Exploring Belize City

For the next three days I stayed in Belize City. I was planning on going for a ride into the countryside and explore the Belize capital of Belmopan and the town of San Ignacio. It was just so freakin hot though. I just couldn’t put on my riding suit and head out into the heat. Even the locals said it was hot.

La Petit Cafe

The La Petit Cafe was my refuge in the heat. Each morning I would head out to the cafe to do some work and enjoy the air conditioning. One of the main projects to do was updating my GPS.

la-petit-gps-update

GPS Travel Maps gave me a coupon code for a free update for my Central America maps. I was sure hoping this would fix my Belize maps.

There were a few problems doing it. First, my SD port didn’t work. A coin had gotten stuck in there and after I took it out the port was “read only.” I tried everything to change it but I am guessing the coin set something off. The Device Manager said it was working fine though. Oh well.

So next I hooked up my GPS directly to my computer to update it. It wouldn’t read! After a lot of experimenting it turned out to be a bad cable. It took hours but my GPS updated. I just hoped the map for Belize was fixed.

Restaurants

As the evening approached the temperature cooled off to go out exploring the City. This exploring mostly consisted of walking to different restaurants recommended by Tripadvisor and seeing the sights along the way. First it was Riverside Tavern for a much needed salad. Then to Celebrity where I had a really nice chicken curry.

curry-chicken

But what I was looking for was a “home” where everyone knew my name, to quote the song from Cheers. The next restaurant on my list was the Wet Lizard. Come to find out it was only available for cruise ship passengers!! I walked around a bit and stumbled upon Spoonaz. It had a patio along the river. I ordered Salbutes.

salbutes

And enjoyed the wonderful views.

spoonax-view-water

belize-city-swing-bridge

The server was a bit sassy, as was the outdoor cook right behind me. I like that. I found my home.

Exploring Belize City

As I mentioned in a previous post, Belize City is not that big. Especially the downtown area. One evening I walked through downtown to Bird Island. The downtown is run down. It always seems to be filled with school kids in the uniforms.

downtown-belize-city-2

downtown-belize-city

I passed the Belize Supreme Court.

supreme-court

The Channel 7 News station.

news-station

I stopped at the St John Anglican Cathedral. Not really much of a cathedral but an historical building in the city. It was built using slave labour from 1812 to 1820 with bricks that had been used as ballast aboard ships and was the first church to be built in the colony of British Honduras.

church

There is a small residential area on the island.

houses-birds-isle

One of the reasons for going to Birds Island was to check out a restaurant. It turned out to be closed. But I loved their sign.

birds-isle

Evenings

When it got dark I headed back to my guest house passing by a candy store.

candy-store

I really didn’t want to be out too much after dark here. All the closed stores have those metal blind on their windows. And the stores that are open, have metal bars between the clerk and customer. So to order something you look through the bars and say what you want. The transaction is completed by a small hole in the bars. That was my hint that it may be dangerous after dark 🙂

The one awesome thing about Belize is English ha ha. That meant English TV stations. Not good for me learning Spanish, but nice to relax to in the evenings. Especially since the Final Four NCAA basketball tournament was on.

final-four

My Location from March 30 to April 1, 2017

belize-city

Safetly Reached Monterrey on my Cracked Tire

I felt a sense of relief today as I safely reached Monterrey on my cracked tire. All that anxiety was for nothing ha ha.

Breaks

I continued with my breaks and listening to music. You know I can’t remember what I was even doing in the photo below. I was happy about something. Maybe it was the music.

brian-break

break-road

Earbuds

During my breaks I would take off my helmet. When I did, it would catch my ipod earbuds and pull them away from my ear.

On one break the little rubber piece on the end fell off. I couldn’t find it anywhere. Then it happened again. Luckily, when I bought them they came with a larger and smaller rubber piece. When I get to Monterrey I need to glue them on so they don’t come off.

Monterrey

Monterrey is a big city of about 1.5 million and considered one of the wealthiest cities in Mexico. However, in recent years it has also had problems with violent drug cartels.

Like most big cities there were freeways and lots of traffic to negotiate. I was trusting my GPS to get me to the hotel I booked.

BMW Navigator IV GPS

I have been using the GPS that came with my bike when I bought it in 2013. I am finding out it isn’t very accurate or precise in Mexico. You have to do some interpretation when reading it. And it doesn’t always get you to the right place.

To compensate I make sure I also get the coordinates of the location I am going to as well as marking it both on Google Maps and Maps.me.

On this occasion my GPS took me “close” to my destination.

So as I have done several times previously, I had to stop, pull out my phone and see where I was on Maps.me. I was only a block away from the Suites DIOH.

Suites DIOH

The Suites DIOH is a non descript hotel I guess. You buzz to get into the reception area. This isn’t that uncommon in Mexico. Like usual, the people didn’t speak English. After some work I learned a new word, “piso.” They put me in the penthouse on Piso 10.

Parking was an issue. The ground parking floor was on a steep angle. Not good for parking a motorcycle. To get to the second parking level I had to negotiate a corner that angled one way and then angled a different way. Not a normal curve up to the next level. Complicating matters was that the road was not smooth.

My riding skills couldn’t cope and I stalled out. Not fun on a hill like that. But I finally made it up.

My room was big. And the views from my balcony were awesome.

monterrey-hotel-3

monterrey-hotel-2

monterrey-hotel

There wasn’t much around the hotel so I picked up a few things from a local store and settled in for the night … looking forward to getting my tires replaced tomorrow.

My Route for October 26, 2016

torreon-monterrey-map

Translate »