Hello.

We had such high expectaions for our trip to Balize.  Boy what a dissapointment.  It turns out we showed up on Easter weekend.  Being a heavily Cathloc country, every thing was closed in honor of the lord.  Every one went to the beach!  We could not find a room, any where.

That´s not totally accurate, we were able to find a room in down town Balize City, it looks alot like down town New Orleans.  What we didn´t glean from our glance at the internet was all the good diving, all the good beaches, all the good resorts, all the good places to visit, were 7 miles off the coast on several islands.  They were all booked solid with Easter people.

We considered just taking a boat out and finding out for our selves, we considered taking the 15 minute flight out, but full is full, and besides, I don´t want to be there if it´s packed!  I want empty beaches, I want a thatched roofed bungalo with a hammoc.  I want a small sail boat to take me out to the reef, have some tuna salad sandwiches and ripe bananas and a Coke.  I don´t want a hotel full of tourist,  I don´t want a cattle boat.  We saw a small boat leave this morning with 23 Asian old folks going on a tour.  It was about a 27 foot boat, elbow to elbow, camera to camera…

We wound up finding a room in the Princess Hotel and Casino.  Another disapointment.  Yes it was nice, much like a Holiday Inn, but…..  The people who worked there were all super nice and spoke English, rasta mon English, but we could communicate with them easily and they were all super nice.  It was just…..  I don´t know, they were just following orders,  orders from some one who had looked at photo´s and decided THIS is what tourist want.  Wrong, what I wanted in Balize was real Balize, not fake Las Vegas.  The food was Okay, cold, slow, bland.  Remember we were made happy with unrefrigerated macoroni salad tacos, so we are not being all upity and special.. It´s just when you order a $19 dollar hamburger, you would hope it was served hot and with some flavor.  The waitress was very sweet and the bartender made a good drink, well the drink machine was computerized so the owner could sit in his office and figure the profit and loss on every move.

The Casino was like any other, but at 12 midnight they had a free food buffet, sounds like a good deal, but in real life it was just a trick to get every one to hang out untill midnight for a spegetti dinner.  We had a nice TV in our room and watched two creepy scary movies.  In both of them the bad guy got a hypodermic needle in the neck, got the idea.  Okay that set´s the stage, now we have not talken about Chucks night terrors.  I had hoped they would go away, never to come back, but no, they just keep coming.  Last night it was scary, I laready had the seed planted,  then in the middle of the night Chuck starts screaming in his sleep.  ¨NO! NO! I HAD NO IDEA! NO!¨ Then he gasp himself awake.  He rolls over and goes back to sleep.  Me, on the other hand I¨m scrunched up against the head board with the blankets up around my neck, flat petrified!  It´s not easy to get back to sleep either with one eye open and my back against the wall.  Terrors, he´s had them from years and tells the story about being in a castle in London for a MX race years ago and woke every one up and they were all mad at him, that was in 1978, he was riding for Husky then.  The mamager came to his door and wanted……. Stop, leave, what ever, just quit scaring all the other guests.

So I guess you can tell I was not too happy about our Balize trip, so we made a move.  We packed the bikes back up, bought gas at over $4 dollars a gallon and headed back North to Mexico.  Balize was lots of small houses between sugar cane feilds.  They were burning the sugar cane for harvest and the big trucks hauled outrageously large loads of cane out of the feilds.  The roads were covered with sugar cane and the animals stood on the edge of the road eating it.

There were some wooden houses here, they looked like old Bahama houses, run down, but a switch from the concrete we have gotten used to.  They were burning the ditches too and the sky was hazy from the smoke.  It was not as hot, we had a nice breeze from the ocean and lots of palm trees, so it was a pleasant 100 mile ride back to the border.

Ah the border.  Yesterday when we came through traffic was backed up for a mile.  Well we went through customs and imagration easy enough, then asked what next.  The guy said since we were on bikes we could just bypass all the traffic and cut in line at the Mexican border.  We didn´t have to be told twice.

We got up to the line of cars and pulled in behind a three wheeled bicycle who was going against traffic, slowly we moved forward, then when he got stopped by an on coming car we leapt!  We passed him, passed every thing on the road and cut the very last car off at the line and were waved right through the Mexican check point.  We just saved an hour sitting in line.  It was the hightlight of our day.

We are heading towards Cancun right now, we are about 100 miles north of the border.  I had not filled my bike to the brim, I only put $15 American in it back in Balize City.  The reserve light started flashing, and 30 miles later I´m dead in the tracks.  Chuck had about 25 miles left in reserve so he went on to get me gas and left me on a small access road.  I sat there alone for a while with traffic whipping by on the main road,  They could not see me, I thougt it was best if I was off the road a little and out of sight.  So there I was minding my own business when all of a sudden 3 guys on a Carabella come riding up out of the woods.  The bike was a 1974 version they thought, they didn´t have any gas but said it was not far up the road.  All thee of them jumped back on the bike and took off.  It was too cool, the freedom this old bike gave these guys.

We stopped for lunch ot this beach.  The water was spectacular, bluish green out deep then a beautiful sand bottom swimming area where the water was bright blue.  I figured it was just a river or bay from the ocean.  Chuck went for a swim, when he came back he had found out the water was fresh.  We were in fact on a lake, and the ocean is miles from here, I have never seen any thing like it.  It´s name is Laguna Bacalar, it was 30 miles long and half a mile wide or so.  There was some kind of stone fortress there with cannons but we didn´t stop long enough to translate the sign, it might have taken months to translate….

You can tell we are near the beach now, pine trees, and palm trees and holly bushes and dogwood trees line the road with white sand two tracks splitting off now and then.  The breeze has the palm trees all pulled over and it is nice here.  The temprature is down some and we got to a decent motel before dark, even with running out of gas.

So tomorrow, we plan on trying to get over to the island of Cozumel, if we can conform to the Ferry schedual.  5am, out, then the next one is between 10am and 4 pm, sure we can hit that window, but don´t want to sit in line for hours.  We´ll see how it works out.  The book says Cozumel is a good place, snorkeling right off the beach, rooms for 30 bucks american.  Oh and by the way, that was $19 Balizeian dollars for the hamburger, still almost $10 American.

We got the news that Joey got a thread about our trip on Adventure Rider.com, and have had over 674 hits on the link!  Wow!  That´s impressive.  Len has a counter on the Trail Rider page but he left town and have not heard from him, lets see, he left right after gettng the Pay Pal account set up….   Uhhh I wonder……

Any how, Chuck is still working on downloading photos and even has a video and audio clip you would enjoy.  So don´t curse me for not having more photo´s. Keep those cards and letters coming and if you can forward the link to the Trail Rider site, it would help us out.  We both have many sponsors and helpers and the more publicity we can get them the better off it is for every one.

Thanks for visiting, hopefully we will find paradise tomorrow, that´s our new goal, seeking paradise, it was not in Balize.

Adios

Charlie