We had a chance to hitch a ride on a charter boat delivery to Belize. We knew the captain, Curtis, from the online Cruisers Forum and he was in the country so we got to meet in person. The sailing community is small and it is always fun meeting other cruisers whom we've "met" on the internet.
The delivery was on a loose schedule and we were in no hurry. For us this turned out to be a convenient way to check into a new country and renew our 90 day Guatemala visas for another 3 months.
The 50' catamaran had been in our marina for the summer and had been hit by lightning, so nothing much electronic was working on the boat.
Curtis had a tablet with GPS and Navionics charts for navigation, although he knows the route so well he could do it in his sleep. Mark & I were the autopilots for the next 2 days, steering by compass.
The day before we left, the boat had to have some last minute work done. Curtis picked us up after leaving the yard and we headed to Cayo Quemado for an overnight stop, some good meals and an early departure the next day. The river was lovely in the morning mist as we passed fishermen throwing their nets.
Leaving some interesting events behind us in Guatemala (one involving a stuck head), the three of us had a pleasant trip motoring up the coastline of Belize.
The weather was rainy but calm, without the typical NE winds and chop according to Curtis.
The south flowing current worked against us at times, as did the occasional river outlet flows from recent heavy rains. Even so, we averaged 6 to 8 knots overground towards our destination.
We stopped overnight in Placencia for dinner and reached the Cucumber Beach Marina the next day to bring the boat to its base for charter season. Here, there is a man-made "beach" where cruise ship passengers can disembark for the day.
Mark & I had free time the next day to take a tour of northern Belize, hosted by a driver with endless funny stories. We took in plenty of local scenery, villages & rural areas and an impromptu tour of Belize City along the way. Belize is a small country, which we had virtually just traversed by water over the last 2 days, and now the rest by land to the north. I was surprised to learn that the city has only ~70k inhabitants and the country just over 300k people.
Our day-trip destination was Altun Ha, one of the Mayan ruins of the Yucatan.
Mayan ruins always conjure a sense of the culture that inspired these grand pyramids.
The rulers, battles, rituals, trading and agriculture throughout this region formed an intricate web and a vast civilization from which only these structures and their distant ancestors remain. Much of the ruins remain un-excavated and likely many more undiscovered.
Luckily for us, we just beat a huge group of tourists from a cruise ship who were entering the park as we were leaving.
Our driver took us for authentic Belizian food for lunch. Both Mark & I had to try the special stewed meat of the day, gibnut!
This is a prized local meal comprised of a kind of cute, fuzzy critter in the rodent family.
It was very tasty and well-textured, hearty meat, served with rice and red beans. We also loved the fry jacks and meat pies for breakfast - Yum!
Since it was still quite rainy with the roads flooded and crumbling, we decided to take the local commuter flight with Curtis to Punta Gorda the next day with great views of Belize's city, shrimp farms and coastline. We have quite a bit in common with Curtis and this entire trip was a fun way to get a job done, hang out with a new friend, get out on the ocean again (even if not yet on our boat), share tall tales of life on the sea, and create a few new memorable stories for the future!
Unexpected bonus ~ there is a brand new, fancy Duty Free store at the Immigration departure dock in Punta Gorda ~ the gin supply on Reach is now re-provisioned!
Along with other tourists and backpackers, we checked out of Belize and took a 1 hr launcha ride back to Livingston, where we checked back into Guatemala and achieved our updated passport stamps. Another 2 hour launcha ride up the Rio again brought us back home again.
