We had, yet again, been having problems with our fridge when using it on propane. Derek worked on it near Bacalar, but we just could not get it to stay lit and we had run out of tricks. The plan had been to visit the beautiful multi-hued lake of Bacalar, but instead we decided to head to Chetumal where we had a larger town at our disposal and better internet to troubleshoot the issue.
We arrived at the Yax Ha campground outside of town only to discover than my MacBook Pro laptop was not operating correctly…I would turn on the screen and it would have vertical grey lines, then turn translucent red, green or blue, depending on its mood….really, not what I needed at that moment.
The ocean view from our camping spot. Feeling safe from pirates.
The next morning I opened up the laptop and it appeared to be fine, then moments later the screen went wonky again. An on-line chat with Apple determined that my 6 year old laptop was considered obsolete, so they would not provide any service or troubleshooting. The computer repair guy in town thought it would be expensive to fix, that it was likely the graphics card and would need to be shipped to the US for repairs. So off to Office Depot we went and we bought a new laptop, this time opting for a cheaper HP…if it ain’t meant to last very long, why drop all that money on a Mac?
We also spent some time contacting different companies to see what options we would have for a fridge replacement. It still worked on battery and electric, but if we needed to rely on our two house batteries the fridge would easily discharge them overnight. New compressor fridges are super efficient, and we would have no problem operating one on our two house batteries. The problem is, however, finding one in Central America, or having one shipped to us somewhere along the route without doubling the cost. Difficult.
In the meantime we enjoyed our beautiful spot at Yax Ha and visited with several other overlanders that we had met previously on our route.
Our rig, in the foreground, and those of fellow travellers.
The next day I opened my Apple to see about transferring my files to the new computer, and lo and behold, now it worked. Go figure. We will see how long that lasts.
We crossed into Belize on the 16th of February and the crossing was nice and easy, mainly because the official language of Belize is English, a real treat after having to do everything in Spanish for the past three months. You would think an imaginary line in sand demarcating the border would be nothing more than political, but we immediately began to see differences between Mexico and Belize; the roads were less busy, the housing styles were completely different, and we were surrounded by sugar cane fields for miles.
We spent two nights camped along the river in the small city of Orange Walk (Belize’s third largest city, with a population of about 14,000 people), where there were many beautiful birds and fast internet!!!!
This tug boat appeared from around the corner pulling a huge oil barge.
Our camping spot for two nights.
This fellow swam by in the middle of the day…we kept Piper away from the water’s edge at this camp.
Big green iguana that someone brought by the restaurant. He wasn’t on the menu later that day.
River and birdlife.
Sunrise.