Bobby Bicycle Brigade: Better Belize It!

Yes! Indeed!

It’s only natural that after the action packed adventures of the Cuban variety we came into a period of low key chill times. We’re lucky to have an abundance of visitors along our journey. Since we last sent our update we have sandwiched our time between the meetup of Annina’s familys.

In Tulum we hung out with the Wells’s and now in Belize we are with the Dougherty’s. In Tulum we visited the archeological ruins by the coast and from there also ventured to the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá. The heat felt like a haute sauna under a magnifying glass. So we made the only logical decision one can come to, go under ground.

We visited a series of underground caverns with stalactites and bats galore. The cenotes (fresh water sink holes) are all over the Yucatán peninsula. Many of the larger ones near the tourist centers are well maintained and have opportunities for divers and snorkeling the like. We took a guided tour in chilly waters through a network of Cenotes that connects to a wider system only accessible by diving in underwater caves.

After our reunion with Brian and Kathie we stayed another few days in Tulum to recuperate from a phlegmatically inspired cold and for Annina to paint the skulls we had been carrying around.

We also found the kush coconut spot at the local park so that was a daily pilgrimage to climb the tree and gets some free coconut water. After we felt sufficiently hydrated and the skulls cosmically decorated we mounted on the long and monotonous road towards Belize. The path was a lull in pattern of trees and not much else. We did stealth camp in a spot that had secret cenote in the woods. We also camped behind a chicken restaurant which is where we realized all the grasshoppers we had been seeing on the road (and dodging to avoid with little success because they jump into your chain ring anyway) were actually a locust plague that was devastating the area. We looked it up and they are of the giant red winged grasshopper (Tropidacris cristata). The juveniles have a bright color either yellow or red with black striping, indicating that they are toxic. But the mature ones have this huge wing span and are some of the largest grasshoppers in the world. We fried it up and ate it.

A highlight was camping north of Bacalar in a small town of Buena Vista where we had an abundance of coconuts and we camped right next to the lagoon. We met a nice traveling family that welcomed us into a place they were house-sitting and got to share a nice chill day with them before continuing our route to the border. We offered them our horse skull as a parting gift.

We rode into Bacalar proper and tried selling our remaining cow skull to no avail. So after a quick dip in the municipal beach on the lagoon we continued on the long and not winding road to Chetumal. We ran into Luis Antonio a fellow cyclist voyager heading the other way.

He had been traveling from his homeland in Brazil for the past 3 years! We exchanged a bit of stories and tips and realized he was wearing a long sleeve shirt Ernesto had left at the cyclist haven in Tuxtla Gutiérrez! We rode into the border city of Chetumal where we road around catching up on city errands. We camped in a park next to a police station and finally made a digital copy of our zine, Gear Grinder! It’s been many months in the making and we actually printed it a while ago but never got around to digitizing it. We’ll attach a copy of it below for all to read and enjoy. If you’re able to print (double sided) and share let us know :)

It feels weird leaving a country you have spent half a year in. It was a wild ride traversing Mexico by bicycle we’ll miss the vast expanse of land and cultural diversity, troubadour musicians, plethora of salsas, deserts of towering cactus, and butterfly forests etc. We’re excited to be in a new cultural environment experiencing and learning new things. As soon as we reached customs in Belize we new we were in a new world.

The customs agent who directed us on where to get our passports stamped had a big chain necklace with a marijuana leaf pendant. After we stamped our passports we rode through the customs booth where the agent who was busy on the phone out of the corner of his eye checked one of our passports and waved us through. Laughingly we made our way to the coastal town of Corozal. We stopped in town to pick up some light groceries, where we first realized almost all grocery stores and markets are owned by Chinese families. We pedaled a little bit outside of town to a free camping spot under an abandoned palapa. With a palm thatch roof over our heads and the ocean breeze blowing a soft salty mist, we dozed off to sleep with no worries.

A few hours later we woke to the pitter patter of drops and noticed the winds had picked up, we groggily began setting up the tent and rain fly in order to shield us from the rain. But sooner than we could have imagined the storm entered into full maturity and was just dumping buckets at us sideways. We struggled to keep the tent from flattening out while attempting to keep the rain cover from flying away. Our futile attempts at staying dry, left us with piles of saturated clothes and a flooded tent. Luckily we had kept our sleeping bags in our waterproof panniers and used our wet clothes to mop up and wring out the puddles in the tent.

We awoke the next morning to a calm and bright shining day. After rigging up a clothes line we lazed about waiting for our clothes and tent to dry off. We left after midday and made it into the town of Orange Walk where we were hosted by our first Belizean family. We camped on the foundation of a little house they were building for one of the family members. We shared meals with them and met more of the family that lived nearby in the morning for breakfast. They were incredibly gracious hosts offering us parting gifts of sweetened craboo or nanché fruit, fresh guaya or nekip from their trees and an hand embroidered table cloth. We made our way to Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. We camped in a family yard in the village and on the way out popped in to the office for Audubon Society. We met an incredibly nice man who talked to us about the wildlife there and told us he taught wilderness survival courses. We wished we could have stayed longer to appreciate more of the natural knowledge and teachings of this man but we had to make it to Belize City to meet up with Annina’s mom! After a quick stop for some Chinese food and WiFi in Ladyville we cruised into the port city and stayed at the local fire station. We met Annina’s mom and took a ferry to San Pedro Island where we would be chillaxing like it be 2002.

We had many an adventure on a boat and snorkeling in the reef. The sargassum is very present on the island carrying that eggy smell on the ocean breezeways but it seems to be the case in most of the Caribbean shore. Mother nature’s warning of the things to come. After a wonder-filled week and a half of island time we parted ways with Mama Deane and continued south.

We camped with a family where we played “find the craboo” with one of the children.

We also camped on a corn and sugar cane farm and were able to swim in a river they had access to. After biking into the capitol city of Belmopan and camping next to the police station, we pedaled into Guatemala through the western border. Seemed like a quick dip into Belize but we’re excited to keep moving. We ended up in a small rural village next to a river where we stayed with a family and hung out with them for two days. Swimming in the river, taking care of a baby chicken, and visiting their cow pasture next to a lagoon where we saw a howler monkey swimming.