Jan. 14 – Belmopan to San Ignacio
Still raining in AM. Started early taking my bike apart, to install new spark plug and PM the air filter. The front yard of our hotel looked like a used motorcycle lot. Besides Levi and mine KLR’s, there was an ’92 BMW R-bike airhead with a California plate, an Aprilla one-lunger with a plate from Ireland, and a Dakar from Alaska. The three riders were all traveling together, on their way to Caracol in southern Belize. When they came out to load up, we had a nice chat with them.
I pulled my tank and installed a new spark plug; cleaned and oiled the air filter, and checked the fuel selector to see what could be preventing the reserve from working. I adjusted my chain, but it is stretching badly. My bike has 12,500 miles on it now, and this is probably the original chain, so I an thinking it is near the end of is life’s. We rode around and actually found a Kawasaki dealer on the Hummingbird highway. He said he could find us oil filters and have them in a few hours, and would install my chain for a reasonable amount. (The new chain was an ‘endless’ one with no master-link, which requires dropping the swing arm to install). So we left my bike with him, and walked down the road to have a drink at a near-by bar. After an hour or so, we checked back, and they had the new oil filters, and had my chain was installed. So we gladly left Belmopan behind, and rode the few klicks to St. Ignacio.
This turned out to be a much more reasonable town than Belmopan. More stores, more life, more of everything. We located a very cheap hotel right in thr center of town, and had a very good Indian curry dinner. Levi took off for a night on the town, and I hung around the hotel and watched the Daily Show and South Park on Comedy Central on TV. The TV had 125 channels, more or less evenly divided into english, spanish, and chinese language channels!
Except for a few fleas and very bad beds, the hotel was a bargain; out bikes were pulled up onto the porch and off the street, and chained to the railing for the night. This is a swinging, wide-open frontier-like town, with lots of night life and activity. Really the nicest place we have seen in Belize. We spread out all our wet stuff, and ran the fan all night to dry some of it out.
My leather boots have taken a real beating with all the wet weather, so I bought a pair of sneakers as back-up footwear. It is not an easy thing to find size 12 shoes in any of these countries. It rained all night, again.