(27) Belize
Looks like I’m going to have some free time so I might as well catch up with our last few days. We are currently in San Ignacio, Belize waiting out hurricane Lisa. It’s the third hurricane of the trip that has impacted us in one way or another. Hurricane Kay delayed out entry to Baja at the beginning of the trip. Then we had to hunker down in Melaque for a couple days to let hurricane Orlene pass. Now we are waiting things out in the hotel at San Ignacio to let hurricane Lisa go through. Hoping this is the last of the hurricanes for the season LOL.
We’ve had reasonably good weather up until now in Belize. We left Bakalar, Mexico and entered Belize on October 27th. The border crossing was fairly painless. Getting our TIP canceled and stamped out of immigration didn’t take long at all. The Belizean side was a bit slower. The immigration, TIP and vehicle insurance stops took about an hour and a half total. The whole process getting out of Mexico and into Belize was about two hours in total.
Serge had a bit more trouble than Neil and I did coming through. He had flown back to Canada for a few days and therefore the dates on his tourist visa (he got a new one on his return to Mexico) no longer matched the dates on his TIP paperwork. In the end he was able to finally explain things and they didn’t charge him for a second TIP ($475).
Since we didn’t know how long the crossing would take I was not willing to make a hotel reservation very far from the border and we ended our day in Corozal. A grand total of about 50km from where we were in Bakalar. Serge was not feeling well so Neil and I took the recommendation of the owner of the hotel we were staying had and walked down the beach to a restaurant for dinner and headed back to our room for the night.
The next day was a ride down south to the village of Hopkins. Terrie, the boys and I had stayed here at a resort about 13 years ago. Neil and I went a little down market for accommodations this time though. We ran into a German couple a few days ago and they mentioned that there was a motorcycle hostel in Hopkins. So that’s where we wound up. There was no air conditioning, but other than that the place was nice. It was a good place to spend a night as we continued on south the next day.
After Hopkins it was a short day down to Placencia. Terrie has been here before and offered to pay for 3 nights stay for us at a condo development she stayed in before. It was a really nice place and we definitely enjoyed our days there. I was up every morning to go up to the widows walk on the building roof with my coffee to watch the sunrise. It was a great way to start our days.
Our first full day in Placencia was rainy so we didn’t do much other than just walk into town and look around between showers. The second day turned nice and we took a short ride to Mayan King Falls. Our timing was perfect. We got there just as a group of people were leaving and we were just getting ready to leave when the next group showed up. So we had the place to ourselves for some nice cool swimming in the pools at the bottom of the falls.
The day we rode into the falls was Halloween. We had dinner in a restaurant in town up on the second floor. We could sit and watch all the kids and families go by on the street below trick or treating. Trick or Treating seems a bit different there. Since the bulk of the streets are not lit and it’s pitch black off the main road, all the businesses stay open late and the kids go from business to business doing their Trick or Treating.
We started paying attention to the weather again our final day in Placencia. A new tropical storm was forming in the Atlantic and was forecast to strengthen to a category 1 hurricane and head straight for Belize. Just as we were about to leave for our next stop the tour company we booked with to visit the Mayan ruins at Carocol messaged me to say the government had closed all parks in the country until the hurricane passed. Given the look of the storm on radar and the path it was forecast I got in touch with our hotel in San Ignacio and extended our stay here by two days. San Ignacio is about 50 miles inland so the storm wouldn’t be has strong there.
The ride from Placencia to San Ignacio was pretty straight forward, except for the 20km of road on the Placencia Peninsula. There are 37 topes (yes we counted them) in the final 20km of the road to Placencia. All you do is get up to speed and then it’s time to break and go over another speed bump. It took 40 minutes to get out to the main highway.
The clouds were following us all the way to San Ignacio but all we got our first night here were a couple thunder showers. Things pretty much shut down entirely here yesterday as the hurricane neared. The hotel stopped serving food in the restaurant. Instead they just had single food offerings and brought them to us in our “cottage”. It took longer than the forecasts were saying, but the hurricane finally got to us at about 6:00pm last night. It wasn’t long before we lost power after that. On the plus side wee never lost cell service. We had high winds and lots of rain until sometime early this morning. Still no power when we got up this morning.
We went to check on the bikes first thing this morning. They survived the storm without damage. The walk also let us look around the grounds here. Lots of palm fronds and coconuts on the ground and two trees blown over, but other than that not much damage. Unfortunately, All the parks are still closed in Belize today and there is no word on when they will reopen. We decided to stay here today and see what happens tomorrow. If Carocol opens up again tomorrow we will still take our tour. If not then we will head into Guatemala tomorrow. I messaged the park at Tikal this morning and they said that Tikal will be open tomorrow. That will be our destination either tomorrow or Saturday. We have power and internet now so things are pretty much back to normal except for the clean up of all the stuff on the ground. We’re definitely looking forward to getting moving again.
I have finally made contact with a shipping company in Panama City called Overland Embassy who is looking at sourcing some parts for me and who gave me a shipping address for me to send parts too that they can’t get locally. They have tires for us and can get oil and air filters. I’m ordering new sprockets and an upgraded rear spring for the suspension. I’m glad that is coming together.
That brings things up to date. I’ll probably update again from Antigua Guatemala when we get there.
