Carnival Cruise - Belize
On Tues. the Glory stopped in Belize for the day. There was no set plan that morning, I just wanted to explore and see what the city was like and find out more about it. First things first, we had to get off the ship. We waited in line for a tender that would take us the 5 miles to the port. This can take some time when you have 3,500 passengers plus various crew all wanting to get off, but eventually we got to the port.
The port was a dizzying array of all kinds of shops trying to sell us various memorabilia to drag home. Of course, we have no room for any of this stuff at home, so shopping was not my goal - I wanted to see houses and people and stuff. So we make it to the gates that let us out of this tourist shopping mecca and what do we find? The gate is literally blocked by dozens of Belizians who are trying to sell us more stuff, tours... we couldn't walk anywhere without all of them following us. It was a little weird having people follow us. Many of the women wanted to braid Kirsten's hair (yeah, where will they be when I have to pull all of the beads and junk out of her hair, huh?) So we kept telling them no. Finally, Dave said, "You know they are not going to leave us alone." So we agreed to let Willard drive us around Belize city in his van.
Willard was a nice man who had somewhat of a British accent. This makes sense since Belize (formally called British Honduras) was a British colony from 1862 to 1981. He showed us the Governors house and other colonial era buildings around Belize City. He also explained that all the bricks used in the foundations of those colonial buildings arrived in Belize as ballast from the ships that had come to take the mahogany harvested here back to England. Belize got the bricks, England got the mahogany.
Old Belize was our next stop. There Mark finally stopped whining since we let him go down the zip line. It was really high and really long. Mark says it was fun - but as I am not so much into heights, I wasn't going to join him. They had a man-made beach there but after the beautiful beach on Isle de' Pasion, it looked just so-so. I think you have to venture out of Belize City to see the really nice beaches.
We drove past St John's Cathedral (oldest church in Belize - built in 1812 out of those bricks again!), the Lighthouse monument at Fort George Point (donated to Belize by Baron Bliss of Portugal - he is entombed there) and the only manual swing bridge that is still in use today.
But along with the historical sights we also got to see some of the less than touristy spots. The poverty in Belize City was readily apparent by the ramshackle housing, open sewerage systems and number of people begging in the streets. One cute little boy came up for me and asked for a donation. I purposely carried no money with me because I was afraid it would get stolen, but I really wished I had something for him. Willard said it was a shame that whenever something nice was put in the city like benches or whatever, it always seemed to get stolen. He also noted that large sums of money had been given to Belize, but somehow, none of that ever seemed to be used to make the city better.
The traffic was terrible in the city - the streets were narrow and there didn't seem to be any traffic rules except "he who gets there first, goes". There were many people on bikes and we even saw one women on a bike with a child balanced on the crossbar. That wouldn't be so unusual except that the child looked to be no more that two years old. That certainly wouldn't be legal in the US - at least not without a child seat, safety harness, helmet, knee and elbow pads...but, I digress. There are exactly three traffic lights in the city which Willard explained didn't always work.
After our ride was over we spent a half hour or so talking to a former Californian who has made Belize his home. He also lamented how poorly things are run in the country. We could have spent even longer talking, but we had, by this time, bored the kids to tears so by 1:00 pm we were taking a tender back to the ship.
Oh yeah, I did buy a couple of touristy things in the shops at the port in Belize, but really, they were small! And you have to have something to remember the trip by, don't you?