When the resort we were staying at in Belize mentioned that they had bikes guest could use, I didn’t have high expectations. And yet, I had previously managed to get in some enjoyable rides in Florida on a beach cruiser and again on a town bike in Mexico. So, when I saw the bikes on offer, I looked past their rusty chains and fixed gears and wondered how far I could ride one in the local area? A hundred metre test ride told me all I needed to know. The cranks were straight, the chains drove smoothly and the tires were sufficiently inflated to allow me to ride at the same sort of speed I was riding on a studded tires through a Calgary winter.
A quick scan of the local Ride with GPS routes showed me the available rides were limited because the village at Hopkins had only 8km of coastal road and only one paved road heading inland. This road leads you back to the main north-south highway in Belize although that was a simple two-lane road. However, there was another unpaved dirt road that ran parallel to the Sittee River at the south end of Hopkins. This road was paved for the last few kilometres to the same north-south highway.
Initially, I decided to explore the extremities of the village on the paved coast road. The southern section was characterized by large plots of land occupied by three-storey homes built by expats and foreign tourists. Theoretically, the narrow strip of beach along the shoreline was public, but there was nowhere to access it and I found my way to the Sittee River was barred by the gates of a private marina.
Bicycles similar to the one I was riding were a popular means of transport for the locals even though cars and pickups were driven by more the more prosperous and foreigners. Gasoline-powered golf carts appeared to be the transport of choice for short term visitors. Traffic moved slowly along the coast road, in part because tourists and dogs meandered out into the street unpredictably, but also because Belize has a love of sleeping policemen traffic calming bumps. Some of these bumps are so vicious that cars have to traverse them at sub-walking speed.
Exploring in the other direction, I rode past the hotel district where building heights are again limited to three storeys and into the village which is where the local Belizeans live. By this stage I had ridden the bike about 5km and understood its idiosyncrasies. The main problem was I couldn’t even adjust the saddle height as the stem was rusted in so when I slackened the pinch nut and pulled, the saddle came off in my hands. This meant my knees were rising too high and taking more strain than normal. Also, the saddle itself was of the wide, cushiony type, favoured by non-cyclists but not suitable for riding any distance.
I was going to limit this first ride to an hour or ninety minutes but I still wanted to explore the dirt roads so headed inland on the Sittee River Road. The dirt was rutted and potholed but the wide tires (50mm) coped well and there were usually smoother lines to follow. I wasn’t aware of insects at the time but later found I had received a few mosquito bites. I was aware of the temperature and high humidity though and was wearing shorts and a short-sleeved jersey but still sweating profusely.
The bike had no bottle cage so I was resorting to the traditional method of caring a bottle in my rear centre pocket. I mused that multi-tool I was also carrying wouldn’t fit any of the bolts on the bike and I had no puncture repair kit either. Consequently, once I moved north out of the village I made sure I had a cell phone signal and the hotel number. They had several minibuses and I’m sure would have come out and recovered me if necessary.
In Sittee Village I had two options. I could either continue to the main highway, ride north on the highway until I reached the paved road back to Hopkins, or I could take a farm track that ran parallel to the main highway until I intersected the paved Hopkins Road. Opting for the latter, I soon found myself on a partly overgrown double track between plantations of coconuts and bananas. Green bushes were decorated with bright yellow and red flowers and others I recognized as purple morning glory. I splashed through muddy troughs but the dirt dried quickly on my shorts and bushed off.
Luckily, the tires were soft enough and wide enough to cope with the terrain even if keeping the pedals turning was tough on my knees. After one false turn where I ended up at a ramshackle hut guarded by a dog, I managed to thread my way back towards the paved road. The return to Hopkins was easy from there but, heading back, I made a mental note to find a bike with an adjustable saddle for my next outing.
By securing a bike before 8am, I found I had a better selection but they were all the same type just in in a range of sizes. Fortunately, I discovered one that still had an adjustable saddle stem with a quick release so I could fine-tune the height while I was out. The tires were softer than I would have like so I attempted to inflate them with the small hand pump I had brought with me. I guess I managed to pump them to around 30psi before I ran out of enthusiasm.
The other items I had brought with me were a high intensity rear light and a Garmin mount for my cycle computer. Bike lights were a complete novelty in Belize as I never saw a single bike using lights day or night. Kids would ride past you in complete darkness in the village of Hopkins, navigating by moonlight. The resort locked its bikes up at sunset to prevent guests being tempted to venture out in the dark.
I was happy to retrace the dirt route to Sittee River on my next trip but then I continued to the main highway. Named the Thomas Vincent Ramos Highway after a local civil rights activist, the road was much quieter than I had expected with only one or two vehicles a minute passing me. Moreover, the road surface where I entered the highway was smooth asphalt, in far better condition than the highways around Calgary. As I headed south, I did come across one patch of road where the tar had been stripped back revealing a chalky stone base layer but this was easy to cycle around. I had no idea when it would eventually get resurfaced as it was still in the same state when we drove past several days later. Further on, the smooth asphalt transitioned to a chip seal surface with signs cautioning “Drive Slowly”, even though the chips were well bedded so there was no reduction in my speed.
As I crossed the Sittee River, the road dipped slightly to the bridge and the gradient up afterwards gave a hint of the bike’s climbing limitations. My chain ring had 40 teeth while the rear sprocket had just 14, giving a relatively high gear ratio of 2.86 equivalent to the 9th gear of my 12-gear Trek Checkpoint gravel bike. On the smooth flat roads of the coastal plain, this wasn’t an issue. However, my destination was a pass between the hills on the road to the Cockscomb Basin nature reserve.
I turned west onto a dirt road and once I had passed some houses I was riding through tropical forest. The road undulated to cross two creeks but then started to climb in earnest at a modest 5% but this gradient was quickly too much for me on that bike. Even standing on the pedals and hauling on the handle bars I couldn’t keep the pedals turning. It didn’t help that the grips on the cruiser style bars were loose and tried to slide off so I had to hold the chromed metal below them.
At least my descent back to the main highway was fast, though this time the gear span- out as the ratio wasn’t high enough. My fastest speed was around 35kph downhill while on the flat I had managed around 20kph in still air. Returning to Hopkins, I choose paved roads and faced a stiff sea breeze headwind. The high cruiser style handlebars threw your body up into the wind so the only cure was to hold the handlebars much lower down to reduce drag.
Knowing the limits of the bikes available, I planned my last ride with an easier, secondary, objective that I could ride if I got behind schedule or if the grades were too steep. In the end, it was the strong north wind that forced my hand as I could only manage 17kph when I left Hopkins to ride north up the Ramos Highway. My intended destination this time was an abandoned jail near Alta Vista on the Hummingbird Highway but this would entail my riding on dirt roads over a low hill.
At the turnoff for the dirt raid I was already behind schedule and the gentle climb on this road reduced my speed further to around 16kph. Unlike the motor vehicles which plied this road on their way towards the Bocawina National Park, I could ride around the ruts and potholes. Some 5km from the highway, I reached the turnoff where my route climbed to the north. Halfheartedly, I started to investigate this road and crossed over Silk Grass Creek on an old bridge.
Beyond the bridge, the route climbed into an old plantation but it wasn’t clear whether road access was private or public. Threatening signs warned against trespassing. By that stage I had already decided to ride to my secondary destination, the Bocawina National Park so I backtracked to the junction and continued heading west. Nowhere was the gradient steep but the road climbed gradually to the park entrance.
Returning back down the dirt road, I benefitted from the gentle gradient and managed to maintain 20kph. Then, with the wind at my back, I maintained 22-24kph on the paved road but I still faced a headwind component on the final run into Hopkins.
After 2 ½ hours of riding I had pushed my endurance on that bike to a comfortable limit as my knees and my sit bones ached from the unfamiliar positions. My heart rate data indicated some 154 TSS of training effort which was about the same as for riding a gravel bike with studded tires around Calgary in winter. All in all, it was well worth taking the risk of exploring my surroundings in Belize on an ill-fitting bike but I would advise anyone contemplating taking a hotel bike to increase their cycling range gradually before embarking on an epic excursion.
Even so, never underestimate the possibilities with a humble hotel bike!