Belize to Guatemala, heading due south?
 

I'm going to try to cross from El Ceibo(approximately lateral from Palenque)
It's a recently open crossing that someone suggested I try out as he wants to take a 4x4 group through, apparently all dirt and questionable road(should be fun:), and since most people going a similar way go through Frontera Corrazal it will be a bit different) but I may be able to make it all the way to Belize. If I do that, I would prefer to head south again, is there any way to cross from southern Belize into Guatemala and be closer to Honduras that way?

My whole route has pretty much been winging it, I had a paper map that covered USA-Honduras but I didn't look at any planned routes and just kinda followed the gulf around, I don't want to dead end and then back track in southern Belize if I can avoid it.

The El Ceibo border is all paved road , from Palenque to Flores/Tikal .
The only way you can cross from the southern part of Belize to Guatemala is by boat : you can put your bike on a boat from Punta Gorda (Belize) to Puerto Barrios (Guatemala) .

Hmm. Well scratch that off my list then.:thumbdown:
:confused1:
I was really looking forward to it too, was told it was all dirt.

Any recommendations on more interesting roads then? I'm coming down from Merida, Mx now on a CX500, I've got enduro tires, about 400km worth of fuel capacity, bit heavy, but I really want to get off the pavement again.

All the "official" borders between Mexico and Guatemala are paved !
There are really nice dirt roads in the border area , on both sides . Selva Lacandona on the mexican side and Transversal del Norte route on the guatemalan side .

Hmm. Does the Transversal del Norte head approximately south, or towards Honduras?

The Transversal del Norte starts pretty close to the Mexican border (La Mesilla) and crosses the whole country until 1 h north of Rio Dulce . From Rio Dulce you are 2 h away from Honduras .

Well I guess I'll go south from Palenque then instead of going down the eastern side through belize. Good thing I read your message today, heading off in about an hour! :funmeteryes:


How does one go about finding it?
I can't seem to find it on google maps anywhere.

I did find one mention of it in a thread on some forum I found through google.

"Microbuses to El Estor departs every hour from the center of Rio Dulce at the El Estor junction. In May 2010 about half the road to El Estor was paved and some parts newly paved with more pavingwork going on. The rest of the road were gravel in passable condition. But the conditions keeps changing depending on the weather situation. With some waiting time at the constructionsites and to let on and off passengers the microbus ride from Rio Dulce to El Estor took about two hours.

Regarding the Transversal del norte road there were constructionwork going on along most part of the road between Playa Grande and Highway # 5 and between Fray and Raxruja. Along 9N between HueHue and San Juan Ixcoy the bus had to wait more than an hour at one of the construction sites."


Doesn't sound like good news if there is construction happening! I hope they haven't paved too much, I saw other pages for a GS challenge on the same route that are fairly recent, so it must be some gravel, though they didn't include coordinates or any helpful info.

A masochist......,but with reservations ? Why would you seek out crappy roads , :confused1: then shrink from a bit of construction zone. Doesnt that add to the challenge ? You will never be the ¨ first ¨¨ to see any of the things along those roads, the builders took that prize.
You can sneek into Guatemala ILLEGALLY from Mex 307 just around the hamlet of Nuevo Orizaba , in the NON river east to west segment of that highway.From there you can get to Playa Grande. But then you have all the fun and problems of your lack of documentation if you try to leave for Honduras. Again, why would you give yourself all those problems, likely get a hefty fine or thrown out.