Belize Border Run! Going “south of the border” when you’re already south of the border

We had just alighted from our bumpy ride over from the mainland on the aptly named “Thunderbolt” when we saw the sign posted in a coffee shop window:

Sit back, relax, order a latte and browse the wanted posters

What kind of place had we just walked into? And what were we thinking dragging our suitcases around the back streets of San Pedro, Belize? Read on to find out…

FAR south of the border

For many, the proverbial “south of the border” phrase conjures up images of folks with “questionable legal status” making a run for freedom over the southern US border. Indeed, if you’ve ever been to the Tijuana-San Diego border,  you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Its edgy, dusk-till-dawn-movie-set feel makes you want to head back north of the border before sundown. 

But the border I’m referring to in this story is a long way from Tijuana - about 4000 kilometres away in fact. You’ll find it in a seldom-visited corner of the Mexican Riviera, far from the Zona Hotelera and spring break party crowds of Cancun. 

Our route from Cancun to San Pedro. The border is between Chetumal and Corozal. Note that there is no way to get from Xcalak to San Pedro - trust us, we tried!

Cancun: Snorkelling, Micheladas and Crocodiles

The origins of our “assault on the Belize border” can probably be traced back to Cancun’s reputation as a cliche destination for “fresh off the boat” American tourists. Valuing our “off the beaten path traveller” status, the first time we landed in Cancun we put ourselves on the first bus south to Tulum. It was only after renting an Airbnb in Cancun for a week on our second trip there two years later that we discovered some of its charms (which I’ll present here now for “geographical continuity”).

You don’t have to venture far from the Zona Hotelera to find sleepy little joints like this in Cancun

The genius thing about the Michelada is that you’re watering down your beer with tomato juice and at the same time keeping up your salt intake, so it makes for a great non-dehydrating daytime drink option. 

Best Michelada in Mexico, at Los Tarascos Cancun. “Para tacos Los Tarascos” as their slogan goes. I’d argue they should add “y Micheladas”. Although then it wouldn’t rhyme. 

View from the taco stand at Isla Blanca, a little-known peninsula north of Cancun city

Enjoying a “boatie” (“boat beer” a portmanteau of boat and “roadie”) on the ferry to Isla Mujeres

Quintana Roo is one of the safest parts of Mexico - you’re more likely to run into a crocodile than an armed robber.

Pro Tip: you’ll find world-class snorkelling right off the Club Med shoreline on Punta Nizuc. Just walk in off the beach from an adjacent hotel carrying your snorkelling gear and act like you’re supposed to be there. 

Trendy Tulum

Tulum, as it turned out, had already been overrun by hipsters by the time we got there in summer 2017. You’ll have to venture further south than that if you want to get off the proverbial beaten path. That said, there are many good reasons to visit Tulum and spend some time hanging out there - there’s much more to it than the seaside Mayan ruins that it's best known for. In particular, don’t miss visiting one of the many crystal-clear cenotes in the surrounding region - check out this post for more information. Also worth a visit is Parque Xel-Ha, which is a brilliant yet somewhat dangerous combination of water activities and all-you-can-eat-and-drink Mexican food and alcoholic drinks - for an entire day! 

The Zona Arqueológica de Tulum - a seaside Mayan walled city with the most iguanas I've ever seen in one place

Where else in the world can you cool off in the Caribbean Sea after wandering the ruins?

Tulum - come for the ruins, stay for the cenotes

Chilling in a cenote whose name I don’t remember, somewhere between Tulum and Cancun. 

Help yourself to habanero sauce and salad at Antojitos la Chiapaneca, home of the best tacos on the Mexican Riviera.

Hanging with the iguanas at Parque Xel-Ha

Into seldom-charted waters

A further three-hour drive south of Tulum will bring you to Bacalar Lagoon. It’s like an entire lake and tributary system with cenote-like water. Here you are getting into territory where not so many gringos have been, so be prepared to dust off that high school Spanish. We did the whole trip on ADO buses, but if we did it again we would rent a car. Car rental in the Mexican Riviera is cheap (like 20 USD/day cheap), and the driving conditions (once outside Cancun centro) are pretty low stress. If you’re planning to visit a lot of swimming spots, taxis to outside-the-city-limits destinations will quickly add up. 

Of course, you'll need to weigh this decision up against decreased Michelada consumption opportunities :-)

Pro Tip: while in Bacalar, don’t miss Los Rapidos Bacalar, a narrow stretch of river that feeds into the lagoon. Jump in the river up one end and float down to the other. Eat some tortillas and guacamole and grab an ice-cold cerveza from the on-site restaurant. Repeat. 

Cenote Cocalitos - Tranquil swimming lagoon with fossilized stromatolites, a cenote, hammocks & an eatery. (Source: Google Maps. Picture by author).

View from the shore of Los Rapidos Bacalar.

Nan taking a break from floating down the river. This picture was taken in the thatched bungalow that you can see in the picture in the link above.

Probing the border

Now, after that little detour through the highlights of the Mexican Riviera, lets return to the theme of this post: the Mexico-Belize border region. Strictly speaking, you could count Bacalar Lagoon as part of that region as it is just 45 minutes by road from Chetumal (Mexico’s analogy of San Diego in the San Diego-Tijuana border crossing I mentioned earlier). We, however, managed to turn 45 minutes into two days by taking buses all the way to Mahahual and Xcalak - and back again (see map route above). We couldn’t find any online information that confirmed either way whether we’d be able to cross into Belize from Xcalak, so we decided to turn up and find out from the source. After all, it looked so close on the map!

Turns out we couldn’t. But that’s OK. We like to approach our border crossings slowly. With Nan’s Chinese passport, you’re never absolutely sure they’re going to let you in until they actually let you in (or you’ve applied for a visa in advance).  A US tourist visa gets Chinese passport holders into most places in Central America and the Caribbean (albeit usually only for a week or two), but accurate and up-to-date information on the topic is hard to find, especially for small countries like Belize. More to the point, Belize still maintains its Chinese embassy in Taipei, not Beijing, so the odds of being rejected at the border were high. With that in mind, we decided to stay the night in Chetumal before attempting the border crossing. 

No man’s land

It was the kind of border experience designed for locals doing day trips and travelling light. Think chicken buses, no English signs (on the Mexican side), constantly having to ask where to go and what to do next, and hauling your luggage across a long stretch of “no man’s land” between the exit and entry points. The details are somewhat fuzzy, but Shannon O’Donnell’s account sums it up nicely with this line:

“Rather than just following instructions mapped out in a guidebook, we were forced to hunt down a way to cross the border into Belize”

It took us most of the afternoon to find our way into Corozal on the Belizean side, so we spent an evening chatting with the salty old expats at Bay Breeze before catching the 7 am Thunderbolt to San Pedro. To sum up our Belize experience, everything was about double the price of Mexico, it felt less safe, and the beaches and food were “meh”. We promptly booked flights from Cancun to Havana, took the 3 pm boat back to the mainland the next day, and began the process of “figuring out” how to get back into Mexico. 

The view from the Corozal esplanade was underwhelming after coming from Bacalar.

All aboard the Thunderbolt! Hang onto your hat, and bring a cushion. 

Belizean food is more Caribbean than Mexican

The beaches in San Pedro are nothing to write home about. It seems that most of the diving and snorkelling action in Belize happens on day trips to the outer reef. 

So there you have it, that’s how we ended up in a coffee shop in San Pedro, Belize browsing most-wanted posters. I remember the crossing back into Mexico being equally as difficult as the one in the reverse direction. I heaved a sigh of relief as I plopped myself in the passenger seat of a taxi headed for the ADO bus terminal.  It felt amazing to be back in the land of guacamole and micheladas. The driver, sensing as much, glanced at me and smiled. “Estas libre en Mexico” (you are free in Mexico”), he joked. I wonder if that’s what he said to the guy on the wanted poster. 

This post is part of The Travel Archives series, where I write about my experiences travelling through unconventional destinations. 

Rental Car Relocation on the Silk Road and the China-Kazakhstan border experience

Figure 1 - the area of north-west China where the events in this post took place in summer 2014, with the rough route we took shown in red.

The trip began with a gao tie, the name for China’s new network of high-speed trains, from Beijing to Xi’an. We skipped the Terracotta Warriors and headed straight to the highest rated roujiamo joint that my wife could find on dianping.com. 

“OG” roujiamo, straight from the source. The lard was dripping down my arm. 

Our first rental relocation assignment was to drive an oversized 4WD all the way to Jiayuguan, the western edge of the Great Wall. With a fuel-guzzling beast to satiate and Chinese road tolls to pay, it cost us just as much as flying would have, but at least we were able to stop over in Zhangye and check out the famous Danxia National Geopark.

On the road somewhere near Lanzhou.

Zhangye Danxia. Check it. 

It was a long walk back from the bathroom.

Don’t visit Zhangye Danxia if you don’t like climbing steps.

The view from the top was worth it though.

After a minor setback caused by a power steering failure that required driving “the beast” very carefully through the back streets of Zhangye until we found the mechanic that our car rental company had nominated, we were speeding westward again in no time. In Jiayuguan we managed to visit the western end of The Wall and visit a local winery (unsurprisingly given the climate, they grow grapes out in that part of China) before it was time to change rental cars. 

On the road again somewhere west of Zhangye.

A less-visited part of the Great Wall, Jiayuguan

The climate in north-west China is suited to grape production.

BBQ lamb’s brain, still in the skull, Jiayuguan (I think).

Fortuitously, we scored another rental relocation gig the very next day moving a much more manageable 4-seater about 400km west to Dunhuang, China’s famous desert oasis town. Our target was Urumqi, Xinjiang (and possibly beyond), but after a few days in Dunhuang and no sign of further gigs on the rental company website, we decided to skip the train and fly there (there were no fast trains that far west at the time).  

On the main road into Dunhuang, northwest Gansu province.

View from our Dunhuang guesthouse parking lot.

These sand dunes are right on the edge of town. You can just park and walk into the desert.

Arty sunset pic. 

This picture is a metaphor for something. Just not sure what.

Is that a mirage in the distance?

Alternatively, you can pay 20 bucks for the Chinese theme park version of the desert experience. 

Which includes a camel ride.

Nan at “basecamp” preparing for her expedition.

Riding into the sunset.

Moonrise. I’ve always thought sunrises are overrated.

It’s not very often you see an oriental pagoda in the middle of a desert.

Once in Urumqi, my mother-in-law put us in contact with some distant relatives (of Chinese Han ethnicity), who naturally then arranged for an entire lamb to be butchered in our honour:

We ate every bit of this lamb. It took several days. 

Best lamb skewers I’ve ever tasted.

Downtown Urumqi, where the Middle East meets The Orient.

Once the lamb was finished and we’d seen the sights (and tanks) of Urumqi, we took a quick trip down to Turpan, another oasis town which is famous for grapes, being really hot, and being near an area that is 150m below sea level. 

Grapes literally growing in the street, Turpan.

Grape Alley, Turpan.

Rest stop on the highway between Turpan and Urumqi.

My favourite Xinjiang food, “kaobaozi” (baked lamb and onion buns)

After Turpan and some more time spent eating in Urumqi, we decided to head further west towards Khazakstan and hopefully, Kashgar. Still having no luck with the rental car relocations, we decided to take buses rather than fly again, so that we could “smell the roses”. This turned out to be a bad decision, as once you get out of Urumqi and Turpan, it’s very hard to find places that are allowed to host foreign guests in Xinjiang province. Despite the plethora of mid-range choices available to Chinese tourists, I had to settle for that one, overpriced government hotel in town. Travelling with a Chinese wife, this was frustrating for both of us, and after a few nights of this, we resorted to Nan booking the room and then sneaking me in later on. 

After a few days of bus hopping through fairly unremarkable mid-size towns, we made it out to the Khazakstan border region, which was probably the highlight of the trip. There we stumbled upon the crystal clear (but freezing) Lake Sayram (in Chinese “Sailimuhu”), right beside the highway and still (in summer 2014) free to visit. We were so impressed that we decided to stay a few days in a Khazak homestay yurt. We hired a local driver and went in search of more “off the beaten path” Lake Sayrams, but alas, found that they had dried up long ago. 

Lake Sayram, Xinjiang, near Yili.

I’d never seen water this clear in China before.

Putting on a brave face - the water was about 15 degrees!

Semi-wild horses in the hills near our yurt.

With our Uyghur driver - notice our eyes are the same colour!

Our home for two nights.

Lake views! This is probably a resort nowadays...

Chinese progress keeps marching westwards.

After a camel, how hard can a horse ride be?

Smelling the roses, metaphorically.

After two nights in a semi-permanent tent, we were ready for a hot shower and were glad to finally find a decent range of accommodation options in Ili (Yili), the capital of the Khazak autonomous prefecture. From there, it was a short bus ride to the nearest Khazakstan border post at Horgos, so we decided to set out on our next “curiosity mission”. The town itself was nothing to write home about, but it was interesting to see all the menus and shop signs in three languages (Uyghur, Chinese and Russian), and a sizeable minority of Caucasians going about their business in the streets. There was no way to get a Khazakstan visa at the border, but thankfully, the authorities had set up a special “border zone” experience that allowed Chinese citizens to cross the border on foot and buy Khazakstan products without exiting Chinese immigration. Once on the other side, we grabbed some lunch in a giant tent set up for Chinese tourists where they served up Soviet comfort food and mugs of Khazakstan beer. The waitress approached our table and spoke at me in Russian. We weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.

Snow-capped mountains in July! (somewhere in western Xinjiang - not near the border, but I just thought it was a cool photo).

This used to be the border between the USSR and China.

Donkeys and carts were still a thing in 2014 in Horgos.

All the menus were in Uyghur, Chinese and Russian. And English if you got lucky.

Standing on Khazakstan soil - 22nd July 2014

Looking back into China from Khazakstan.

The bread was a nice change from noodles. 

After a few more days in Yili contemplating our options - another “off the beaten track” mission into the highlands to the east, or continuing further west towards Kashgar, we realised we didn’t really have time for either. My upcoming visa run to Australia was looming, and we needed to get back to Beijing. Kashgar would have to wait for another trip. 

After one too many long bus rides, we told ourselves we’d go back to Xinjiang once they had a high-speed rail network. Funnily enough, the Lanzhou-Urumqi high-speed rail link opened later that year, and the Southern Xinjiang Railway from Turpan to Kashgar has since been upgraded to make travel times tolerable. Maybe, once I’m able to get back into China, it’s time for another trip out west.