MY ROUGH GUIDE: Peter Eltringham: `The village was convinced I was going to die'

Best discovery

Piedras Negras, a Classic Maya city built in an impressive location on a cliff above the Usumacinta River in the Peten of Guatemala, was abandoned to the jungle over 1,000 years ago. The guerrillas who'd occupied it for the last twenty had (apparently) just left and I was rafting down the river with the first archaeological expedition since the 1930s. The archaeologists, Steven Houston and Hector Escobido, were both out at the first lengthy exploration of the site. So they sent a small group of us to find particular glyph carved on a rock face.

Armed with a drawing of the glyph, an old map and a compass direction we set off. The city is enormous and the light was fading, so our chances were not great. I noticed some vertical grooves on an overhang but couldn't make out anything clearly. We had to go across the narrow valley to get a good look. Following the lines upward we slowly began to see the outline of a huge double-headed turtle surrounded by other glyphs. We'd found it and it was undamaged.

Favourite meal

There's no finer lunch than freshly grilled snapper, lobster or barracuda accompanied by Creole rice and beans - a Belizean staple, washed down with a Belikin beer. After tramping the streets in Guatemala I relish a marketplace meal of black beans, tortillas cooked over charcoal with a bowl of guacamole. If I'm really hungry I'll add a bowl of caldo - stew - and a plate of rice to that, with a bottle of Gallo beer.

Bizarre meeting

On my first attempt to reach the ruined city of El Mirador, the location of the tallest Maya temple, I was forced to turn back at Carmelita, the village at the end of the "road", still two days walk through the forest from the ruins. The rainy season hadn't quite finished and the mud was too deep to go any further. Still I had found an excellent guide in Carlos Catalan and promised I'd be back "in a couple of months". When I eventually headed back, three months later, it took me two days to reach Carmelita. I wondered if Carlos would be there, as he could easily be out working in the forest. I approached the village hesitantly, not daring to hope for too much, only to find Carlos walking down the road to meet me. "I knew you'd be back this week" he said, "so I waited for you."

That was strange enough, as he could have had no idea when I'd be back. After all I'd only decided myself three days before, but how could he know exactly which minute I would come near enough to the village to set off to meet me? "Well," he said, "I knew any stranger must be you coming back, so I promised to pay a Quetzal (worth about 10p) to the boy who spotted someone coming." It still all seemed too much of a coincidence, but as often happens, luck was to be on my side. Carlos had the horses ready (to carry supplies - walking through the forest is quicker and safer than riding) and we set off the next morning for a week in the jungle.

Biggest disappointment ever

On my last trip government budget cuts had forced the closure of the Archaeological Vault in Belmopan, Belize's tiny capital. The vault, a locked strongroom housing almost all of the nation's finest Maya artifacts was supposed to be a temporary measure until the National Museum could be built. Visitors could see, even handle, the priceless decorated ceramics, the gold and jade jewellery or the exquisite, delicate eccentric flings - symbols of office for the rulers of a powerful, advanced culture. Now all I can expect are occasional, temporary displays - until funds, or foreign aid, permit the museum plan to be resurrected.

Worst mistake

I was staying on the top floor of my friend Robert's uncompleted two- storey house in Hopkins, a Garifuna fishing village on the coast of Belize. Robert called to me from outside and I stepped through the door to the balcony to see what he wanted. As I fell I realised that the verandah deck was one of the unfinished parts. I hit a horizontal hardwood beam a foot square then slid off, gasping, into the sand.

The entire village was alarmed, convinced I was going to die. The only way out was by boat, nine miles over choppy sea in the dark to the hospital in the District capital of Dangriga. It was excruciating. Each wave hitting the boat knocked the breath out of me and at the hospital the X-ray machine blew a fuse every time the technician turned it on. I was in a serious state; six broken ribs, a punctured lung and the possibility of a ruptured spleen. I was flown to Belize City the next day, but rejected advice to fly out to a modern hospital in Florida. I stayed in Belize, recovering over Christmas as a guest of the British High Commission, and the Foreign Office gained a new fan.

Peter Eltringham did research for `The Rough Guide to Guatemala and Belize'. Keep up withdevelopments in travel by subscribing to the free newsletter `Rough News', published three times yearly. Write to Rough Guides, IoS offer, 1 Mercer Street, London WC2H 9QJ. A free Rough Guide to the first three subscribers each week.

FACT FILE

Getting There: There are no direct flights to either Belize or Guatemala, but you can get to Guatemala in one day using American or Continental. For Belize you almost always need an overnight stay in the USA. Return fares vary from pounds 470-pounds 650 - low season is in the British summer. Journey Latin America (0181-747-3108) offers the best advice on flights. A good alternative is to fly to Cancun, on Mexico's Caribbean coast, and travel overland to Belize.

Belize's land area is about the same size as Wales, but there's an equal area of sea and islands. It also boasts three of the only four coral atolls in the Caribbean, protected in national parks and marine reserves. Diving and snorkelling are just wonderful.

Getting Around: The most popular (indeed virtually the only) internal flight in Guatemala is from Guatemala City to Flores, for a visit to the ruins of Tikal. Buses in both countries are frequent, crowded - and sometimes alarmingly fast.

One more useful fact: British citizens do not need a visa for either Guatemala or Belize.