Part II: San Pedro, Ambergris Caye
Maybe I should have started with this part, but when I pulled up my photos for Part I, the beerita was the first on the roll and I just went with it.
Today let's talk about where we were for our 9 magical Spring Break days!
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| http://www.belizefishfinder.com/central-america-map.jpg |
Ted and I left our house in Ohio around 4am on Saturday, March 22nd and by noon we were in Belize City, Belize (with a time change of 2 hours). From Belize City we took a water taxi to San Pedro on Ambergris Caye (the city that Madonna dreamt of in
La Isla Bonita).
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| 1.5 hour water taxi ride |
San Pedro is perhaps not quite as
bonita as it used to be, but it still has some charm. The roads were only recently paved, and the town is now overrun by golf cards and Toyota Previas (a blast from my past). You can still easily get around on foot, as the town is very small, but the exhaust fumes in the air got to me after awhile.
(Of course I timed all my camera clicks so that no cars were in the pictures. I was trained by my mother in the art of setting up a photo.)
The town is very colorful with many Spanish Colonial style buildings.
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| http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/central-america/belize/map_of_belize.jpg |
We spent the first half of our vacation 6 miles north of San Pedro, in a 'villa' that we rented through
vrbo.com (Shout out to our friend, Kyle, for finding the place and making the reservation!):
There were 6 of us in this 3-bedroom, 4-bathroom villa. There was plenty of space for everyone, though we spent most of our time together on the porch, enjoying the warm breeze.
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| Ted and I ended up in the 'pelican bedroom.' All the artwork had to do with pelicans. |
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| The saltwater pool was a nice touch. I'm pretty sure it was filled with ocean water... |
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| …since the ocean was right there and all. This was our backyard. |
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| More backyard. |
Nearby there was a small grocery store. Emphasis on
small, even though the name implied that it was big.
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| It is not grande. |
On Wednesday morning, we hopped back on the water taxi to ride back to the mainland. I'll do another post about the second half of our trip in a couple days.
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| I guess they like things 'grande' around here. |
So, what did your friends think of the diving in Ambergris? Richard and I went years ago (when there were no paved streets) and we stayed on the other side of this channel that cuts the island in half, so you had to take a water taxi into town to get to the other side of the channel. We stayed in a really BAD all-inclusive hotel. We could hardly eat the food, and the hotel smelled like sewer gas. The reef runs parallel to the Caye - and the diving is on the outside of the reef, so they had cut a passage through the reef so the boats could get to the outside. All of the boats lined up (in very rough water) until it was their turn to gun it and get through the reef. I remember getting sea sick on several different days while we waited to get through the reef. Needless to say - this was not my favorite vacation. San Pedro itself is charming, the restaurants were incredible - and it certainly has cleaned up nicely since we have visited.
ReplyDeleteI think they liked it, though not as well as some other places they've been to in the past. I know one of our friends got really seasick the first day - they went out on a private boat just off the coast. I don't know all the details, but they shared some videos that looked like deep coral 'canals'. Sounds like we were pretty lucky to stay where we did - we had a great experience with the VRBO.
DeleteThere was a restaurant I should have recommended, called Capricorn. It was probably my all-time favorite dining experience. It was an old house on the ocean with a big front porch. We didn't have reservations (we walked down the beach to the restaurant), so we sat at the small outside bar to see how much food would be left and to see if they could serve us. As we sat at this bar and drank wonderful drinks, the owner of the restaurant started bringing us out appetizers "on the house". After 2 hours, she came out and told us she could seat us. We didn't have the nerve to tell her we were no longer hungry. We sat at a table out on the front porch, ate fresh fish, the fireflies came out and lit up the sky over the moonlit ocean. It was just magical.
ReplyDeleteShe was expanding on the old house and had built a couple of cabanas and was setting it up as a B&B. Here's her website. Looks like she has added on even more: http://www.capricornresort.net/