Mennonites in the Shipyard and Mexico

Thursday 1/19/2012

Day 5 Distance ( 398 km)

Horse buggy

   Orange walk, a strange place with at least 100 chinese restaurants, so we picked one out, where we saw a few local Monnonites, about 30 in a family with lots of children and thought the food must be good and for sure it was Mushrooms with shrimps and lots of it.

Shipyard Transportation

      So we decided to visit their camp in the place called Shipyard, which is about 30 miles from orange walk and pretty soon we came across the buggies and horses, what is their only transportation mode, besides walking,

               They still talk their own slang   ( German) and do agriculture and wood work.

General store Shipyard

 

Low German

To make things more complicates, there are     Mennonites, Quakers and Amish in  Belize, but they do not really mix! It was as of time was set back 100 years in Shipyard and it was surreal and every one was travelling with buggies on the road and sometimes they go great distances! It is a must see thing and we all were happy we went out of the way to see them and at least we had some 100 km dirt road in the loop we made that morning.

Hotel parking

Horse buggy

There were no little restaurant or anything else to eat so when we returned to orange Walk to check out the hotel, we went first for break fast and you guessed it already "Chinese" there was no other food in this town, but that suited me.

After we left the hotel, we were heading for Mexico, using the Chetumal border and an hour later we reached, checked out of Belize for $ 20.00 exit tax and 5 minutes later, we were in mexico, where we had to do a lot of paperwork, but it is getting expensive now compared with Last year, no laws were implemented and to make the story yet, they charged each credit card almost $ 500.00 US, there was a refundable $ 400.00 deposit for the bike and they guaranteed, would be reversed when you leave Mexico, then there was a $ 23.00 immigration tax and at last , there was a $ 48.00 permit tax for driving in Mexico.

Mexico border Chetumal

     Anyway we left the border 1:30 pm and 3 hours later on an almost straight boring road, doing 130 km an hour, we checked in an apartment hotel in Tulum. Outside were thousands of people strolling down the highway, which had for a 2 mile stretch hundreds of restaurants, terraces and bars, so we felt right away at home.