Pan American Adventure [Belize]

December 13th 2019 [Day 82]

Unplanned free day in San Ignacio today because Charles needs to find a welder to put his pannier racks back together, they’re not in great shape but he got them sorted for super cheap! We went out for dinner later and I had some of the best food on the trip so far. Belizean food is influenced by many different cultures so there is a mix of everything on a menu. Guinness is also pretty heavily advertised here too for some reason!

December 12th 2019 [Day 81]

Caracol, BZ to San Ignacio, BZ

Charlie had a tough day on the road today, it started pissing rain just as we were getting ready to leave the campsite so we were a bit concerned about the ride out of here, with red clay and all that rain equals lots of slippy mud. We waited a while for the rain to stop then some more and decided to give it a try to see how far we would get. We made it to San Ignacio but Charles had a few Slippy Slideys along the way and trashed his panniers and rack pretty good.

December 11th 2019 [Day 80]

Pine Ridge, BZ to Caracol, BZ

More ruins today! Caracol is about an hours ride away from our campsite, there’s a military escort from near where we camped to the ruins at 9:30am to Caracol which we were too early for so we went by ourselves. I think their concerned about tourists being attacked since the ruins are only about 10km from the Guatemalan border and there’s nothing around but jungle.

These ruins are cool because there isn’t many people coming, you mostly need to go by guided tour or rent a 4×4 to get here because of the state of the road, plus when you get here before the military escort you have the place to yourself.

There is also The Rio Frio Caves & Pools in the area not far from the campsite so we took a little spin to those after the ruins to check them out. The cave was huge and again not a sign of any other person in sight.

After the caves we had the rest of the day to chill at the Pine Ridge forestry campsite, there’s lots of Tarantula holes in the ground so we got to have a good look at these critters and I think I made a new friend…

December 10th 2019 [Day 79]

Caye Caulker, Belize to Pine Ridge, Belize

We left the island of Caye Caulker this morning and got the Water Taxi back to Belize City, our bikes were still where we left them with no missing bits 🙂 The plan is to spend a few more days in Belize and visit the Caracol Ruins which are buried in the jungle a few kilometers from the Guatemalan border. To camp in the forest we need a Permit from the Forestry Department located in Belmopan which is on our way. The permits are only $5BZD per person per night and it’s a bit of an ordeal to get one, we would have just camped without it if we had known.

We got to the Forestry Department where they gave us an invoice that we had to take to the Treasury, a Kilometer away to pay the $20BZD, then return with the receipt and they then issued us the permit. We were asked twice while camping if we had it but nobody ever wanted to see it so I guess it was a waste of time! We stocked up on groceries before heading into the jungle for the few days.

The camping place was a bit eery with lots of abandoned houses in this abandoned village. We met a security guy that told us it was like this for the last 20 years when the government changed colour and stopped all the forestry. The houses were occupied by forestry workers and their families in this remote village. There was even a little school here for the forestry workers kids.

The trail to get here is pretty slick with lots of slippy red clay, it’s a pretty nice place though, I got my first 5km run in since Puerto Vallerta in Mexico!

December 8th >> 9th 2019 [Day 77 >> 78]

Caye Caulker, BZ

This island has a very chill vibe where the local motto is “Go Slow” the accents here are very Jamaican/Islander/Caribbean when listening to the locals verbally jive with each other, they sound pretty cool. We ate at a place called Wish Willy’s last night and the fish was so good there that we were back again tonight armed with a group of guys we met where we’re staying. There’s one guy here doing everything, beers are go help yourself to what you want from the cooler. Food is what ever he has left and it comes when it comes. I tried the Lobster tonight over the blackened Snapper last night, both were so good and super cheap for the freshest of fish.

There’s lots of swimming, snorkling and kayaking to be done off the small island.

December 7th 2019 [Day 76]

Bacalar, MX to Caye Caulker, BZ

Today we finally get out of Mexico after spending 3 weeks longer here that we had planned. There is just so much to see and so much ground to cover that it took us over 7 weeks to get through it. This now creates some problems because the viable weather window to make it to Ushuaia by motorbike is mid October to early March and that’s just too much ground to cover in 2 months so I need to figure out a Plan B…

We stop at Lake Atitlán in Guatemala in a few days for a couple of weeks to take intensive Spanish classes so I can look at my options there and see what I wanna do. Charles is already out somewhere in Central America, he’s not sure where yet, since he doesn’t have the funds to finish it. I’d still like to make it all the way to Ushuaia so I might have to get a little inventive!

We left Bacalar this morning around 9am and rode 35 km to the Mexican/Belizean border at Chetumal where the first stop was to hand over our tourist visas to Mexican Immigration before moving on to the Banjercito to export out motorbikes out of Mexico and have our $400 USD deposit refunded to our credit cards, which I no longer have since I lost it with my wallet but didn’t cancel it so I could still get this deposit refunded without any problems. They don’t need the physical card to refund the deposit. They took photos of the bikes and the VIN numbers to make sure they were the same bikes that we entered with.

A this point we rode the 1km of not being in any country to the Belizean fumigation station to pay the $20BZD fumigation fee to have our bikes fumigated, this never happened but we sill paid the fee. Next we rode onwards to Belizean immigration to get our tourist visas and import our motorbikes into Belize. This process was super easy and the Belizean officials are very chill, it took a little while for them to manually write out the paperwork for importing the bikes, it cost us $30BZD to import the bikes and the tourist entry visa was free. The dominant language here is English so it’s probably going to be one of the easier border crossings. I changed all my Mexican Pesos to Belizean Dollars, the rate was 9MXN to 1BZD.

Next we cleared customs with the bikes and rode to the insurance broker to buy bike insurance for a week which cost $28BZD. We stopped for lunch in Belize at the border town of Corozal both pretty pleased that we had made it there before noon, we also gained an hour crossing the border between the Mexican state of Quintana Roo and Belize.

Next task was to ride 200kms to Belize City, ditch our bikes at the water taxi terminal car park, stuff our rucksacks with 3 days worth of crap and take the 45 minute ferry over to Caye Caulker one of the islands in the Caribbean, we were on the island, checked in and chilling by 5pm.