We could also see just how close Guatemala was, the border between the two countries in dispute since the 19th century. “That’s why I’m pretty happy to be part of the Commonwealth,” said Darren.
Relationships haven’t always been this strained; the Mayans of Xunantunich were possibly allied with the Guatemalan city of Naranjo during their heyday from about AD 700. Just 300 years later, they abandoned Xunantunich, possibly as a result of devastating drought. It is the lack of water that archaeologists believe is behind more than a dozen skeletons and some broken pottery at the ATM cave; they were sacrifices to the rain gods.
It seemed ironic, then, that while the Mayans sacrificed their children out of desperation for water, our visit in the dry season turned out to be a rainy wipe-out when we started our adventure at Ambergris Caye. The largest of dozens of islands off Belize’s coast, Ambergris’s big-ticket excursion is the Great Blue Hole, a submerged and collapsed limestone cave where experienced scuba divers plunge part way down its dark depths of 410ft. We had intended to snorkel its 984ft circumference and to fly over the deep blue ink blot in an azure sea, but both trips were scuppered by storms.
And so we did what the locals do and took a golf buggy for a bone-shaking journey from our beachside idyll at Victoria House over speed bumps and potholes as we followed the stream of traffic to buzzy San Pedro. Here, amid colourful dive shops and stands selling carved wood, not far from the ferry that was disgorging its load of schoolchildren from the mainland, we found the Belize Chocolate Company, run by Britons Chris and Jo Beaumont.
“We love the people here. Everyone is friendly. And there’s no fast food anywhere in the country,” said Chris, handing us some chocolate-covered honeycomb that tasted infinitely better than a Crunchie.
No fast food franchises
There may not be a McDonald’s or Burger King, but there is the Truck Stop, where pizza, tacos and ice cream are sold from converted containers. It looked good, too, but we had a reservation at Elvi’s Kitchen, one of the island’s best restaurants. Here, with our chairs in the sand beneath a photograph of the Duke of Sussex during his visit to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, we munched on street corn and fish in Mayan spices steamed in a banana leaf.
We unwittingly followed in Harry’s footsteps later, too, when we switched from reef to rainforest to stay in the Lodge at Chaa Creek, which expat Mick Fleming opened with his wife, Lucy, the year Belize gained independence.
