Adios amigos, arright friends!

This day was meant to be a very plain driving day. That is, we would drive all day and arrive into Chetumal, Mexico. We would then spend the night there and cross the border into Belize tomorrow Monday morning.. However, Chetumal happens to be a very boring border town (at least to Lonely Planet). Greg, who was at the wheel of Rosinante Chocolate, had a huge day.. He got us pretty much to the border in about 6 hours! Again, people had given us estimates for the drive ranging from 4.5 hours to 10 hours (most people just have no clue but they feel compelled say something anyway). On the way there, in a town called Escarcega, we stopped for gas and were pleasantly surprised to find a Burger King!!!! Now, it's not like we don't like Mexican food.. In fact, we've eaten tons of it! But as Amy, whom we met in the hostel in San Cristobal, said "After traveling in Central America for so long, I take every opportunity I have to eat something that is foreign". So we went for it.. Delicious, American, greasy but tasty! (for some reason this BK was infested with flies but we didn't mind)

Ahhh.. also, we tried some new fruit which I had never seen before during our trip. The Mexicans seem to call it Mamoncillo (they don't use this name regularly because "it sounds naughty" according to the road-side fruit-seller) or Guaya and it kind of looks like a Lychee. Very tasty but funny texture. Greg thought that a more appropriate name was "snot fruit" so that's what we called it.

The Mexico-Belize border was open on Sunday so we decided to try our luck and attempt a border crossing on the spot. It was around 2:30PM and we left Mexico. The guy at the Mexican Migration office said something about "180" so I asked him in Spanish if there was something to pay. Being very smart (and a crook) he quickly replied "just give me $100 pesos each". So we prepared the money and were ready to hand it to him when we asked for a receipt for this fee. So he got a bit scared and said that he did not have receipts so he would let us go without paying. Nice try crooked migration officer!

We would have our second corruption experience a few meters away after crossing the bridge. After clearing our paperwork with Belizean migration, we had to get a car permit for Rosinante. The lady seemed very cool. However, as we walked out, she said in a very low tone "you know, we have to check your car and if we find anything, we need to charge you.. how much are you willing to pay to settle this?". So I said "let's go and see what it is that I am going to sell in Belize and how much would it be. She quickly realized that we did not have the amount of money that she thought (she had to go through our trunk, dirty socks, crickets, towels, etc..) so she gave us the permit without much more fuss after making us throw away our entire stash of snot fruit!

Ok, so after this, we drove a couple of hours into Belize. (What an expensive place! considering we are arriving from Mexico) Our arrival into Belize City was crazy to say the least! Pardon me if you are Belizean but this town really scared us!! It was frightening to drive through and even more to stay. So we quickly had to figure out what to do if we did not want to get mugged! Most people in the streets seemed to have nothing better to do but to stand around with a bottle of beer and look scary. All of us at this point were freaking out about what to do. However, it must be said that we performed quite well under pressure. We quickly distributed the tasks for finding hotels, water taxis schedules, parking, navigation, driving, etc..

The last water taxi to the tourist island of Ambergris (where the town of San Pedro is located) was at 4:30PM. This is really where most people that come to BZ stay instead of Belize City. It was about 4:05PM and we had a car to park somewhere, no hotel reservations in San Pedro and no idea of what to do. We went to the water taxi place where a guy named Dennis (so far he has been pretty good) offered to keep the car for $10US/day at his house backyard. We agreed and we went to his house, fast! Parked in his backyard (where his buddy Steve lives in what is left of a VW van - see picture) and fled Belize City. He later asked us for US$5 for gas money too but Todd gave him BZ$5 which is half what he was asking.

Now, he took us in his taxi back to the water taxi place. Here we took the 4:30PM taxi with just 2 minutes to spare. The ride took about 1 hour and we arrived into tourist heaven! Marvellous beach, seafood everywhere, sandy streets, etc.. everything is expensive but it's safe at least. We scored a place right on the beach called Conch Shell Hotel. So tomorrow morning is going to be awesome to wake up and walk downstairs to get in the water. As soon as we arrived into the peer we saw a sting ray and a manta ray!!! It was incredible, we can't wait to do snorkeling tomorrow!

Check out San Pedro and the view from our hotel..





So we went to dinner and Greg is feeling just a bit tired so he left back to the hotel. I hope he feels much better tomorrow. Aside from that, we are all fine and really look forward to hangout here while we wait for the arrival of our fourth and final wheel (the keystone, the missing piece of the puzzle), our very own, Alexey.

Finally, here is a picture that summarizes the navigational nightmare that sometimes is to drive through these roads.. Aparently, route 186 goes in three different directions!!