PowerCycle

06/14 You better Belize it! I’m officially in Central America now. Crossing the border was painless. The lady just asked where I was going and I was on my way. It sucked having to pay an exit fee of $20 US just to leave Mexico but what can you do. Once into the country I followed the road about 7 miles to the town of Corozal. It’s a pretty quiet place on the shore of Chetumal Bay which opens up into the Caribbean Sea. I’m happy to see there are lots of Chinese restaurants here. Haven’t eaten at one in a while. Drank some new beer–Belikin it’s called. It has a Mayan temple on the front and it tastes pretty good.

On the road into town I saw a dead Tapir, the largest land mammal of the American tropics, so I can add that as my first exotic road kill. Hopefully I’ll see some live ones. And Toucans…there are a lot of them here. Actually Belize has so many things that can seriously mess you up that I’ll have to be careful. There’s even an ant that’s described as causing “waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours”. No more dropping Oreo cookie bits and seeing how many ants I can summon during a rest break.

It’s weird speaking English to everyone again. Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official language. The population of Belize is pretty mixed: Mestizos comprise about 34% of the population, Kriols 25%, Spanish 15%, Maya 11%, and Garinagu 6%. The population is small, only 320,000 so it enjoys the lowest population density in Central America but sadly it has one of the highest population growth rates in the western hemisphere. When will people learn?

Stayed in the lake-side town of Bacalar last night. Didn’t have anything exciting to report so I didn’t write up a blurb about the day.

GPX Track

This entry was posted on Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 5:25 pm and is filed under Leg 2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.