Long and winding road to Jaguar paw now dilapidated
It is a road that thousands of tourists travel every year to go cave tubing at the Caves Branch, but the road is rapidly deteriorating and stakeholders are up in arms. The dilapidated road is not only used for the tourism industry, but also by the nearby community of Franks Eddy. For Vitalino Reyes, the owner of cavetubing.bz, called on our newsroom today to say that in fifteen years, he has never seen the road in such a deplorable state, which is affecting business at a t time when the economy is weak.
Vitalino Reyes, Cavetubing.bz
“The road is so bad right now that all the tourists, not just from my company, but others as well. They complain about the roads and we usually have good ratings on trip advisor and lately there is three negative reviews not about my company but about the roads.”
Andrea Polanco
“So how long has the road been like this?”
Vitalino Reyes
Vitalino Reyes
“This road has been for like one yea r and a half like this and the paving for this road is actually very new but as soon as the rain started to come it started to be eroded. It looks like nobody cares so everybody comes here to get sand gravel from the river from the river, tour companies come here big companies yuh know come here for cave tubing, this is the top number one adventure in the world so it’s sad to see that they’re not doing anything.”
Andrea Polanco
“So what has the traffic been like at the back here, the street is normally busy?”
Vitalino Reyes
“Normally is busy especially on a cruise ship day like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, it would be very busy. This is the top number one adventure so everyday we would have traffic in this area here.”
Andrea Polanco
“And the rainy season is about to start so you expect it to get worst?”
Vitalino Reyes
“Right because of the rain, this will be washed away. Whatever is bad right now will be completely worst eroded once the rainy season starts which is very close.”
Andrea Polanco
“So you believe if the road isn’t fixed do you believe it will affect business for all the people who operate along this highway?”
Vitalino Reyes
“Yes all the business and not only the business but the vans will be very damaged. Sometimes we are out of time so we have to go very fast and especially small cars have to go very slow the fastest you can go is five and ten miles and it’s still touching the bottoms.”
Reyes says he will contact businesses and associations that utilize the road, to attempt to improve the infrastructure.
what about the road towards Caracol, the Mountain Pine Ridge is in critical condition and it does not seem that anyone is caring about it. The Mountain Pine Ridge is one of the major attraction in the belize next to San Pedro, but the BTB is not paying much attention to this area.
Many guest prefer to to go to Tikal instead of Caracol to avoid the bompy road, why take our business to another country when if the road was in better condition all that money will stay here in Belize.
Plus in addition, Jaguar paw mostly caters to cruise tourism of which belize does not benefit more, we shoudl concentrate on overnigh tourist as they are the ones that spend more money.
Some dirt roads in other parts of the country are way smoother than this particular road heading to The cave Branch (Nohoch Cheen) park. One of the worst roads heading to a very much accessed park. As many as a couple of thousand persons could visit this park in one single day and have of the visitors complain about the condition of the road! The Government should do something about this, very soon, before it is too late. Or maybe some park fees should be spent fixing the condition of the road? or maybe the visitors should stop park fees since the roads are in deplorable condition. Please government personnel lots of belizeans make a living of that area.