Sunday, July 2nd, 1995

Day 8: San Ignacio to Placencia, Belize

The Hummingbird Highway

It's time to move on.  We're heading out early for Placencia, which I've read has the best beaches on the mainland, and comes highly recommended by a few of the tourists we've met.  Just before rolling out of San Ignacio for good, I see a white Mercedes Benz Unimog parked down the street from Eva's.  I walk down to look at it and take a picture of the huge truck.  The owner, a blond-haired blue-eyed German named Chris, is standing in front of a nearby diner.  He ambles over, puts his foot up on a chair, and introduces himself.  We talk for a few minutes.  He imported the beast 6 years ago from Germany and it's been running strong since.  He used to run tours into the jungle for tourists, but that became a pain.  Now he drives supply runs for remote mining and archeology camps out in the jungle.  What a life.  He tells me how he drove regularly for a mining company for about a year, then they bought their own Unimog and hired a driver.  "The new ones aren't any good, though," he says "too many electronics."

We are excited to be on the road again.  We head east out of San Ignacio towards the national capital of Belmopan.  It seems to be closed on Sundays, so we head south on the Hummingbird Highway for Dangriga.  Fodder's guide warns:

"If you do...drive, check on the state of the Hummingbird Highway first.  It is a notoriously bad road.  The last bit of the journey, over the Southern Highway, is a bone-shaker.  All-terrain vehicles are strongly advised."

We figure it's named the Hummingbird Highway for all the kamikaze hummingbirds that are sure to be lodged in your grill when you reach the end.  The northern section, on the way to Dangriga, is relatively well paved.  After the turnoff from Belmopan however, the road begins to alternate paved and dirt every half mile.  It's almost as if they knew they could only pave half of it, so instead of paving to the center, they spread out the asphalt over the whole length.  Single lane through the jungle at the foothills of palm-covered mountains.  Beautiful land, some of the most striking we've seen.  We pass a boy on a bicycle walking up a hill.  As we approach, he gives us a big thumbs-up.  I will later wish we had stopped and given him a lift to wherever he was going, for in retrospect I think that is what he wanted.

About halfway to Dangriga, we cross a narrow single-lane bridge and suddenly the road becomes beautifully paved 2-lane blacktop.  This holds to Dangriga.  I theorize that they couldn't get the paving equipment across the little bridge as they paved north from the seaside town, and were forced to stop here.  We fly through the valleys towards the turn-off for Placencia.  It's strange to see thatch-roofed grass huts fifty feet from a modern asphalt road.  Parts of the road are under construction and in these places the mud is quite deep.

During one stretch, we would swear we were driving through Southeast Asia.  What looks like rice-paddies are arranged below the ornate concrete bridges stained orange from the mud thrown up by passing trucks.

The turn-off for Placencia and points south was an unhappy event, for it marked the end of the paved road.  We would later learn to view it with mixed feelings however, for the drive over the Southern Highway turned out to be a fun one.  These forty or so miles through the plains is as close to a rally as I will ever get.  We blast through the straights at up to 60 mph, and slide around corners with the back end swinging out.  Small bridges occasionally span irrigation ditches which cross under the road.  These are sometimes taken at a sufficient velocity to lift us clear of the ground, or so it feels.  Sometimes the mud is deep, and the truck slides everywhere, and we need every available inch of the wide dirt track.  Other times it is hard rock which forces us to crawl along at 10 mph.  Dangerous curves come up suddenly and often.

We reach a guard gate at a small intersection in the middle of the plains.  They wave us through and we keep flying along for 15 minutes until we pass a town that shows up on the map as being south of our turnoff for Placencia.  We head back to the guard station.  Sure enough, they confirm that we should have turned there.  They laugh right at us when they see our map.  There aren't many roads in this country, it's not easy to take a wrong turn.  We talk for a few minutes before moving on.  The guard asks about the truck and how much I paid for it in the States.  When he sees the odometer at about 95k miles, he makes a comment to the effect that this truck is still brand new.  They drive their trucks into the ground here.  "You want to know if you got a good truck, mon, you bring it to Belize."  We speak briefly of our trip through Mexico, and the guard asks us if we had any trouble.  We say no, but understand that it's not quite so easy for Belizeans.  "Mon, in Mexico when you're right you're wrong, and when you're wrong you're really wrong!"

Approaching Placencia

The road worsens markedly after the turnoff.  It turns from gravely mud to wet clay to hard-packed sand.  We finally reach the coast around mid-afternoon.  We enter Placencia excited for some good beach time.

Placencia stinks.  Fodder's describes it as "a bit of the South Seas in Belize: a balmy fishing village...with crystal-clear green water...Indeed, Placencia is the best place to get blissed out in Belize."  I'd describe it as a dirty little dive-shop town located on a swampy section of insect-infested beach.  Even the palm trees are phony, planted in straight rows along the shoreline.  My lasting impression of the town is all the trash that litters the beach and town sidewalk.  Old food rots right next to the sidewalk, while fly-covered garbage piles lay scattered about the town.  Even the beach is a melange of industrial and domestic flotsam.

The only interesting event occurs when we literally bump into Victoria and Tara in front of a beach-side bar called "De Tatch Hut."  They are less than thrilled to see us, and we wander off down the beach in search of a good spot on the beach to park Pedro for the night.  We fail.

After walking for almost an hour, Sean falls asleep on a fishing dock next to an upturned refrigerator while I drive off in search of a campground.  An hour later we locate a public beach with some Americans camped out in tents.  I carefully drive the truck out and park, back to the Caribbean breeze, between two coconut trees.  For a moment life looks good.  This place isn't so bad.  We string up our clothesline to finish drying the still-damp clothes.  We eat a good meal of Pasta and take a few pictures.  A young couple amble up the beach and strike up a conversation.  They are psyched to hear about our trip down.  They are buying about 10 acres on the beach south of town for about US$25,000.  It sounds good, but he's probably buying swamp.  He talks of opening his own resort, as scenes from "Club Paradise" (old Robin Williams flick) flash through my head.  They amble off towards town after warning us that the bugs get bad after sunset.  We'll be ready.

As the sun sets, we begin preparations for a retreat into the back of the truck.  Suddenly, as I am stepping out of the cab and Sean is shutting the back up, the bugs stage a blitzkrieg.  We are astonished at the speed and ferocity with which they mercilessly attack every square inch of exposed skin.  They are barely visible (hence the name no-see-ums) but they bite like fire ants.  We scramble into the back of the truck after lathering up with repellent.

The heat quickly becomes unbearable in the sealed-up camper shell and I jump out to attach our mosquito net.  I barely escape with my life.

Now I'm back in the truck.  The net is up and the light is on for reading and writing.  There's a nice breeze picking up, blowing in off of the Caribbean.  Ahhh.

Unfortunately it isn't enough to keep the sand fleas and mosquitoes from making it miserable.  We have to turn off the light and half-shut the side windows to keep the bugs from taking over completely.  The electric fans are turned on and off as we alternately try to stay cool and save the truck battery.  We decide we hate Placencia, or Placenta as I have begun calling it.  We bitch and bitch because it's only 8:30 p.m., but it's too dark to do anything and too hot and early to sleep.  We joke about the rains coming and forcing us to close the windows completely and pull all of our laundry off the line.

A light rain begins to patter on the roof of the truck.  Irritated, we shut all the windows and decide that it isn't raining hard enough to get our clothes all wet.  Eventually the rain lets up, but a 25 mph breeze blows in off the ocean, blowing our clothes off the line.  I crawl out onto the beach, gather the wet clothes from the sand, and throw them in the front seat.  The wind blows the netting off the back of the truck so we shut the back gate.  We continue to be eaten alive by the sand fleas and mosquitoes, which, we postulate, were not even slowed down by the netting or the window screens.

Life stinks in Placencia.

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