Hello Mexico

Greetings and salutations
We are in Chetumal, Mexico tonight.
Elsie rode well though she has a bit of a 'hard start' going on and she never overheated at all.
Tomorrow we head to Talum for a few meetings.
Crossing into Mexico was rather strange because as we entered Mexico, the place was buzzing with cops and the minute they saw Elsie we were hauled over for 'inspection' - the cope dude poked his head into both doors looking for contraband and such like but then quickly waved us on.
I almost asked where we get our passports stamped but thought to myself not to invite more than we we will have to already go through as we have heard the worst about Mexico's officials.
So off we trundled slowly past more officials and then nothing.....I said to Angelika, "I think we might already be in Mexico".
It was the most painless crossing of all and NO ONE even looked at our passports at all, so legally or illegally, we are now in Mexico and loving it.
Keep tuned in for more updates and adventures.
Take care and stay well
Paul and Angelika

Wednesday - Elsie

Hi all
We are hoping Fedex will deliver the parts by noon today - if this is the case and all goes well, we hope to be on the road again tomorrow morning, so please check back here for updates on our status.
Take care
Paul & Angelika

Elsie update

Greetings all,
Yesterday we were on the island of Ambergris Cay and share these few pics with you.
Elsie still has her 'guts' out as we wait on a head gasket set, seals and a fan to arrive from the States and we hope to be back on the road to Mexico by Wednesday or Thursday.
Keep checking back here
Take care
Paul and Angelika

Elsie update

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 Belize City.

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 20^th 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 Guatemala City, so all things being equal, we hope to be on the road to Quintana Roo, Mexico by Wednesday latest if we can find the parts.

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

Back to Belize

We're having some problems with Elsie's cylinder head gaskit and thus are having to turn back to Belize for repairs.

We should be heading back to Mexico by Sunday or Monday depending on how the repairs go. Anybody who needs to contact us can reach us via e-mail or via telephone at +1-520-465-7078

Finally Mexico on the horizon

Greetings once again,

Belize is a truly amazing country going back to Columbus and the Buccaneer days.

Though small in size and known as British Honduras in the old days, it is only populated today but less than a quarter of a million people.

There are quite a lot of Maya people as well as enclaves of the Mennonites amongst them. Belize City is also very small for the capital city and really has no beaches – all the pretty pics one sees is of the off shore islands and the long barrier reef, the 2^nd largest in the world we are told.

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 Belize and Honduras.

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 Belize City, it took only a few miles for the putty to break loose and by the time we arrived here, Elsie had lost the entire gasket and she sounded like a tractor doing Mach 1 and running on a mixture of steroids and Nitro.

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 Mexico as we plan on leaving in the morning to the north of Belize to enter Mexico just south of Chetumal.

Paul & Angelika

A quick note

Greetings all
Just a short note to say we are back from the jungles and a little worse for wear with 'mossie' bites but will be in Belize City today and most likely into Yucatan tomorrow.
I hope to update the blog tonight with pics of our most recent adventures but for now please check out the blog of a fellow adventure traveler we met whilst in a Livingston/Stanley moment - http://blog.joshuaberman.net/08-07/down-golden-stream-the-tranquilo-traveler-meets-the-krazy-african.html
Check back soon for more
Take care
Paul and Angelika