A little excitement

Most of our trip to Belize was pretty low-key. See a few ruins, sweat it up in the jungle, hit the beach, hate the beer, usual stuff. The closest thing to excitement we had was on the last day, but it started on the first day.

Remember I wrote about the free lunch we got at the car rental place. This almost made up for the rental car we got. It was a Chevy tracker well past it's due date, more because of the mileage than the age. As soon as we picked it up, we noticed a funny noise coming out of the rear end, a few missing trim pieces, a side-view mirror that rattled so much as to be useless (which became less of an issue half way through our trip when it rattled right off). But we planned to drive on crappy roads, so you tend to worry less about that stuff: if they gave us a shiny, new car, we would be worried about any little damage we might do and what I would cost us, so this thing seemed to suit our needs. Four inflated tires and a spare, 4 wheel drive, air con that works to get us past hyperthermia after jungle hikes, fluids topped up, and no sign of overheating. Everything else was just frosting.

After a few days up in the jungle, driving on sketchy roads, it became apparent that the noise from the rear end was getting no better, and might have been getting worse. Nayer, our passenger from Lower Dover to Hopkins, agreed with me when I described the noise as the "alien" sound from the movie Contact. Clearly rhythmic, and coinciding with the wheel speed. My 20 years of driving cheap, crappy cars had me diagnosing it as likely a worn wheel bearing, or maybe a dry or worn rear differential.

Coincidently, in Hopkins, we overheard another tourist arguing with their rental car agency as they had cracked the head on their rental truck. The agency was saying they should have pulled over as soon as it overheated and called instead of continuing to drive, and then it might have been a minor repair instead of a new head. the agency wanted to tourist to pay for the head replacement. So we thought we had better call our rental agency and make sure they know about the blown wheel bearing - just in case.

Our rental guy seemed completely unconcerned. -yeah, that truck is noisy, nothing to worry about , see you next week!

So we did what we were told, and didn't worry about it. I guess you know where this is going.

The day of our departure was a beautiful sunny morning, if a little windy. We decided to spend a couple of hours sitting on the beach, putting the last layer of melanoma on before heading back to Belize City and rainy Vancouver. Our flight was at
5:00, and we were 2-1/2 hours away at a leisurely pace. we packed up at noon, and started heading north.

Ten minutes out of Hopkins, something went wrong in the rear wheel. The noise quickly went from the rhythmic thrumming to the sound of various bits of metal trying to kill each other. I pulled over and looked at the back wheel: the brake drum was smoking hot, and there was grease/oil sprayed all over the inside of the wheel. It seemed to me that the wheel bearing had failed, taking the seal with it, and dumping rear end lubricant and cooked wheel bearing grease into the drum. It now seemed likely to me that either the wheel would fall off, or the combination of heat and oil would cause the wheel to ignite; both very bad things.

We happened to be near a small village called Sweet Grass: Small in that there was a single pay phone outside of the single police station, across the street from the single Chinese Store. We parked at the police station, assuming I could ask them if there was a taxi or bus that could take us to Belize. The police station was open, the police radio and books and phone
and everything were there, but there were no actual police. Front and back door wide open. Small town. I thought about picking up the radio and calling in an APB, but I had other things to deal with.
We called out rental guy, and told him that the truck was rolling, but there was no way we were getting to Belize City.  in his truck.

He said - no problem, I will send my guy down there right away.

I said - problem, if you send your guy down here now, he won't be here until 3:00, and if we are both here at 3:00, we won't be where we need to be: at Belize City Airport meeting you to drop off the car.

He said - You leave today?

I said -uh, yeah, that is why we were meeting you at the airport in two hours, remember?

This seems to stump him. For only a few seconds. -You just drive the car to Belize City then, it'll be Ok. We'll see you at the airport.

I expressed my doubt, but given few other options, we hopped in and headed north. It was about 10 minutes later when approaching one of Belize's ubiquitous highway speed humps that I noticed the brake pedal go to the floor. It took a few pumps to get braking.

Then it became clear to me: it wasn't the wheel bearing or rear end at all, it was the rear brakes! It had been brake parts inside the drum that had been rubbing, making the thrumming noise, not the wheel bearing. It wasn't getting smelly or pulling the car to the right because there was no brake lining on the shoes. This might even explain why we had the adventure up at Nim Li Punit with the sliding parking lot: we had been operating with no rear brakes!

It seemed now that now broken bits were bouncing about inside the brake drum, the brake cylinder had failed, and we were blowing brake fluid into the drum. Checking under the hood, the Master Cylinder was down fluid, confirming the brake-
pedal-to-the-floor observation. Clearly, we had a limited number of braking events left before the whole thing stopped stopping. We were not going to drive for two hours at highway speeds in an automatic transmission car with a smoking back wheel and no brakes! It just wasn't on.

Luckily, we had been peripheral to a conversation earlier in the week when Nayer had been trying to arrange her travel back to Belize International, and we knew he next major city ahead had an airstrip with regular flights to Belize City.

So, sounding like we were dragging a drum set behind the car, emanating heat from the rear wheel, and me using the crappy auto box transmission to reduce the need to brake, we limped in to Dangriga airstrip. They had a flight leaving in 10 minutes to Belize international, with seats available for $75 each.

Tig called our car rental guy, and actually only got our car rental guy's guy. Apparently, our guy was now "out of the country". Regardless, we told our guy's guy where his car was, and asked if he wanted the keys brought to Belize City or
left there. Then he asked Tig if we had filled the gas tank.

Tig, now hotter than our back brakes, very politely told him that we had not, and that he was going to have to eat that $75, considering the money we were spending on tickets to get back to Belize City.

Literally 10 minutes after pulling into the airport parking lot, we were asking off in a Cessna Caravan for the 15-minute flight to Belize City. This is how Led Zeppelin used to travel...

So, really, for an extra $75, We got to replace a 2 hour drive with a 15 minute flight in a small plane over some of the most scenic coast in Belize, including passing right over the lagoon where we had gone to spot Manatee. I guess for something going wrong, it all worked out pretty well.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't thank Nayer... It was being around her that led us to the simple solution to a problem that cropped up a few days after she had flow home.