Michael travels the world: Crossing Belice and Yucatan

Hello again!
Here my update about the last weeks of my trip.
The idea was to just cross Belice (didn't call my attention) to get to Mexico (better just to Yucatan). Mexico is huge - look at the map! So sooner or later I will come back to get to know it. This time I just wanted to see some Maya sites there and get a cheap flight back to Colombia, from where I had booked my flight back home.
So entering Belice from Guatemala by hitchhiking was easy. Hitchhiking itself there a bit more complicated. We always had to wait at the "speed bumps" to get a ride. And actually it happend TWICE during this just two days we were there, that later the same day we got a ride from the same person who just lifted us earlier.
Belice due to english language (only country not spanish-speaking in central america), wide roads, many black people and swampy ground I kind of felt like being in the US (e.g.Florida).
Also a lot of US citizens seem to live there after retirement. The english spoken there was with strong accent and difficult for me to understand. "yo man! Whass up?"
First night we headed south to at least see some costal part of the country and ended up in Dangriga. Spent a very pricy night there.

Scene from Dangriga, Belice

beach in Dangriga


We saw a lot cars like that - just used for spare parts

The second day we hitchhiked north to Altun Ha, another Maya ruins site. There was just one other tourist! :) And then we slept one the side of the road close to Sandhill. Was really difficult to find a place as usually about 50cm from the asphalt of the road the swamp started...

Altun Ha

here we slept, just some 10m from the swamp and 10m from the street

swamp everywhere

hitchhiking out of Belice in a wood transport

While hitchhiking out in the transporter for wood and bamboo we made a stop at a gas station. I rushed into the shop to maybe buy some water or cookies but soon turned around because of the high prices and not having left enough belician money. The staff must have seen that. When I just left a lady came after me and gave me a sandwich for free! Then she also saw Albi on the truck and gave him also one. And brought us a bootle of water! Thanks to all that hospitable people we met. Thanks for all kindness we were allowed to feel.

Leaving Belice we saw a lot of people smuggeling clothes across the border to Mexico. They just wore ridiculous amounts of clothes and taped others on their legs or belly. ;)

Hitchhiking in Mexico was hard. It was so difficult to get a ride we ended up walking long distances and unfortunatelly not even the buses stopped for us?!? took us 3hours, three rides and some kilometers of walking in the hot sun to get to Bacalar - our destination.
But there we were lucky. We just arrived on time for the carneval :)

Carneval in Bacalar

We met some local and argentinian people

Here we saw something strange for our german eyes...

And I had a nice encounter with a man working on the side of some small road. he was cutting grass for his horse and caught my attention. I stopped and started talking to him. We ended up in some short but intense talk about live, death and our believes.

philosophisches Gespräch auf einem Pferdekarren in Bacalar

Actually Albi and I wanted to go together to some other ruins, but it was just to difficult to get there (thanks to long distances and problems to find rides). So we ended up for the night in Francisco Encarcega. And actually here's another travelling story. We already missed that in Bacalar it was another time zone than in Belize. And as there exist several ones in Mexico, we missed another time zone in Francisco Encarcega - so we got up already at 3 at night (not at 4 like planned) to get our buses - to different destinations. Here Albi and I splitted up after a crazy month of travelling together.

Here is a nice photo explaining our waiting situation for a car or bus or anything in the middle of mexican nowhere.

As we travelled to gether hitchhiking for a whole month we kind of developed our own choreography to make cars stop and have fun at the same time. Here is one short video of what it could have been looking like.
Sometimes making a "Laola" or other fun actually made the following car stop, and the drivers were smiling about our outgoing craziness.

Then I went alone through Merida to Pisté, the village close to the famous ruins of Chichen Itzá. There I bargained with a owner of a hostel and stayed for half the price on the rooftop.
About Chichen Itza - dear followers, I would not recommend to go there - better check our some other ruins in Mexico or best Tikal in Guatemala (see the other post). The entrance was expensive (although I managed not to pay it ^^) and there were almost more merchants selling their products than tourists. And you couldn't get directly to the rocks, stones and pyramides because of some barriers. And almost all of the ruins have been obviously rebuild with white concrete/cement.

in Chichen Itza

Fred in Chichen Itza

the "stadium" in Chichen Itza

un cenote / a water hole

After this day I went to Cancun and spent 2 more days there. Everyone tried to make me believe it was high season, but actually it was pretty boring there. The city itself didn't offer so much, the beaches and mongroove forests at the swamps were nice though. And it was really absurd seeing a long queue of people lining up to take pictures or selfies with some big CANCUN-letters.