An unusual cloud formation around sunset.Another remnant from the colonial era – the phone box, that is!This wooden bridge is lower down the river from the metal bridge and enables the traffic coming into town as opposed to the higher bridge carrying traffic out of town.A new Police Van provides an unusual sight.We spent 5 days in this town and passed this charging point several times and did not see a single car being charged or in use around town.When you live miles from the coast and want to cool off at the weekend the local river is the place to go.A reminder of the Mayan predecessors in this area – we are close to the Guatemalan border.We are looking for the local Mennonite community and take a bus ride to Spanish Lookout.The local bus took us along a very bumpy track through all these villages and some very pretty country scenery.
Spanish Lookout. This was the opposite of what we expected. We discover there are several Mennonite communities, however, this one is progressive and embraces most aspects of western capitalism and this is why their town looks like a thriving town in the mid west of America with the best road surface in the country. Here they have the dairies, silos for all the grain production and also a Volkswagen dealer. They are clearly very hard working and quite prosperous compared to other parts of the country. There is not much for visitors to see here including the traditional style of dress they are well known for because they have adopted western dress styles.We did find one couple with traditional dress. His wife was indoors at the supermarket checkout packing the groceries.We were disappointed not to find a proper Mennonite community living by traditional means so we set off on another day with our bikes to explore further although it did require a 30+ mile (50 kilometres) round trip to do so. There were not any buses on this route or signs to point the way.The Chinese have been here with the road surface improvements and our route is through a very picturesque rural area which is, in our view more pretty than the Hummingbird Highway which compensated for our earlier disappointment.
Mayan ruins as seen from the roadside.
At this point we are lost and our only Mennonite sighting has been a horse and cart hitched to a fence where there is a Sunday service in progress. Not wanting to intrude to ask directions we see a car at this junction with a couple of traditionally dressed Mennonites and their 8 children who invited us to join them at the meeting house where the whole community of 40 – 50 people of all ages spanning 8 families were having lunch. This is their meeting house.This is the only photo we took of the community meeting because we thought it would be too intrusive bearing in mind they have rejected modern ways and that includes cameras. When we arrived the children of all ages were playing a game outside on this grass area in their bare feet. The moment we arrived with the couple who we followed in their car, they were visiting family and had driven from Canada, the couple below came and introduced themselves and became our hosts for the next 3 hours. We could write a book about the various discussions we had with many people there because they were as intrigued with us as we were with them; in short it was a one off experience that could not be bought through a tour operator. When the lunch gathering dispersed this couple invited us back to their home and we learned more about their lifestyle and promised to keep in touch; hopefully we can remember how to write letters and post them overseas because they don’t do text, emails or Whatsapp. Our spirits were lifted enormously having had this experience, however, we were soon brought down to earth because on the return trip we discovered that David’s bike had 3 broken spokes in the rear wheel – something we had been concerned about since we had bought these bikes as we are expecting them to do something for which they are not designed. This character is a local Traffic Warden who we had met the first day we arrived and kept on bumping into. His picture is included because he recommended his cousin who lived the other side of the river and was the only one in town who does bicycle repairs.Another bicycle mechanic who has saved our trip from an early finish worked for an hour to replace the broken spokes – thankfully we had taken the precaution of buying spares when the previous bike had a similar malfunction because he didn’t have any to supply (we interrupted him working as a gardener for someone because cycling is not so popular here given the hilly terrain).Not the traditional layout of a bicycle man’s repair shop – all his tools were in the shed behind the couch.We are still processing the events of the past 24 hours as we wait for the next leg of our journey to begin; it should be a bus out of here to avoid another stretch of dangerous road and drivers.
Mexico and Belize 