Happy to be back on the bikes and being able to cycle through Belize and after a hug from the manager of the cute little hotel, we got back on the bikes the next day.
We wanted to go to the Belize Zoo, where you can also camp. Just before we arrived at the zoo, the hilly part ended. From there on it would be flat. We pitched our tent underneath a roof on a big lawn. A beautiful place in the middle of nature.
Because the bikes were very muddy from the unpaved parts in the rain in Guatemala, Ronnie decided to clean them a bit. Most of the mud needed to come off. All of a sudden we heard a hard snap; a spoke! It was going so well, but now another spoke snapped when the bike was just standing still. That meant we couldn’t go on cycling and that sucked!
We visited the small, but very nice zoo the next day. All animals that live there have been saved after accidents or were taken from people who kept them as pets and they’re all native Belizean animals. We were able to see them very close by, the monkeys were very active and the predators (cats) came very close.
We were able to go to Belize City with a van from the zoo. Belize City is a horrible city where there really is nothing to see or do in our opinion. The whole city appeared to be a big slum and that image didn’t improve when the streets flooded after all the downpours that day. Unfortunately we had to spend a whole day there. We arrived at the busstation around 11 am and the bus to Playa del Carmen in Mexico didn’t leave until 7:30 pm. But we were happy that we could leave that same day.
Now we had to figure out what to do with the wheel. Ronnie’s parents were going to come to Playa del Carmen a few days later and were going to bring a lot of spare spokes and other parts but that wouldn’t be a permanent solution. The wheel had been good when we left Antigua, but still another spoke snapped. Having a new wheel built wasn’t a good option either, because it’s a special wheel and we had read that building a wheel like that is a very precise job, different from building a normal wheel. The tension of the spokes is different and all the spokes have to have exactly the same tension; if not; more spokes will snap sooner or later. The only way to build the wheel right is to use a tension meter and there are not many shops where they have one of those, not even in our country. Usually the tension is measured by hand/gut feeling.
After some emailing with Santos, the bike manufacturer, we were told they were going to build a new wheel and send it to us in Mexico.