We finally left Mexico and crossed the border into Belize. The officials didn't take any food from us; in fact, they didn't even ask us about it. They didn't even come out to look in the van! All that worrying and eating up our food for nothing.
You must buy insurance when you enter Belize and the guys at the insurance company wanted our stickers to put on their monitors. We happily obliged. We didn't find many places in Mexico to put our stickers without feeling like we'd get into trouble for doing so.
We headed to the coastal town of Corozal. This is their big letter sign. The second 'O' represents the jade mask--a famous Mayan artifact from here. There are several little parks along the waterfront here where we could've stayed. We chose to stay here as there was free electricity to hook into. We whiled away the time watching the big iguanas and fending off locals who wanted to sell us something or wanted us to give them something.
Jason catching a snooze in the shade in the park. He doesn't even have to be horizontal to take a nap anymore.
Our camp chairs are getting worn out. The rivets are breaking, so we found some nails in a hardware store and Jason is installing them to keep the legs from falling apart.
Rainbow Park provided free showers. The park was lined with these painted coconut palms. Very artistic and colorful.
We wanted to go to Sartenejo, out on the NE point. Two ferries were required to get across the waterways along the way. We reached this first one just as the ferry pulled in. Jason eyed the angle of the loading ramp and decided we'd most likely drag when loading and unloading and decided not to go.
We'd had to traverse a construction zone and splash through this white clay water puddle to get this far. We had to go through it all again to backtrack to get back to the main road to continue on out of Corozal. So much for the clean van.
We stopped in Orange Walk along the river for lunch. We thought we might stay for the night here, but had noticed that the construction water truck had been using this site to reload his tank and there wasn't really room for both of the vehicles on the little two-track road down here, so we had lunch and carried on.
We were amazed that someong actually lived in this house by the river in Orange Walk
We drove as far as La Democracia, where an iOverlander post said the owner of Cheers Restaurant and Cabanas was happy to allow vanlifers to park in the lot overnight. The inside of the restaurant had old license plates and tee-shirts hung from the rafters.
The owner also sold homemade bread and rolls and cookies. She graciously let me post a sticker on the bread cabinet front.
The tapir is the national animal of Belize and we saw several signs warning us about them crossing the roads. Same thing for the jaguars. We saw neither animal on our travels.
The Coastal Highway as we drove south along the coast was pretty boring, often scorched as they cleared land or burned off sugar cane fields. The few low mountains like these made for a nice break in the scenery.
Gales Point is a skinny spit of land tha juts up into a big ocean lagoon. It's home to the largest group of manatees anywhere. They come to a warm freshwater spring that flows up in a particular spot in the ocean here. Tours will take you out to see them, but we passed the opportunity as we can see manatees in the marina in Punta Gorda, Florida when we are there.
We drove to the end of the Southern Hwy to Punta Gorda, Belize. Folks got a kick out of the fact that we were from Punta Gorda, Florida and drove all this way to see another Punta Gorda. Peini is the old, old dialect name of Punta Gorda. Few folks are still alive to speak the dialect and this is a sort of tribute to their culture.
Punta Gorda, Belize has little to offer us as tourists, but we were told cruise ships sometimes anchor offshore and tender folks in to the town. Tiny, potholed roads with no place to park a vehicle our size meant we didn't really spend much time here. We found a place to park in the neighboring town of New Hope and the friendly folks there made us feel safe and welcome. A local healer next door claimed she was texting Keanu Reeves via Facebook, encouraging him to visit Belize.
At the big letter sign for Peini, Jason talked to a man driving a group of chocolatiers from the US and Germany in a bus, heading to the cacao processing plant we'd passed on our way down the day before. He welcomed us to stop by as the group was visiting the place to check out their processes. By the time we got there, the group had already been and gone, but we talked our way into a bit of a tour of the operation anyway. These bags of the gooey cacao beans are being loaded into these boxes to be covered to ferment for seven days. They are rotated every two days to keep the fermentation even. They collect the bagfuls from growers on 30+ farms in the Toledo district of Belize, all of them organic.
The Maya Mountain Cacao Co. processes the cacao beans and ships them to specialty chocolate makers in Germany and the USA. They provide 100% Certified Organic Cacao to make the best chocolate.
Omar and Financia showed us their operation and explained their processes to us while they were on their break.
The burlap bags covering the fermenting beans keep the heat in and the bugs and dirt out.
The staff of seven at this location were busy dumping bags of beans into the fermentation boxes and didn't have time yet to pull out these huge trays of fermented beans to dry in the sun. We were questioned about our use of lotions or such that might interfere with their 'organic' certification before we were allowed to touch the beans. I sampled a handful of the ones already nearly dried and ready to bag and ship out. The dark chocolate nibs are still kind of bitter at this stage.
The warehouse with bags of A1 grade organic cacao beans, ready for shipping. Each bag weighs 120 pounds and the guy lifting them only weighed 140 lbs. The entire process is all manual work.
The washing palapa where the bags are washed for reuse. When they wear out, they leak or spill the precious beans and they are wasted as they can't use them then. They don't use the juice fron the coating around the beans. It's just a waste product, but can account for up to 12% loss of the weight of the beans from the time they pick them up from the grower until they get weighed again before they are dumped into the fermentation boxes.
The front of the Maya Mountain Cacao building is decorated with cacao pods and flowers found in the locale. The whole operation seemed very low key.
The flowers and a cacao pod as decorations.
Jason was enamored with the hand pump for water out in front of the processing plant. We're always on the lookout for water sources.....
The sign along the highway. We thought it looked like a dump of a place when we passed it the day before, but were glad we stopped on the way back. It was more impressive than it looked.
We'd also passed the Belize Spice Farm and Botanic Garden and had made a mental note to stop there as something different to do on our way back up from Punta Gorda. We had to backtrack from PG as it is right next to the Guatemala border and there is no other road. We paid for the tour through the spice farm and rode the tractor-pulled trolley as our guide told us about what we were seeing. These arches of flowers were what originally caught my eye from the road. A pretty place for weddings and such.
Our driver, Antonio kept hopping out to get things for us to eat or smell along the way. Here, he shows us the golden globes inside the lotus flower. He brought back some lotus seeds from the showerhead-like part of the lotus for us to taste, too. Sort of like sweet corn.
The Victoria lilies can gtow to 4 feet across and support a small baby or child on their smooth surfaces. The underside and outside edges are prickly, though.
Our guide, Cornelio, telling us about the plants.
Antonio broke open a cacao pod so we could eat the fruit inside. The slimy white coating on the cacao beans is sweet and I kept the pod for snacking all evening.
White pepper is just the overripe black peppercorns with the red outer coating rubbed off.
The 500-acre farm has 400 acres dedicated to oranges and the other 100 to fruits, flowers, and plants for tasting, smelling, and looking pretty.
More varieties of the local flowers.
This is the owner, Thomas Matthew. He is a very unpretentious man originally from southern India. He's 83 years old and was quite a pleasant host, spending time chatting with us. He wanted a photo of YOLO visiting for his website.
We had lunch after our tour and I was looking forward to a fresh garden salad.
I also bought some curry leaves, something I haven't seen since the South Pacific.
After lunch, Mr. Matthew showed us the bungalows he's building for people to stay next season. All the wood is teak from their lands. They looked great.
He is landscaping with gorgeous plants like this giant cycad palm.
We passed through the town of Silk Grass and I just liked the colorfu big letters along the road.
We treated ourselves to a few Belikin Stout beers, the local brand. We used up our Belizean dollars to buy them.
Crossing a river, we noticed this tall white cliff along the water. There's a rope swing hanging out there and the contrast in colors with the clear river water made me walk onto the bridge for the photo. I was nearly blown off by a semi speeding by.
Cave tubing was on our list to do before we left Belize as there are few places to partake of this activity. We stopped into the St. Herman's National Park and rustled up a guide to take us through the underground spring waterway. These are our tubes; we got the blue ones and the guide took the litte black one.
Jason kitted out for the cave tubing adventure. Stalactites and rock walls can make for tight passages sometimes and the light on the hard had was necessary in the dark cave.
Jason and Karen ready to head to the cave to go tubing. We had to carry the tubes for about ten minutes, hiking to the steps to get down to the water.
Our guide, Antony, leading us down into St. Herman's Cave to the water.
Antony giving us info on the history and culture of the Mayans and the caves. He is a full-blooded Mayan, but tall for his culture at 5'6".
There were lots of pretty formations in the caves: stalactites, stalagmites and sugary crystal flow stones. We had to paddle upstream for a bit to get to the source of the water, but my hands barely reached the water from the giant tube, so Antony pulled me along by my feet much of the way. The water here is really shallow.
Jason taking a photo just before we got wet. It was a pleasant, refreshing thing to do on a hot day. We rode the lazy current back downstream and returned to this spot to hike back out,
We hopped back to the blue hole in the park for more cool water relaxation,
It was way too hot to hike the park trails, so we showered, stayed in our wet clothes, and headed on to Belmopan, the capital. I didn't feel like staying in the city, so we found a spot along the Belize River where locals come to use the river as a swimming hole. This road dipped down to the river, but we stayed on the bluff, not wanting to get into the crowd partying along the river and the deep, soft gravel along the riverbed.
Horses roamed freely around here. We've seen a lot of horses in Belize, compared to the few we saw in Mexico.
This one didn't mind me taking photos and came right up to me to nuzzle.
Jason enjoying the spot above the river, a relaxing site that exceeded his expectations based on the long, rough road we traveled to get here.
The pretty Belize River from the lower part of the road to the river bed. It was a calm, peaceful place after the locals left. I found lots of pretty chert, chalcedony, and some agate rocks along the road here, too.
The sign where we turned to the river spot. We thought we were going onto private property as we had to pass through a gate, but when we reached the spot, it looked like it was a public access road and was well used. The actual lodge was just a bit further along the road.
Back in Belmopan the next day, we sidetracked on the way to the library and we got a flat tire while Jason was trying to get info from the American Embassy here. The Embassy is at the end of this road behind us. Luckily, the couple who owned the home at the end of this road gave Jason a ride with the tire to a local shop to get it repaired.
The tire has a nasty slice in it and the tread is beginning to delaminate, so they patched it from the inside as a temporary measure. Jason put the spare tire on to use, but it is the one with the bent rim. The repaired flat is now the spare.
We found the National Historic Library with a good wifi, cold A/C and friendly staff who let us spend the night in the lot there, offering the water spigot for our use, too. I tripped on a rock and bloodied my leg on the way in to get more cold water to drink and had to use up a bunch of bandage options to try to not ruin the sheets with blood overnight.
