PowerCycle

06/15 First whole day of riding in Belize and I’m not a fan. The Northern Highway as it’s called has no shoulder, no lane markings of any kind (including a center yellow line) and there are big, old rumbling sugar cane trucks all over the place. No one ran me over and that’s all that matters I guess. The wind was kicking my butt too. It was blowing hard from the east which pushes me right into the broken asphalt that marks the side of the road. Fortunately I have mad riding skills and avoided running off the road.

Other than a lot of sugar cane fields there’s not too much in the way of scenery. I miss hills. On a positive note the people here are extremely friendly. I’ve had more fist-bumps from strangers on the street then I ever have. And the food… it is sooooo good. Had this garlic pepper shrimp tonight that was awesome. Most of the restaurants are air conditioned which is great because then I don’t have to chase nasty flies away from my dinner. So other than the stinking road and that things are a bit more expensive I like it here.

Orange Walk Town is pretty neat. It seemed from reading different web sites that it would be really touristy but its not that way at all. I even found a place (Baba’s) that changes Mexican pesos. There’s a decent-sized river that runs through town that you can travel up to see the ruins at Lamanai (used to be huge Mayan city). I’m going to skip it because staying an extra day for the US $40 tour plus the cost of the motel (US $35) is way too much.

I sure miss having detailed GPS maps like I did for Mexico. I’m using the Garmin WorldMap v4 and it only has major highways on it. That didn’t help when it took me 15 minutes to find my way out of Corozal this morning.

GPX Track