Been lost in the Yucatan 'jungle' a couple times myself.
That must have been very interesting. Was your trip before or after Belizean independence? A few years ago when we visited Caracol, very near Belize's border with Guatemala, we were told the Irish Brigade was having live fire practice in the area and not to be alarmed at the sound of gunshots. Tensions with Guatemala were high after a couple of recent violent border incursions in which Guatemalan "trespassers" had been killed near Caracol. The Brits were letting Guatemala know Belize was no pushover.
Meanwhile, the Belizean ambassador to Guatemala had been taken hostage in reprisal and when we crossed the border from Belize to visit Tikal things were decidedly jittery. Something serious was afoot and our ashen-faced guide was clearly a worried man when we turistas were herded into a small room at the border crossing station. The first thing that struck us was the Guatemalan map on the wall: no Belize. It was Guatemala all the way to the Caribbean. To Guatemalans, Belize does not and has never existed.
After a lot of palaver we were allowed to continue but apart from delightful individual people and gorgeous locales, we found the mood of Guatemala very dark. We never got used to guards with AK-47s lurking in the bushes around our hotel, presumably to protect us from being kidnapped for ransom. A couple of weeks after our return home we read of an incident in a remote Guatemalan village in which a tour guide and a couple of tourists were killed by villagers. Somehow they became convinced the visitors were there to steal their children and they attacked the tourbus. I don't think I'd care for anything much more primitive than what we experienced.