin plaza with views of the jungle canopy. (The honeymoon suits are a little further away for privacy though!) Very nice. We find ourselves spending our days ensuring all the guests have everything they need for a comfortable and fulfilling stay. As 'stand in managers' we welcome the new arrivals with a refreshing drink at the bar before showing them to their room. We discuss with them what they would like to do in their time with us. A little early morning bird-watching perhaps before an adventurous trip into ATM cave. Or would they rather a guided horseback ride through the jungle followed by a dip in the crystal clear waters of Kingfisher pool, an easy stroll down one of several forest trails on the private reserve. We serve drinks and dips at 6:00pm sharp while making easy conversation with the guests as they watch the humming birds come to the sugar feeders or relax in a comfortable chair prior to joining us for the evening meal at 7:00. Over dinner we mill around the guests chatting, ensuring all their needs are met and their chosen tour for the next day has been arranged. That's the guests perspective on what we do anyway.

The reality is that we do all that but its intermingled with sneaking into each of the cabanas as they eat to ensure the tarantulas and scorpions have been removed, getting lighthearted back-chat from the kitchen staff and trying to make sure that the guests trip to Tikal has been organized and the guide booked even though the telephone company has been on strike for over a week. We have learnt to judge how smoothly things are going by the number of T-shirts we get through in a day. There's nothing more unpleasant than a host sweeting profusely over their guests. The more running around we do the more showers and T-shirts we have to have. A normal day entails at least two showers and T-shirts by 8:00am! A good day will be a 3 T-shirt day, a bad day can be as many as 6 in this heat! The reality is though that we both love it. There is nothing quite as satisfying as saying goodbye to a guest who leaves with a tear in their eye because they have had such a good time with us. The fact that we eat like kings every day, sleep in luxurious rooms and get to go on some of the best tours in the world free of charge helps too though! Its a far cry from our days with Wildtracks, which was much more rough and ready. We don't know how long we'll be here but we do know we have to be out of the country by 2nd May when the temporary importation certificate expires.

In some ways we've made a rod for our own backs. Come mid May the heavens will open as the rainy season begins. We know we're going to face days on end struggling over mud roads as we try to head south. We'll just have to see how things go. Whatever the cost though, its been worth it. Eight days in Belize was the plan but its turned out to be four wonderful months. Our daily budget for this trip is around £30 or $55 per day. While in Belize we've only been spending that each week. Its opportunities like this that will stretch the trip out for us and that can only be good.

So what have been the highlights of Belize for us? Well, the first thing has to be the people we've met here. The Belizeans are wonderful, friendly people who have gone out of their way to make us feel a part of the country. We've been to everything from baby showers to fiestas with local friends. They are some of the best people in the world. Then there's the 'international' friends we've made. Other volunteers and the ex-pat communities here. There is a spiders web of people here who have made Belize their home and helped us get to grips with the red tape of the country, or just kept us supplied with alcohol and conversation. I think the most bizarre assistance we received though had to be someone offering to flying a packet of Oxo cubes out to us in the jungle by helicopter. We can't say too much about that though. The natural wonders of Belize are on a par with anything the rest of the world has to offer. Many travelers miss Belize and go straight to Guatemala as its perceived to be expensive. In comparison with the rest of C. America it is but it's worth it. Here on our doorstep at Pook's Hill we have the world famous ATM cave.

Rediscovered in 1986, it has revealed itself from amongst the trees and hillsides as an archeological treasure trove of the Maya world. A trip into the cave is a mixture of swimming, wading, walking and climbing as we make our way up the underground river that has been carving the cave out for millennia. As we pass stalactites and stalagmites, flow-stone and a hundred other formations we edge nearer to the jewel of the cave. Climbing a large bolder and struggling over a rock ledge we take our shoes off to protect the site. Then climbing a final ladder we enter a world of broken pots, offerings to the gods and the bones of human sacrifices.

The chamber is littered with close to a 1000 artifacts and human remains that have lain hidden for 800 years or more. Its an incredible sight that demands respect. We haven't seen anything like it before in our lives and its got to be in the top 5 of out favorite places to date. There have been so many highlights for us in Belize I don't think we could write them all here but trust us, they're here. If you ever get the chance come to Belize, you'll not be disappointed. Just a few pictures to wet the appetite.

It would be so easy for us to settle here and we've had offers of help with the red tape but we must move on. We can't hang up our boots so early in the trip. Its only been 15 months now - we've only just started and there's still so much to see. All being well our next update will be coming from a country other than Belize. Which country remains to be seen but whichever it is it will have to be something special to live upto Belize. From a 'bikers' perspective its an easy country to travel through. The major roads are good and the more minor roads are not too much of a challenge at this time of year. Coming into Belize from Mexico is a relatively hassle free experience. If all your paperwork is in order you'll receive a temporary importation certificate for the bike for a month, the same as your tourist visa. Both can be extended with out too much trouble if your finding it hard to escape the country, as we have. Like the rest of C. America its who you know here. We got a letter of support from the ex-Deputy Prime Minister without any trouble. You can't help but bump into an ex-pat as you travel round Belize and many of them have contacts here, so just ask!

Posted by Chris Smith and Liz Peel at 05:14 PM GMT

It hasn't been too long since our last update but it feels like a lot longer than it actually is since we temporarily parked the bike up, adapting to being in one place for a while has taken a bit of effort. No longer getting up every morning and packing our gear onto the bike to ride off round the next unknown bend feels odd. Instead we find ourselves planning a different form of logistics for each day. Are the machetes sharp? Is GPS working and will we be able to carry enough water for our next foray into the jungle? Its now the dry season in Belize and the tropical steam jungles we find ourselves in are less than steamy. We've just returned from a week in the jungle surveying a biological corridor and the little fresh water that remains on the ground is stagnant and full of animal urine. As such, Liz, myself and Anna (a tropical tree specialist and researcher) have had to carry all our water with us. Even though we travelled at an easy pace so we could record all that we saw, the 15 kilometres (9 miles) per day was grueling, hot and painful work. Cutting our way through the jungle, crawling under fallen trees and avoiding the numerous Black Poisonwoods (trees with sap like acid that leaves painful burns) kept us busy all day long, on top of doing the job we were there for. The scenery was spectacular though and made any of the hardships well worth the suffering.

Walking through forests of palms, strangler-figs, mahogany and gumbalimbo trees, to mention but a few, and the chance encounters with tapirs, anteaters, deer, peccary and snakes, to mention but a few more, had us smiling all the way.

Camping in the jungle is a surreal experience. Gone are the noises of humankind, replaced by the din of insects and animals going about their timeless business. The street lights are replaced by stars and household smells are exchanged for the sweet perfume of hot leaves and colourful flowers.

Even conversation changes. At one time for us it would have been the norm to be talking about what was on TV or something but during our trek through the jungle our conversations turned to the colour of our urine and dehydration, chaffing and crotch-rot, blisters, bites and bowels.

The basic fundamentals of life are what becomes important and there's no room for pride or embarrassment. Its a humbling place where the important things in life come back into focus. Its only now that we've come back out of the jungle that we realise that we've been living by sight, sound and smell more so than we ever have before. An example being, having seen and heard nothing at first, we can smell the jaguar den and know we need to be careful. A few metres on and we see the den and all the signs are there that somebody's at home with the kids. We beat a hasty retreat and find another way. Further on and through the cacophony of insect and bird sounds we filter out the distinct sound of white-lipped peccary clacking their tusks in warning, then we smell them. We look for options - escape routes, trees to climb if they charge and ultimately another way round. White-lipped peccary are one of the most aggressive off all the jungles creatures and if they feel the need to protect their young the males will form a defensive front line ahead of the rest of the group. Sometimes numbering as many as 100 in a group its no time to stand your ground - and we didn't. Its rare that a full on attack comes but we choose discretion over valor anyway and nothing happens so on we go.

As odd as it may sound, for the first time on our trip we've really had the time to just sit beside some isolated pond and watch the comings and goings of the wildlife with camera in hand. So much of our trip has been governed by daily jobs and getting from A to B, paper work and finding food, its actually been a nice change to really get away from the bike for a while and REALLY get to know a place, even if it is bereft of people for the most part. Having said that, the people of the area are varied in both culture and even time. The Belizean descendants of the Maya are similar in looks to their Southern Mexico neighbors but different in attitudes. More active in the mind but less active in the body in many ways. Politics is everything to everyone while family comes second to making families! The national radio station is "Love FM" which says it all. On the flip side there's the Mennonite communities of Belize who live a life of odd contrasts to both others and themselves. Using 1880 as a benchmark for the degree to which they feel comfortable with modernization (1880 being the onset of the Industrial Revolution) they have shunned TV, cars and washing machines but are happy to hire taxis, use pesticides and herbicides and modern tractors. Mennonites seem to be in a permanently confused state of denial and acceptance.

Now back at base we're nursing our blisters, bites and cuts, and reminiscing over the sights and experiences of the past few days with copious amounts of beer. (Still trying to get over the dehydration!) Thoughts now go to our next trip over to San Pedro on Ambergris Caye. Only a couple of weeks ago but feeling like light-years back we had a relaxing 4 days there. San Pedro is a small fishing town, now reaping the tourist benefits of being situated on the Belizean Barrier Reef. Its a staging post for anyone who loves the water. Diving, snorkeling, fishing, sailing - take your pick. Not being divers, we plumbed for a snorkeling trip to Shark Ray Alley and Hol Chan. Shark Ray Alley is as the name suggests, full of sharks and sting rays. Historically the area, now a marine reserve was where the fishing boats used to stop off the caye to clean and fillet their catch. Over the years, as tons of fish guts were thrown overboard the sharks and sting rays learnt to hang out there for a free meal and never left. Knowing that there's an easier meal to be had from the dead fish that the live divers and snorkelers they let people swim amongst them unmolested. As soon as we put our heads under the water we were thrown into a world ruled by 10 foot nurse-sharks and sting rays looking like bombers on their way to sortie. They're so tame you can (carefully) hold them and they don't bother. A nurse-shark can suck a conch right out of its shell so its a good idea to keep away from the business end of things though. As soon as the sharks feel they've had enough of the tourists they just shoot off into the distance like lightening with a couple of sweeps of their tails. Its easy to see why man doesn't stand a chance against the more aggressive species of sharks in the water round Belize if they feel the urge. As far as is known though, there's never been a shark attack on a diver in Belize and people swim with the sharks every day so the odds of a safe dive were in our favor .We swam around with them for 45 minutes before moving on to Hol Chan dive site. A natural break in the reef it's like flying through a gorge of other-world trees in multicolour with birds bereft of feathers and wings flying along side you. The sides of the underwater gorge slope steeply down a hundred feet or more and every step of the way a different corral, fish or crustacean takes up its place in the ecosystem. Taking a deep breath and propelling ourselves down with our flippers we swam as far down as our lungs and ears would allow to spend a few snatched seconds with the creatures down there. The seconds feel like minutes until we look up at the surface 40 feet above and kick hard to reach the sky again. We drift horizontally with the current and swim vertically with the gorge walls and its all over all too soon. We're back in the boat and drinking a refreshing fruit punch before we know it. Our minds tell us we've only just got in the water but we stand corrected by our muscles telling us its been another 45 minutes. Soon we'll be doing it all again and it can't come too soon.

The situations we find ourselves in on this trip of ours never ceases to amaze us. There we were, all geared up for a leisurely ride round Central America only to find that within a week of actually entering the first of the 7 Central America countries we find ourselves being hijacked by a conservation organisation called Wildtracks. Upon arriving here we found ourselves reeling somewhat from the abrupt change in our situation but it hasn't taken us long to settle in and feel at home. Wildtracks consists of a select motley crew of volunteers and staff. See photo below of just how motley they are!

Liz and I have gone from discussing oil changes and carburetors to transacts and gene pools. It feels like a somewhat schizophrenic life for us in some ways. Romantic in an 'Out of Africa' kind of way but also tough in a sort of 'Temple of Doom' kind of way. Not to mention the amalgamation of being a desk jockey/pen pusher and Indiana Jones/Lara Croft on a daily basis.

The romantic side of life consists of working with the manatees, walking through the jungles looking at and photographing orchids and pumas, sitting outside the cabana in a hammock while writing bids and business plans. The tough side of life is wading through swamps filed with crocodiles and creepy crawlies, picking off ticks and digging out bott-fly larva from various parts of the body, and then the nightly ritual of dealing with fungal infections. Just the basics of day to day living are a million miles away from what we're used to. Wildlife is a part of everyday life. We now share our cabana with a 6 foot tropical rat snake we've names Patsy (no idea why!). It took a few nights to get used to having a large snake slithering about the cabana all night long and wondering if we were going to wake up sharing our bed with her but now we've come to an understanding. We leave each other alone and all get on, although we do have to fish her out of our panniers from time to time.

Then there's the armadillo which lives below our window. Looking and moving like a tank with a tail he's less than quiet and frequently wakes us up in the night. Wildtracks also has a selection of livestock consisting of a pig called Gremlin, two dogs, a horse and 3, no 2 sheep. There were 3 until the night before last (called Malcolm, Monkey and Matilda) but Matilda had a run in with a Puma and is no more. At 2:00am I was up and about to take my shift in heating the isolation pool for Buttons (the manatee) and heard Gremlin and the dogs going wild. I went off to investigate what the noise was all about but couldn't see anything. The sheep seemed happy enough and the dogs settled back down. The following morning Matilda was lying not 30 feet from the back of our cabana with her heart, lungs and kidneys missing. All the tell tell signs of a puma kill. They always eat those parts of the body first as they have the highest calorific content so if they are disturbed while feeding they've got the best bits first. Belizean pumas have never been known to take a human but I'm glad it didn't bump into it at 2:00am to test the fact. Matilda didn't die in vain though. The following day we set up camera traps to get some photos of the puma feeding on the remains of the carcass which will contribute to the research being carried out here. (The film has yet to be developed though so no photos of it here!). However, today we're off to track down the pumas layer and tonight a couple of us will be spending the night up a tree nearby to watch its activities. Not something you get to do everyday.

One of the stranger things we've found ourselves involved in while here (for us anyway) was getting roped into a kids weekend for orphans from Belize City. The orphanage there is designed to take 20 or so kids but currently has somewhere around 55. The kids sleep 2 or 3 to a bed, have to share everything from clothes to medicines and never have their own space or really get to do what they want to do. To help make life a little more bareable for them a number of organisations, Wildtracks included, host weekends away for them where they can simply do what they want to do when they want to do it. This means all the adults here regress by about 20 years and start running round like headless chickens entertaining the kids. It was 3 days of exhaustion on top of the work we should be doing but even I, not really being one for kids enjoyed it. They deserve to get more out of life than they've been given so a little exhaustion is a small price to pay for them.

To a degree our time here so far has been all work and no play. Although mornings like this make it worthwhile.

Being a small outfit there's always far more to do than there are hours in the day. We're up at between 4:30 and 6:00am. Work starts as soon as we get some breakfast down us and non of us stop until we go to bed at around 9:30am. Then the night shift starts. Of late there has been a strong northerly wind which has lowered the lagoon from a comfortable 28 degrees C to below 22 degrees C. Unfortunately the minimum temperature for the smaller manatee is 24 degrees C so she's been moved to the isolation pool where we can heat the water for her. This means that we each have to take it in turns to get up at one and a half hour intervals to top the pool up with hot water. Non of us have had a full nights sleep in 12 days now and we're all starting to feel it. Luckily everyone gets on really well so the irritability factor has been kept in check (so far). It all sounds like hard work and much of it is but the knowledge that Liz and I are getting to do and see things that we never dreamt that we would is great. We've seen things just in the last two weeks that many people dream of seeing their whole lives but never do. As Mr. Grant Johnson would say: "It is not the unknown, but the fear of it, that prevents us from doing what we want." With that in mind, we find our strength and resolve is tested every day in a new environment full of things not good for the human constitution but the rewards are beyond our dreams. How long we'll be here we don't know but we're enjoying it so far so there's no rush to be anywhere else right now and with a sunset beer like this who cares!

We only plan to spend eight days or so in Belize. Yeh right!!!!!!!!!! having come into Belize on the 3rd January we were looking forward to nothing more than seeing Camille and Alex (our friends from England) and seeing a little of the country before riding onto Guatemala in a little over a week. Boy has that all changed. We did indeed meet Camille and Alex and had a fantastic time with them seeing and doing so many things but one of those things has lead to an unexpected outcome. The four of us went to a manatee rehabilitation centre in the north of the country at Sartenaja that takes in injured or abandoned manatees and nurses them back to health before releasing them into the wild again.

This is just one aspect of the work that the conservation organisation does. Its a small organisation in relation to others around the world but they're one of the most prominent and active in the whole of Belize. We got talking to Zoe and Paul who run the organisation with help of a number of volunteers and explained that we'd looked into doing some kind of work in Central America but hadn't come up with anything other than the usual volunteer holidays that charge thousands of dollars for the privilege of spending two weeks hacking back jungle during the day and peeling potatoes at night to feed 40 other volunteers. We didn't chat too much about it, just passing comment really and left the centre having seen the beautiful manatees and enjoying the day. The following day Zoe came looking for us and invited us back for a chat about volunteer opportunities in Central America. Having said a sad goodbye to Camille and Alex we rode over to see Zoe and Paul and expecting to be given a couple of contacts for the usual volunteer holidays in this part of the world. We were a bit blown away when they offered us both a job putting together a funding bid for a new marine and jungle nature reserve and habitat corridor in the north of Belize. Stunned is the word that best describes how we feel right now. One minute we're traveling round the world on a motorbike having the time of our lives and the next we're working in Belize on something of monumental importance to both the people and wildlife of the country.

In the morning we waved Camille and Alex off as they rode out to sea in a small boat on their way to the Mexican border before flying back to the UK and we both felt so far from home all of a sudden. By the afternoon we found we had a new home and a new job. Incredible. We'll be spending our days working in the jungle conducting photographic habitat surveys for jaguars, tapirs, peccaries and host of other wildlife, taking part in turtle, manatee and bird surveys and putting together a bid for funding of the proposed 11,000 acres of jungle nature reserve and the marine reserve. On top of that we'll be working with the local communities to improve the opportunities for them as fishing declines and tourism grows. Conservation is something that protects the wildlife from exploitation by the local people but its also something that takes away their livelihoods unless something is developed to give them a new livelihood so we'll be working hard to make sure that happens for them.

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As I said, we both feel stunned by it all and its all a bit daunting but we're not on our own. Zoe and Paul have 17 years of experience in Belize and some huge successes under their belts so we're in good hands. For us its a dream come true and if we can make a difference for Belize it'll be something incredible for us. Wish us luck! We'll keep the updates coming but they may be a little different for the next few months. This little adventure may last a couple of months or as much as six months or more, who knows. All we know is we're very lucky