Paradise - You Can Check Out But You Can Never Leave

 Paradise is a tropical Island 62km off the coast of Belize, on a coral outcrop of coconut trees, stunning reef and as many hammocks as you can lay in. We found it. We found our paradise on that little island in the middle of the ocean. When you can spearfish for huge lobster 100m from your thatched hut. When you can snorkel amazing reef with sharks and sea turtles. When you can dive with giant Grouper fish and swim through enormous coral forests. When you can spend your days eating coconuts in hammocks overlooking a brilliant turquoise ocean. When the hardest part of your day is deciding what time you should crack out the Belizean rum, you know you’ve got it made.

South East Caye on Glovers atoll in Belize is our definition of Paradise. What more can we say about it? We went for a week and ended up staying 5.

But before we could get back we had to leave the country to renew our visa for Belize. We were sorely tempted just to stay but we were facing a 1000 dollar fine if we overstayed our visa with the bike thanks to those exasperating boarder officials, and we only had one day remaining when we left Caye Caulker for the Guatemalan boarder.

After the series of flat tires we had in Belize we were incredulous when we arrived back in Belize City and saw we had another one. How we have no idea, seeing as the bike was undercover and off the street, but once again we had found ourselves trying to find, and then hobble our bike into, a tire repair shop. We eventually found one but as usual they had no idea how to fix a motorbike rear tire. Normally this wasn’t a big problem as Jack can guide them through it, but today it was. It seemed like the two guys just couldn’t be bothered, it was stinking hot and a brief but heavy thunderstorm soaked us as we were repairing it. For a start they threw the bolts and bits into the dirt, and then couldn’t find them and put the rear wheel assembly back together again. When they eventually found the pieces and were trying in earnest to get rid of us, we found they had put a key component back together wrong. After the initial frustration from both parties subsided, we fixed the problem. But unbeknown to us the damage had already been done and this ‘repair’ would end up causing us significant grief down the road in Honduras… the flow on effects from that tiny little nail were not over yet.  

We ended up leaving Belize city by midday and got going, but today just wasn’t our day. An hour down the road we got hit by an enormous tropical thunderstorm and by the time we pulled over to get out our ponchos we were already soaked to the bone. We decided to just keep going but it got worse and worse and soon the road was a river of water. We passed two accidents where cars had lost control and skidded off into the drainage ditches on either side of the road and were now floating. We pushed on but the final straw came when we tried to pass a car and aquaplaned and nearly went into the ditch ourselves. Our visa ran out at 12am and it was 5pm by the time we made it to Belmopan about 2 hours from the boarder. The rain was still sheeting down and it was nearly dark, so we settled that it wasn’t worth the risk to try for the boarder.

We eventually made it the next morning but Belize charged us 80 dollars to leave and we had to plead with them not to charge us for overstaying our bike visa by about 8 hours. By the time we made it to Flores we were so exhausted by the ride and the drama we were seriously considering never going back to Belize.

But we were back in Guatemala and in our element. We had dinner with our Australian friends Bec and Felicity and said our goodbyes. Bec is off to work in Haiti and Africa so sadly it might have been for the last time.

The next day we booked a tour to see Tikal, the largest and highest Mayan ruins in Central America. Tikal is pretty unique in that it is enormous and almost completely covered in jungle. Its remoteness has protected it from the overdevelopment we saw in Mexico at Chitzen Itza and Tulum. There are truly massive temples here, some as high as 70m and towering above the jungle canopy. With our guide we saw spider monkeys in the trees, marmots, birds, an alligator and countless species of plants.

The temple of the two headed snake at Tikal was until the 1980’s the highest manmade structure in Guatemala. At over eight stories high, and hundreds of thousands of cubic tonnes of hand carried rock, impressive is an understatement. They didn’t even have the invention of the wheel to help and some of the blocks are massive. At its highest point the population was over 90,000 people and encompassed an area greater than 16 square kilometres and 3000 structures. It has been the most impressive and memorable of all the Mayan ruins we have visited.

After our day at Tikal we reached a cross roads. Would we start heading south on the bike or return to Belize. We were so torn that we couldn’t decide. On the one hand we were starting to get itchy feet already and the circus with Belize immigration had left us with a bad taste in our mouths. The difficult 7 hour ride back along the same road where we had gotten two of our three flat tires also wasn’t sitting well. On the other hand Glover’s atoll was the closest we are ever likely to find to paradise. After umming and ahhing for the better part of two days, we decided to toss a coin… We pulled out an Australian 50 cent piece and allocated heads to Glovers and tails to moving on…

As the coin flipped in the air our destiny hung in the balance. We were intensely aware that we were playing with fate and creating two alternate time lines. Maybe in one we would crash, maybe in one we would find a higher state of consciousness and ascend to Nirvana.  As the coin hit the ground it fell through the cracks in the floorboards and down into the basement. Suspense much…  We ran down and found tails. We would go south.

It was a relief to get the question out of the way. We prepared to leave and set about finalising our plans. Then we made a huge mistake. We uploaded photos to Facebook… All the planning and fortitude evaporated as we looked at our amazing photos from Glovers, you couldn’t take a bad photo. Damn it. The coin has previously decided our future when we arrived in London in 2006. We flipped a coin so see if we would work in Edinburgh or Glasgow, Edinburgh came up trumps and it was a really fun time of our lives. But sometimes we ourselves are the coin in the flip of our own destiny, and we decided to go back to our island.

We left the next day and battled our way through Belizean immigration, this time they only gave us a week, and we were faced with a 4 hour drive to Belmopan for some inexplicable reason just to get the month visa. Apparently our visa was still active from our first visit even though we had left the country for a week.  We had to fight to get it extended through some Belizean bureaucracy, but eventually managed to get past the girl playing with her phone to her supervisor and got a full month visa for us and the bike. We even got third party motorbike insurance for the month this time.

We stayed in Hopkins the next day and did a month’s worth of shopping. That’s a lot harder than it sounds when you’re stuck out there and have no fridge, and have to leave anything left over. Also complicated by the fact that most of the items in the shop were years past their use by date. We were about to buy a big wheel of cheese and found a rat had hollowed out one side.

We met Ryan, a fellow motorbiker from Canada at our hostel, who is going around the world on his Triumph. He is one of the few motorbike travellers we have met who has little to no time limit, like us. It is far and away the best way to travel. When a side road can become a wild adventure and take you in a completely different direction. When the journey is better than the destination, because the destination isn’t defined.

We have been constantly struck by the huge size of other people’s motorbikes as they attempt to do the same thing as us. We are literally the smallest, least prepared, least equipped, least concerned and least constricted to time limits of all motorbike travellers in the region that we have met, possibly the universe. Everyone seems to have bikes with the engine capacity of a small car and have brought everything but the kitchen sink.  With radio communication links between bikes, GPS’s coming out of their ears and professional matching riding gear. We met a couple the other day who had brought chairs with them on their two massive BMW 1200cc. Chairs!

Our bike looks like a push bike in comparison, with our back packs strapped on with 2 dollar rope and two people on a 250cc. But we have two major advantages. One, we have a bike that is possible to repair in anything slightly better equipped than the side of the road. If something goes wrong on the BMWs it is game over. Parts are non-existent in this part of the world and the mechanics might as well be trying to fix the space shuttle. They are so complex that we have heard first hand stories of people waiting months for parts to arrive by specialty shipping and then cannot find a mechanic in the country that knows/wants to attempt to connect them.

Second, we have time. Something most of the guys we meet don’t. They look at a map and say I want to be there by this day and so and so the next. That just doesn’t work out when road conditions are so unpredictable, and means more time on mundane highways to make up lost time. Worse, they focus on driving through the region rather than seeing it. They often miss the vibrant and incredibly different nature of each country and its people for the next pit stop. It’s such a shame when people make all the effort and cost to live this dream and then spend so much time afraid or indifferent to the region they are travelling through.

We’re not the bee’s knees by any means; we’ve had our share of problems resulting from buying a second hand bike in Guatemala. But they add up to the totality of what we are trying to accomplish which makes it so amazing and unique. If we break down we spend a week in a funky under explored part of the country and don’t freak out about a schedule. If the bike completely dies on us, we walk away. Something someone with a 20 thousand dollar bike can’t. If we are sick of riding, we stop, for a week or a month, it doesn’t matter. It truly is the most utterly freeing and rewarding way to travel.  

Back to Glovers – we left our bike in Shitty River and jumped aboard the Catamaran for a three hour ride back to Glovers.  Because we were returning guests we were treated like royalty and given our pick of the most luxurious cabins on the whole island for the same price as the dorm.  Because we were staying for a month we even got the fourth week for free, making Belize, unexpectedly, one of the cheaper countries of our trip.  We even bought a small spear gun in Guatemala before we came back so Jack caught fresh fish and lobster most nights.  To complete the Castaway experience, Jack grew his beard into a shaggy mane and Annette cracked coconuts every day straight from the tree. 

Our cabin over the water had everything we needed, a kitchen, two hammocks, a decent sized bed and a deck with a view from paradise.  We can’t really do it justice with words alone so here are a few photos:

At the beginning of our second week, just as we were starting to fully relax, we had a bit more excitement.  We were casually informed by Becky, the owner, that a cyclone was bearing down on the island and heading straight for us.  Cyclone Ernesto was a category one but had a trajectory that would bring it over warmer water before slamming it into the coast of Belize.  Considering that the island is one meter above sea level and the building standards consist of thatched huts and wobbly cabins, this didn’t look good. 

Becky told us that when she was eight she lived on the neighbouring island, Long Caye, through a category four cyclone that destroyed a large proportion of the island and its buildings and the storm surge cut the island in half.  She wasn’t taking any risks this time and made the call to evacuate the whole island.  The three other neighbouring islands also evacuated in the excitement of a pre-apocalyptic scenario.  It was so strange, the ocean was mirror calm with not a breath of wind and it was a beautiful sunny day.  It was hard to imagine the power that was just beyond the horizon. 

We got back on the boat and took a dead calm three hour journey back to Shitty River, a little dismayed to be back on the mainland so soon. In the rush to evacuate we had to leave all of our food, and to our later horror, probably the most important thing we have, our motorbike key. We were filled with dread that the cabin would be destroyed and the key lost forever. Luckily Jay, one of the guests knew how to hot wire the bike so we weren’t totally screwed. To her utmost credit, Becky put us and all the guests up for free in their river front cabins, including all meals, and set about organising activities for us.  We weren’t much up for seeing more of Belize mainland and chose instead to return to our favourite drinking hole in Hopkins, the Funky Dodo.  The Funky Dodo was a hostel run by a slightly mad Latvian expat and we had stayed there and drunk with him quite a few times. 

As it turned out, Ernesto veered north just before Glovers, strengthening and slamming into the north of Belize and south of Mexico.  It pissed down with rain but in the jungle it was so sheltered that it didn’t appear to be much worse than the tropical storms we have seen from where we were. 

The next day Becky took us back out to the island on the catamaran amid enormous swells.  Considering that the cyclone hadn’t even hit the island, we were surprised at the amount of destruction.  A full meter around the circumference of the island had disappeared, coconut trees were fallen down or floating in the shallows and some of the huts looked like a small breath of wind would knock them right over.  You could even see where the storm surge had washed onto the island and had destroyed a few of the walkways out to cabins over the water. But mercifully our cabin and the key was exactly where we left it. Apparently even paradise has to deal with cyclones. 

In total we spent a month chilling out on the beach, reading books, snorkelling, and spear fishing, eating freshly caught lobster, barracuda and grouper and drinking Belizean rum with coconut milk.  It was a tough month. 

When our time was finally up we were ready to get moving.  Even with our generally relaxed, snail paced motto of travel we were starting to get itchy feet.  When we got back to Shitty River we found we had a flat front tire.  Yay, a different tire this time! Fortunately it had just deflated due to sitting idle for a month and we hobbled it into Hopkins where we met Emma, a European woman who owns a motorbike rental company.  She helped us pump up the tire and we chatted about our intended route south, which included putting the motorbike on a boat over to Guatemala.  Even Emma, who has lived there for years didn’t know if it was possible given that the boats are so small. 

We were so sick of the route between Flores, Gautemala and Dangriga, Belize, which we had now traversed four times (including three flat tires, thunder storms and border crossing dramas) that we were willing to give it a go.  We left Hopkins and made the four hour ride down to Punta Gorda, where for the first time in a long time we had an uneventful ride. 

We approached a company called Requena who did the Belize to Guatemala boat ride daily.  Everything was hanging on this moment, including our sanity.  To be told on the last day of our visa that we had to drive all the way back to Flores, 10 hours away, would have been too much.  Fortunately, an old guy came out from behind his desk, looked the bike up and down, looked at our anxious faces and told us that it would be alright. 

The next morning, it took four guys to lift the bike off the dock and down into the small 6m skiff.  It was a challenge and a tight fit but we made it.  Another tip of the hat to the small bike strategy (like we had a choice!).  Having ridden this bike thousands of kilometres it was strange to sit behind it and watch the suspension getting crunched as we bounced over big waves.  It was an unusual sight. 

An hour later we were back in Guatemala at Puerto Barrios.  Compared to our trouble with Belizean immigration, re-entering Guatemala was almost comical.  First, we had to find the immigration office, which was about 500m from the dock and appeared to be optional.  Then, two immigration officers distractedly stamped our passports as they laughed and chatted with one another.  One of them even came outside simply to admire our bike and take a picture with his phone, saying ‘1999 right? That’s a good bike!’  They both waved us off and wished us luck as we drove away. 

Having spent 3 months in Guatemala we were pretty keen not to dawdle, but the Honduran boarder was a big eight hour ride away. We instead rode for two hours to Rio Dulce, the biggest and safest port for vessels escaping bad weather in the Caribbean. We crossed the biggest bridge we have seen in 6 months and saw the opulence of western wealth first hand. Literally hundreds of gleaming sail boats, catamarans and luxury cruisers sitting idle in the bay. If you have a spare few million dollars apparently Rio Dulce is one of the cheapest places to buy second hand boats, either storm damaged or from owners who no longer use them and can’t be bothered sailing them back to the U.S. *Cough Pat*

We stayed in an Australian run hostel only accessible by small skiff in the nearby swamp and planned the next leg of our journey into Honduras and El Salvador. But the impact from those dodgy mechanics in Belize, and a host of other serious problems was about to begin, and what a rollercoaster of an adventure it would turn out to be.