Leaving Belize

It is always difficult to leave places you like. It was again the feeling we got when Leaving Placencia. Not only where we leaving Placencia but Belize.
I think it is even worse as you are not only leaving places but also people you have gotten to know and you are not heading home. You are heading on and have no knowledge about the people or situation a head. Still we where heading for Guatemala and knew that the people there are outstanding nice and good.

Sign on a sidewalk in Placencia

We took our coffee this morning to the beach and had a last look at the Caribbean see in silence before getting the expedition vehicle in gear and heading out on the terrible road that goes lies along the sand-reef and up to the swamp area. Soon after we past Dangriga and entered the Hummingbird highway the sky started crying and it was occasional pouring down with rain, still the change in landscape was beautiful and the higway a fin drive, beside few bridges that are a bit to narrow.

Cabaña we rented for a day.

We stoped about 5km from the borders in a small town and decided to do what most others in this town seemed to be doing. Have some chinese lunch. We ordered chop suey and chow mein and we probably will be eating this the rest of the week. Have not seen bigger servings in my life.

There was nothing to going through the customs. I think it might have helped that I now speak few words in spanish, but the customs officer on the Guatemala site was in such a good mood that it really was fun going through. An then he was practicing his english, so he helped me with the spanish and I him with the english. Before we knew it we where through. No problems with any thing and no one really took a look at the truck, they did not even ask questions about the dog.

Then came the drive to Tikal. lets say we never made it to Tical. It was already late in the afternoon and starting to go dark so I was not sure if we would make it. But then the awful potholed dirt road that is on the Guatemalan site suddenly turned into some thing worse. I found the truck starting to behave like cow on Ice. No fun and we stopped. In front of us was a mud field and there was nowhere to go. From the opposite direction two cars and two motorcycles where spinning their wheels through the mud. I thought not much of this and kicked in the lower gears and started rolling again slowly. That is when the truck got the rumba in his behind and started dancing all over the road. As I grew up driving in snow and Ice it was a feeling I knew from a car but not from a 7.5 ton truck, and there where other trucks coming our way that behaved similar. I did not like this. I kicked in the differential in hope for it to get better but it did not really do any thing at first. I managed to stop before going of the road once more and as I was skew across the road I had to back it up to get it straightened, No way of straighten it out by going fort, the front just didn''t get any grip. That was from then on that I could feel the drives function but still the ruck was like a mad cow on Ice. I was not sure what to do , I did not like this situation at all and feared that if there was a hill (which seamed) I would probably have no control over the truck. Then there came a guy on motorcycle and one walking beside him. I asked if this was a long chapter on the road. They said it was just until the top of the slack in front of us, no more than that. So there really was nothing to do but bite the tong and act like a viking. Drive slowly and hope we would make it. It was no problem really. It seamed like such but not really. And we crawled through the mud and in to a better terrain. Soon after that we saw some houses scattered around a football field and drove in there. We asked the people if we could stay there for the night and of course it was no problem. We where very tired when we went to sleep.

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