Greetings all,
So we have our own adventures and those with ‘Elsie’, yesterday sure was one of the latter type events.
We had an early meeting with a client and then headed out north intending to cross over into the Yucatan of Mexico.
Elsie was running sweetly and was the quietest ever with the new manifold/exhaust gasket so we were happy even though everyone was talking of a possible tropical storm forming offshore.
All went well until we passed Corazol and we had already gathered all our “Elsie Docs” in preparation for the arduous usual border crossing with her, when we stopped to pee alongside the road and Elsie started to cook and steam.
I got her cooled down but was worried about our cylinder head gasket because there was too much pressure in the radiator for comfort.
We limped back to the town and opted to have the Toyota agent in Belize City (who knew us by now) sent out a trailer to fetch us so that we could have Elsie taken care of today.
The truck arrived late and we drove Elsie onto the trailer whilst the weather was still going nuts – not happy with the tie downs they had, I winched Elsie securely to the front of the trailer and we both piled into her as the truck headed back south to
Now that was a funky experience, sitting in Elsie on the back of the trailer while trundling in another fashion cross country. – Quite trippy indeed.
We settled down in Elsie and had a few ales to celebrate Anders’s 20th birthday and chatted a few times with him.
After it got dark and approaching the city, thank goodness we had to slow down for a speed bump because the trailer wheels literally and figuratively came off and disappeared into the night as we ground to a rapid halt.
Without much ado, I hauled Elsie off the trailer, filler her with water again, we left the fellows waiting for their manager to come assist them, as we did the last few miles back into town on our own ‘steam’.
As parts are so scarce for Elsie, we have to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday for the parts to come in fro
A last note of interest, as we were sitting in Corazol waiting on our ‘ride’, Angelika noticed this Creole dude pick some flowers and started to approach her.
Not knowing what to expect she thanked him but in short order he informed us that they were for all the raw ‘mozzie’ scars on our legs (yea we are pretty bitten up).
It was not the flowers; it was the leaves that he ground up in his hands until they made up a watery poultice.
There was no hesitation, itching as we were these last few days; Angelika wiped the green goo all over her one leg – it was almost like magic to see all the red inflammation recede within 10 minutes and the itch back off.
We were both sold on this newfound potion so we gathered up the leaves and saved them in a sealed bag for use down the road.
So we learned yet another thing and who knows, Angelika might yet start dispensing leaves in the future J
We hope you all have a great weekend
Paul & Angelika
Though small in size and known as
There are quite a lot of Maya people as well as enclaves of the Mennonites amongst them.
Getting back to the last few days of adventuring, we had a great time meeting up with Josh Berman, a journalist for the ‘Moon’ travel books and writing on
He had heard of us being in the area and we had heard of him as well – so the moment came when we met up at Ken Karas’s Belize Lodge and Excursions, Indian Creek Lodge.
Ken has our tents on his Moho Cay island that we wanted to see and Josh was making his first visit to Ken’s three lodges.
On Tuesday we headed out on a small boat down the swift flowing river with Josh and the Maya guides, ducking and diving to avoid the low lying branches and thorns that had an aggravating habit of latching onto one’s self and shaking all and sundry of the insect world out of the branches and into the boat.
Despite this it was such an amazing experience to cruise the jungles and river into such remote country that we were taken aback when we rounded a corner and there was Ken’s Jungle Camp, in all it’s majesty, this is truly a camp built on steroids and very luxurious.
More stunning was the WW2 landing vessel moored at the dock that Ken uses as a work horse on the river and at sea to work on the erosion at Moho Cay.
After a 4 course meal we all turned in to sleep and were up early for a breakfast and then climbed onto a power boat and breezed the rest of the river out into the ocean to Moho Cay.
Moho Cay is small but really beautiful and it was so cool to see the tents in such a beautiful tranquil location.
We spent a short while there before departing to Punta Gorda where we got a ride back to where Elsie was waiting for us at Indian Creek.
Two things of note is that Angelika has now bypassed me on the quantity of ‘Mozzie’ bites, mainly on her legs and the itching has been driving her to distraction but she plugs resolutely on regardless of the discomfort.
On the other hand Elsie’s exhaust/manifold gasket started to break away and exhaust fumes and black soot started coming into the cab and also heated up the already hot interior.
The further we got the more throaty she was getting that we tried to patch the gaping hole with exhaust putty that Tom had given us.
When we left this morning for
Thanks to the guys at the local Toyota dealership who did a sterling job getting Elsie all fixed up whilst we visited a very unique proposed tent site in the Peccary Hills, run by Discover Belize.
So tonight we find ourselves preparing for
Greetings all
Well this last Friday was a runaround day trying to find appointments here close to the western border region and orient ourselves.
Before going on, there are quite a few voids in cell phone reception here and we are not always able to make or receive calls – also our comms provider has no agreement with the local operators for data service so please not that we are and will be unable to receive e-mail on the mobile phone for the duration of our stay here and will thus be only checking e-mail in the morning/evening when possible.
Be that as it may, yesterday we met with Tom Wilson of Baka-Bush Adventures, who with amazing graciousness gave us so much of his time and treated us to a more than full day of his time, knowledge, dry but keen wit than anyone has done since we set out on the expedition.
This included the privilege of seeing and experiencing the back country of this region as we are sure, few get to see or to share with him – this included more than two hours in one of the thousands of wet cave systems, riding bush tracks through the forests and ‘savanna’ patches that left me with so many déjà vu moments through the day.
These caves are so amazing to behold and would be insane to try and describe in their beauty and graceful elegance, not to mention the rich Mayan history coupled to them.
As we could not carry the camera, we include only a few pics taken before we commenced.
This awesome and breath taking experience also included riding zip-lines over and through the forest canopy, repelling down cliff’s to a few zip-line stations and ending up with a final zip descent through and into a huge cave opening.
Sometimes one moves through life and on those rare occasions one bumps into one’s kindred spirits, Angelika and I sure found this to be so true when it came to Tom, a true gentleman and a real man with a genuine love and connection with the bush and his environment in which he lives.
Sunday: We met up again with Tom in the morning close to Belize City where he keeps his Air Boats docked alongside the main road and next to a canal of water that connects to a vast marshland that few get to behold because of the inaccessibility thereto except with the use of these shallow draught boats powered by 400HP engines driven by aircraft propellers.
Noisy as they are, they allow one a rare insight and passage into an environment very difficult to access and strangely enough, the birds and other creatures do not seem to care about the cacophony and intrusion.
Riding an airboat was as close as one can come to an aquatic helicopter ride and so totally a trip to behold.
Leaving Tom was like saying goodbye to an old buddy, knowing we will meet up again soon down the road and being able to pick up within in seconds, whenever we meet up again……which we will.
We piled back into the ‘Elsie’ and headed south to meet up with such an amazing couple, the Ushers, who also in their own right, live on such an amazing piece of land with such a diversity of ecosystems that range from ‘savanna’ to forest, riverine, salt/fresh water lagoons and ocean frontage.
Just like Tom, it is so refreshing to see people who have a passion for the land they live upon, and yea, like Tom, we hope to soon see our tents becoming an integral part of that natural environment.
We packed in a quick river ride in the morning to evaluate the potential sites there and then packed up once again and headed further south to meet an old customer of ours at Ken at Belize Lodge.
So much going on here but we will try to update again tomorrow but we have no cell comm’s here but we do try to get e-mail at least once a day.
We hope to be in
Take care
Paul and Angelika
