Features

When the SAS jungle warfare team nicknames a type of vegetation laced with barbs as long and lethal as four-inch nails the 'bastard tree', you give it a wide berth.

When the same hard-arsed squaddies call the deadly fer-de-lance snake the Jumping Tommy Goff on account of its ability to leap its entire length off the ground and sink its fangs into your wrinkled chicken-white rain-and-sweat-marinated skin, you pray to any higher being you can find that you never come eye-to-eye with the serpent.

One bite from that, without a rescue chopper on standby, and death becomes a question of when, not if.

These - I'm informed by 'John', one of the British Army's top jungle warfare trainers - are just a couple of the myriad dangers the Belize jungle boasts. It is one of the toughest environments in the world. Not only is it home to a menagerie of nasties, but drug smugglers also operate out of here.

Making contact with Kalashnikov-wielding, Ray-Ban and Prada-wearing drug smugglers is a real possibility for the thousands of Brit squaddies who train in Belize each year - I can only hope I don't come across any during my time here.

Until 1994, the British Army was in this very jungle to prevent a war. In 1981, British Honduras became the independent state of Belize. Cue a mustering of Guatemalan military on the border, seeing an opportunity to assert their perceived claim to Belizean territory.

London was having none of it and sent in a flight of Harriers, plus hundreds of ground troops, to protect the strategically crucial territory on the Caribbean coast of Central America.

At the forefront of counter-insurgency jungle warfare were the boys from Hereford - their SAS skills honed during conflicts in Malaya and Borneo and West Africa proving vital here in Central America. "Now, Belize is the main jungle training site for the British Army," says 'John'. Real names, ranks and other such details are denied.

"Three times a year, soldiers from the UK come out for six weeks. They spend 28 days in 'the trees' (army parlance for the jungle). We teach them to get familiar with the environment. For four weeks they will not wash, will have to live off rations and learn how to find sustenance from the jungle. It's not everyone's idea of heaven, but most of the guys end up loving it."

Belize is not just used for army training, though, there are also SAS operatives working on secret missions here. 'John' has agreed to drive us through bandit country, close by the Guatemalan border, for an insight into the conditions the special forces endure during operations in the area.