10001

The goal of today was to get to Benque, the last town before the border to Guatemala. As it's too far to cycle, we decided to hitch-bike. So we cycled about 22km to the turnoff to Dangriga and tried to hitch a ride. It took about an hour until John Taylor stopped and offered to give us a lift to Belmopan. As he was on a company drive, he wasn't theoretically allowed to take us, but he did it anyways - lucky us. So we put the bikes on the pickup truck and went in the back with the bikes as well. That's traveling in Belice ;) Within less than an hour, we were back in the city - a section that took us a whole day on the bikes. Taylor dropped us of along the highway and we cycled to Spanish Lookout, a farmers community with quite some people of German background. The Welcome sign was in German even. The landscape reminded us of Germany as well: huge farms, agriculture, cows, some hills, no more jungle.
To continue West, we crossed the Belize River by a manually driven ferry. The next town we passed was San Ignacio. Lucky us: it was Tuesday and there was a farmers' market. So we felt like being in heaven: lots of fresh and cheap fruit and vegetables, something that was hard and expensive to get in Belize before. And opposite of the market: a French bakery. So we spent the rest of our Belicean currency on food.
Also, Jamie came over to talk to us. He works as a beer promoter for the local brand Belikin and gave us 2 beers for free - sweet! As it was not allowed to drink alcohol in the park, we decided to just stop along the road - which we did. Back on the bikes, I realized that we had our beer right at our 10.000th kilometer - what a coincidence! We stopped to take a photo, but as we rolled downhill, unfortunately a little late, so the computer had just changed to 10.001...
In Benque, Raul, our host for the night, picked us up at the entrance of the village. We could stay at his sister's house and had a really great time with them: dinner and lots of discussions about bike touring and Belicean and German traditions.Read more