Mountain Pine Ridge and San Ignacio, Belize

Enter Pine Mountain Ridge Forest Reserve, originally uploaded by sanuzbord.

Hills, bumps, and heat best describe our 50 km ride up to Mountain Pine Ridge. We passed through two small villages, otherwise lush green forest composed the scenery until we got up to MPR where pine and granite took over the surroundings. A stark difference to the scenery we're used to here. In total, we gained around 1500 feet in elevation on bumpy dirt roads. Our legs were burning and bodies soak with sweat as the heat was relentless. We almost made it to the Douglas Da Silva Forest Station (the only place in the reserve where camping is allowed), but nightfall caught us, so we camped in the brush far off the road hoping we wouldn't be caught. That night we discovered the black flies that inhabit the area and are still scratching the many bites they left us with that night. After a night of pouring rain (and they say it's the dry season, Seattle weather must be following us), we awoke and decided to hang out and let things dry before packing up. After all, we were totally hidden from the road and no one would find us we thought. Minutes later, we began to hear the whoosh of helicopter blades and soon after saw the chopper fly right above us. Our packing up that morning commenced a little sooner and faster than we had intended. Luckily, we found out later that the chopper belonged to the British army who are training in the area and they apparently didn't care that we were camped illegally because no one said anything to us later. We spent all day at Douglas Da Silva lying things out to dry and enjoying the surroundings.

We spent the next few days exploring the Rio Frio Caves, the Caracol ruins, Rio on Pools, and Big Rock Falls. The Rio Frio Caves were filled with stalagtites and mites and the largest cave was so big a river was running through it. It had a waterfall rock formation like ones you see in Yellowstone. The next day we hitched a ride with the Belize Defense Force 25 miles down the road to Caracol. Caracol is only a few miles from the Guatemalan border and in the middle of nowhere, so there have been a lot of robberies in the area recently. As a result, the BDF escorts all tourists down to Caracol now. So, after a very vague conversation about paying for our ride, we left not knowing if we were allowed to tip of expected to. The ruins were magnificent and it was clear how big the city of Caracol was long ago as unexcavated ruins were all over the large site. We also saw some howler monkeys for the first time and realized they're much smaller than their howl makes them seem. After a very awkward game of "tip-no-tip" with the BDF and multiple trips to our campsite without ever mentioning a word about money, we paid the BDF guys and were done with the awkwardness. We left the next morning after stopping at Rio on Pools and Big Rock Falls for a refreshing swim. On our ride down it was almost as if we were leaving the Northwest and entering Central America again. We climbed a few large hills coming back, but otherwise coasted most of the way down to San Ignacio, a nice break for sure.

We have been in San Ignacio for two days now catching up with errands and internet. We made friends with a school security guard and he has let us sleep in one of the school classrooms for the weekend, so we've been enjoying sitting in chairs, showers, and overhead light at night-- the simple things have become so luxurious. Tomorrow we will head to Guatemala where we'll station ourselves at Spanish school for a bit.