We’re not too sure how to find the good stuff without paying through the teeth, when we meet Eric, a cool booking agent. He’s just opened up in the same building as the supermarket and is very happy to tell us about a couple of free hikes & activities around town. It’s really refreshing to have someone so down to earth, who is not trying to get every last penny from us and genuinely wants us to enjoy ourselves. He’s as excited are we are and soon we’re bouncing around ready for adventure.

The hiking road to the cloudforest

Armed with our new knowledge we set out to hike into the cloud forest at the only place in the area this can be done for free. It’s a really steep muddy road that I drive up as far as possible before parking and continuing on foot. Even though it’s much cooler here we are soon sweating like crazy as we climb up and up, right into the clouds. The views from the top are said to be spectacular on a clear day, though we can barely see ten meters through the thick fog which doesn’t diminish the beauty. We move on to the second free hike, and find a massive hollow fig tree that Mike climbs into a long way.

View of the cloudforest

The giant Fig tree that Mike climbed into

Before the day is done we make our way out to the San Luis Waterfall, a beautiful 35 minute walk along a river deep in the jungle. The falls themselves are about 90 meters high (300 ft.) and hugely impressive. Swimming below is freezing, and we grin from ear to ear.

The 90 meter San Luis Waterfall

The main attraction in this area is zipline tours, and with Eric’s help we get a deal on the best outfit in town, eXtremo.
With a name like that how could we possibly pass it up?

We are harnessed, helmeted and harnessed again before being given a 5 minute safety talk. We’ll be connected to cables spanning huge distances and leather gloves are our only brakes. If the guide waves frantically, pull down on the cable, we are told. Simple enough.
Before long we are flying from platform to platform, across huge spans at really high speed. It’s amazingly good fun and everyone is really excited. Braking turns out to be pretty simple and soon I have the technique down; come in at suicidal speed and try to burn through my glove in the last meter or two. Adding a look of complete horror on my face terrifies a couple of the guides whose job it is to ‘catch’ me.

Hanging out in the treetops

The guides take a liking to me and tell me the best way to ride the tarzan swing is backwards, so off I step, completely unable to see where I am going.

Mike about to set out on the zipline

Mike coming in on the zipline

The main event of the day is the “superman” cable where we are harnessed in so we are lying down, superman style. Everyone quickly starts humming the theme song and calls of “Superman!” can be heard echoing all around. The guides let me hold my camera on this one, so I take a video of what it looks like while whizzing along. Really, really fun.

The superman zipline

It’s really hard to judge my speed in the video, so I did some quick numbers; The cable is 1080 meters long and I complete the trip in 54 seconds, making for an average speed of 72 km/h (45 mph).

-Dan

Lunch in Chetumal

Moving south we come across the border much sooner than I had thought. A very official looking guy in a shirt and tie directs me to pull over and informs me I must purchase car insurance before entering Belize, as it’s required by law. I get a bit flustered and hand over my registration and drivers licence only to watch him walk away with them. I really don’t understand much of what just happened and wish I asked more questions before handing over my paperwork. Of course they are both only copies, but in the next ten minutes my mind goes through all the sinister things he could be doing with my paperwork – like transfering ownership or any one of two hundred other things.

With this going on, we have to line up to get a stamp in our passports from Mexican customs. The extremely scruffy guy sitting in the little shack makes Kate pay 100 pesos (less than $10 USD) and wants me to pay 262 pesos (around $20 USD). When I had over 500 pesos, he throws it on an enormous stack of bills and simply gives me 250 in change – not even the right amount for the price he quoted me. We have no idea why we had to pay this money and receive no receipt. As we sit for a few more minutes we notice it’s only the tourists stopping to pay – everyone else is just going across. I think we got scammed. Scratch that, I’m certain we got scammed.

Waiting for my paperwork to return...

Finally the insurance man comes back and has some paperwork he wants me to sign. After sitting and thinking for a while I’ve finally got my head on straight and spend a long time reading everything even though he is urging me the entire time to sign as quickly as possible. Before I sign I ask about the price and he spits out a really high number in pesos, even though the price is clearly written on the insurance policy in Belize dollars. We argue for quite a while about the exchange rate before he decides to cut the price in half. When I react badly to that, he says “How much do you want to pay?”. I was already suspicious of this guy before, now it’s gone too far. I don’t like that he has paperwork with my name, license number and the VIN number of my Jeep and so right infront of him I tear up the policy into to tiny little pieces. The guy flips out and says he’s going to make customs arrest me, so I ignore him and drive on.

Leaving Mexico

He runs along next to us as we leave Mexico and enter one of those funny places that’s kind of in neither country. I decide I should sort everything out and so stop at the insurance place this guy apparently works for. The lady there is very friendly and I try extra hard to be polite and speak calmly and slowly as as few minutes earlier I was shaking with anger/fear/I don’t exactly know. After we ask the guy not to speak about twenty times I realize the lady is selling perfectly legit insurance policies and this guy is a kind of broker. He had run across and bought a policy in my name for 200 pesos and then ran back to me and tried to charge me 400 pesos. The nice lady is pretty shocked when I tell her I shredded the paperwork and has to call her supervisor. Everything works out OK – she takes the shredded paperwork, gives the man back his 200 pesos and we pretend it never happened.
Her supervisor also told her not to sell me another policy

We drive on and have to stop for ‘fumigation’ of the Jeep – this is another scam I’m told will happen at all the borders, but it is kind of official and I do get a receipt for my 80 pesos ($USD 6). We park the Jeep and walk into Belize customs, where we both get stamps no problems and I move onto customs to fill in some paperwork for the Jeep. It takes a while, but we have no problems and I have one of those special stamps that says I can’t leave the country without the Jeep.
We are finally in Belize and stop to buy insurance, this time from a very legit place that charges the correct price

Easy, huh?

We drive into Belize, 26,600km down really having no idea what to expect…

-Dan