February 4, 2011 (Hopkins Town, cont.)

For our adventure on Friday, February 4, Kirby and I had planned to rent bicycles and ride about five miles from our lodging in Hopkins Town to the Sittee River and Sittee River Village. The bikes cost us each about US$10.00 to rent for the entire day. Since none of the nearby breakfast places were open at 9:00 AM, we decided to head out without eating anything first (oftentimes a dangerous thing to do). It was a hot and sunny day and the gravel road which connected Hopkins Town and the Sittee River Village was generally OK but in a number of places it was terrible. I have heard that Belize has a shortage of suitable rock crushers so oftentimes their gravel roads contain pieces of rock the size of grapefruits. This is particularly bad for bicycling because oftentimes the "grapefruits" also had sharp, jagged edges. For this reason, it is necessary to always be hyper-vigilent when riding a bicycle in Belize to make sure you don't run right over any of these sharp mini-boulders.

The ride to the river and the village was a real workout but it was interesting and pleasant. We pedaled by a lot of beautiful scenery and some interesting homes along the river. We stopped briefly at a place we had read about called Glover's Guest House-- apparently owned by the same people who own and operate the famous Glover's Atoll Resort I will write about atolls and Glover's in an upcoming post. The guest house is located right on the river and offered a number of river-related activities such as kayaking, boating and fishing -- but it looked pretty spartan. Sittee River Village didn't look like too much either, but it was worth checking out. Along the way we saw several billboards for grandiose real estate projects planned for the area which probably collapsed a couple years ago when fallout from the Great American Recession washed over tourist countries like Belize. We also met a really cool (and pretty) young Swedish girl named "Emma" along the way. Emma rents motor bikes (at what seemed to me to be very reasonable prices) to tourists who really want to explore Belize. We will meet Emma again in an upcoming blog entry. The ten mile round trip bike ride on the rough gravel roads on the fat-tired rental bikes was probably the exercise equivalent of a fifty mile ride on a decent mountain bike or ten speed back in Minnesota.

Since we had skipped breakfast, Kirby and I were starving when we returned to Hopkins so we dropped in at a nearly cafe called Thongs (which I had at first thought might have been the first strip club I had come across in Belize). Thongs was not a "gentlemen's club" afterall -- but they did serve excellent breakfasts AND they had free WIFI. Thongs was run by a very nice Russian lady named "Tanya" and our server was a sweet local gal named "Lorraine". My afternoon was pretty low key today-- some swimming at the beach and some Internet at a nearby "Internet Cafe". For dinner we visited Thongs again-- trying their spaghetti this time (not something you see too often in Belize) -- and for our evening entertainment Kirby, John and I had a few beers at King Cassava's followed by some stargazing on the Hopkins beach.

King Cassava's Courtyard During the Day

Kirby and John were getting back on the road tomorrow morning. After spending the better part of two weeks virtually joined at the hip- Kirby and I were going our separate ways tomorrow.The night was clear, and Hopkins has a minimum of lights at night. The result was about a quadrillion stars visible to the naked eye. It was awesome indeed.

John and Ronaldo Shortly before John's Departure