Two weeks into my new gig here in Belize, and we’ve already had
our first 3-day weekend. We took
advantage of the extra day to get out of Belmopan for our first opportunity to
explore what lies beyond our little town.
Our friends from Portland, Mike and Deb, were wrapping up a vacation in
Guatemala by visiting San Pedro, Belize for a couple days, and so we headed out
to meet up with them. San Pedro is on
Ambergris Caye, the largest of the Belize cayes, and while it is reachable via
a drive to Belize City and a water taxi from there, we opted to fly in order to
save time and get more time at the beach.
Fun fact! Belmopan DOES
have an airport… or, more accurately, a small air strip and a 10x10 shed that
serves as the check-in/waiting room. And
we did have a bit of a wait. Our flight
was scheduled to leave around 9am Saturday morning, but the humidity tends to
make mornings here very hazy, so we had to wait about an hour for it to burn
off enough to allow our 6-person plane – YES, 6 person plane – to land.
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| The Belmopan "airport" |
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| Le plane! Le plane! |
Once we were up in the air, it was a 20-minute flight to Belize
City and then another 20-minute jump to San Pedro. The teeny tiny plane afforded us some awesome
views of the jungle around Belmopan and the gorgeous coastal waters as we
neared San Pedro. Worth the cost of the
flight itself!
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| On board Tropic Air - kind of like Belize's version of Uber. |
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| Looking over the jungle on our way out of Belmopan... |
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| ...and over the cayes as we near San Pedro. |
Once in San Pedro, we met up Mike and Deb and found a good spot
for a cocktail (I mean, it was almost lunchtime, after all) and a bite to
eat. We also walked around little San
Pedro town a bit. It is one of the
biggest tourist towns in Belize, and there was no shortage of hostels and
hotels, bars, and restaurants to cater to everyone. The majority of the locals and visitors get
around town on golf carts, which definitely gives the town a distinctive
feel. Our hotel room had a distinctive
feel as well, since in addition to an awesome view of the waterfront, we also
overlooked the beachfront cemetery next door.
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| Rush hour in San Pedro. |
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| Golf cart parking along the main drag in San Pedro. |
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| Day drinking with Mike and Deb. |
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| Our room with a view. |
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| Our room provided spectacular views of the sunrise... |
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| ...as well as spectacular views of the cemetery. |
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| Not all of the cemetery residents were of the human variety. |
The biggest tourist draws are scuba and snorkeling, and we did a
half-day trip to do some snorkeling ourselves.
The second longest barrier reef in the world (after the Great Barrier
Reef) lies along the Belize coast, and the snorkeling was amazing! The water was incredibly clear, and we saw all
manner of tropical fish, eel, barracuda, a hawksbill sea turtle… even nurse
sharks and stingrays. It was probably
the best snorkeling I’ve ever experienced.
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| I don't have any photos of our snorkeling trip... but I do have this one of Andrew climbing a coconut tree. |
Ambergris Caye is very long in the north-to-south direction, but
San Pedro is only about 3 blocks wide, so we walked west to the lagoon side of
the caye to take in the incredible sunset on our last night there.
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| There's something magical about tropical sunsets. |
After a lovely long weekend at the beach, we boarded a (slightly
larger) 12-passenger plane back to our new jungle home. But more adventures await! Another perk of this job… we observe all the
Belize AND US national holidays, which means there will be many more 3-day
weekends to come.
