Shall we go to Belize? Part 1.

Belize it or not, we managed to avoid a pun in the title of our blog post about Belize. Of course, you’d Belize us now if we told you it was a legal requirement for all blog posts about Belize to contain at least three puns. Un-Beliezably we have already met that requirement in the first paragraph.

You have to Belize me when I tell you I’m stopping with these puns.

We should probably explain how we even ended up in Belize at this point of our trip.

When we returned to Mexico from Cuba, we had been given shiny new tourist cards. This would allow us to stay another 180 days in Mexico—if we so chose. However our 4Runner had missed out on a trip to Cuba and had spent almost 6 months in Mexico. This meant the temporary vehicle import permit was due to expire. When this permit expires, Mexico likes to keep your $300 deposit. We didn’t really like this idea.

We planned to stay a couple of nights in a nice campground in Chetumal, pop down to the customs office on the border with Belize, renew the permit and carry on with the tough job of exploring Mexico.

This really is a very nice campground in Chetumal.

So there we were, very close to the border. In fact, we were going to be driving right up to it.

“I’m really looking forward to going to Belize.” Said Emma.

“Yeah, me to. Shall we just go there instead.”

“OK”

That is how we found ourselves in Belize much sooner than we had planned or expected.

Now what?

Well, luckily, since we don’t really plan at the best of times, this was just like any other day for us, so without further dilly-dallying, we set out to explore Belize.

After a brief overnight in Corazal to collect our thoughts, we made our way to Sarteneja, for no other reason than it was on the coast and we hadn’t spent any quality time on the beach in the Yucatán due to the unrelenting wind.

The road to Sarteneja wasn’t always a road.

There were a few hand-crank ferries to cross.

Luckily, we didn’t have to cross in this boat…

Ben couldn’t resist having a crack at driving the ferry.

Despite the variable road conditions, Belize is not a very large country. It wasn’t long before we reached our destination.

For those of you who live in our hometown of Christchurch—if you were to imagine that Christchurch was the centre of Belize, the top and bottom of the country would only be as far away as Kaikoura and Waimate respectively. The difference is, it takes a lot longer to drive anywhere on the sandy, potholed roads of Belize than it does on the sealed highways that connect the thriving metropolises of Kaikoura and Waimate.

For those who don’t live in New Zealand, perhaps one day you too will have the pleasure of driving from Kaikoura to Waimate.