Belize City, Belize (1//4/2007)

From: Sherman Rootberg (BiggiRoot)

Date: Jan 4, 2007 9:35 PM

Subject: Thursday, January 04, 2007

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Belize City, Belize

This used to be British Honduras. After gaining their independence the British military was here for a number of years to see that other countries did not try to take it over. At that time it was known as a cheap place to go for fishing and scuba diving. The few hotels were not much, at best. The people worse. Very nasty to tourists, especially US citizens. They didn’t need them. They were making good money off the British soldiers. Then the day came when the soldiers left and so did the economy, right with them. Suddenly they became very friendly. Especially toward the US. The US provides most of the tourists and it is a good place for US citizens to go fishing and diving. There are plenty of good facilities, equipment, the second largest reef on the planet and everyone speaks English as a first language. It is always hot and humid here.

The major problem with Belize as a cruise ship stop is the pier. There is none and there most likely never will be. The ocean is very shallow here. Ships stop about 20 miles out to sea and even there you see the bottom being stirred up by the ship propellers. When we used to come here, years ago, any small boat that could float was a tender. As soon as a cruise ship was sighted everyone grabbed their boat and raced out to pick up the cruise passengers. At one time everything afloat was powered by outboards. A small boat might have one and huge ones up to four. I had been told the reason being, there was a Yamaha outboard assembly plant near by. Now these tenders are much more uniform. They run mostly 40 to 50 feet and are manufactured to be passenger haulers. They could have outboards or gas or diesel inboards. The outboards are the fastest. They are all very fast for boats of their size and the long trip to shore seems much quicker. All are operated by commercial operators.

There isn’t very much to see or do ashore. No beaches are close by and require a long cab ride. The city is only about 40 years old and has no real points of interest. About an hours ride away is a nice pyramid but the roads leading to it were only one lane for two directions for about 5 miles and very rough to say the least. Again, there has got to be a real shortage of cruise ports. There were people waiting in line to talk to the hawkers that would normally chase them to sell tours.

Up until a couple of years ago there was nothing ashore at the dock area period. There were a couple of trailers with expensive art objects but none of the usual tourist stuff. Not even tee shirts. Now there is an area of about five or six blocks long, at the water front, with all of the usual tourist stuff. I think I saw six International House of Diamonds stores. We did find one big bargain. There was a drug store selling prescription drugs over the counter. They had most anything you could think of and the prices were maybe one tenth what we pay at home. No prescription required and no tax. There was also a perfume store with better prices then I have seen in many years.

We tendered over very early at about 10:30 or 11:00 this morning. We walked around the water front looking at all the new stores. No one was hawking anything in a nasty manner as is prevalent in most places. We bought a few items. For those who don’t know Bobbi, just a few means less then 100. Then we climbed back aboard a tender just in time for it to start pouring. I was going to get a good photo for today’s blog but hightailed it to a tender when the sky started to turn black. So, sorry but you will have to do with a fair one from the return tender.