Let me begin by giving you a little bit of background information. Belize as a country is a unique crossroads between the Caribbean and Central America. When looking at a map, the mainland area in Central America is immediately apparent. If you look closer, however, you'll notice that there are lots of little islands coming off the coast connecting Belize with the Caribbean. As a result, these 2 distinct cultures are blended throughout the whole nation, though the Caribbean side of that culture is particularly emphasized on the islands, just as the Central American/Latino culture sees more emphasis on the mainland. Nonetheless, both are pretty prevalent all over along with some other ethnic groups including the sizable Dutch Mennonite population, the Mayan native tribal population, and even a smattering of European holdovers from the British colonial period. Of the islands that are part of Belize, known as Cayes (pronounced "keys" like the similar islands off of Florida's coast), two in particular have noteworthy populations: Caye Caulker and Ambergris Caye. San Pedro is one of the largest towns in Belize and is located on Ambergris Caye. It is a major tourist location and a completely different side of Belize. While I wouldn't say that everyone in San Pedro is rolling in cash, there is definitely much less poverty than out here in the Cayo district where I live and work. The tourism industry is thriving in San Pedro and bringing in lots of revenue for those living there and it's not hard to see why: Ambergris Caye is one of the most gorgeous places I've ever been and there's lots to do! I'm not going to be able to detail everything, but I'll try to give you the best highlights of my weekend there:
Our journey to San Pedro began...
...on this 2-hour express bus from San Ignacio to Belize City. From the bus terminal...
...we all crowded into a couple of taxis that took us to...
...the seaport! We bought our water taxi tickets and...
...loaded on the boat for a 90-minute ride to Ambergris Caye! On the boat...
...Pete sat next to his clone! Unfortunately, the clone never looked this way when I tried to get a picture, but they he, like Pete, was wearing very similar shades and had the exact same amount of facial stubbery, besides the white shirt, shorts, and hair apparent in this picture. Megan and I dubbed them "Pete and RePete." :) Anyway, we finally arrived in San Pedro and peered across the piers:
Then, we walked down the boat dock to the shore, where the first building we saw was...
...The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! Like the Santa Elena Branch, the San Pedro Branch has converted another building into a chapel until they can get a real chapel some day. More about this building and some experiences had there later on in this post. :) For now, let's continue our journey. After walking ashore...
...we began the gorgeous 15-minute walk down the beach to the Corona Del Mar Hotel where we had a reservation. By the way, can you find the iguana?
We had selected the Corona Del Mar hotel because it was an affordable choice that didn't seem like a grungy hole in the wall. We expected some standard run-of-the mill medium-low-end hotel accommodations. Sure enough, the hotel was pretty standard--a lot like a Motel 6 in the U.S., just on a beautiful beach! However, we were in for the biggest surprise of the entire trip when we went to check in and the staff told us that due to the size of our group, it was easiest just to put us up in the hotel's Penthouse at the very top without charging us the usual additional costs of that upgrade. So, let me introduce you in picture format to the amazing Corona Del Mar Penthouse:
Here is the Penthouse, sitting at the very top of the hotel. I was the last of the 11 members of our team who went to enter it and consequently got to feel my anticipation rise as I heard 10 consecutive exclamations of "Oh my Gosh!" before entering for myself and saying the same thing.
Here is the main living area, bar, and kitchen.
Same, viewed from the other direction.
Bedroom #1 had this cute little towel puppy.
Meanwhile, the other had these swans. Here's Megan Swan with swans!
Nice kitchen
Nice Bathrooms (including toilet paper folded into roses)
Towel ducks in the bathtubs
Decorative pottery on the coffee table
View of the pool and the beach from the living room window
Anyway, I could go on but you get the point. We paid US$25 per night per person to stay there, as that was the original price of the rooms we thought we'd be getting, but got much better! Now, I've stayed in some fancy Marriott suites in my day, and this was very similar to those, but how many of those have you seen with a price point like that? (Of course, as mentioned earlier, I actually didn't pay at all since my amazing team members paid for me as a birthday gift!) Needless to say, we were all super excited about our hotel arrangement. I should actually note that we did also still require one smaller room and we 3 men stayed in that smaller normal room at night, but we spent any other time at the hotel with the girls of the group in the Penthouse! :) So, now that I've detailed the journey to San Pedro and our fantastic hotel arrangement, let me introduce you to some of the rest of my San Pedro adventure. I note here that although up to this point I was taking pictures like a fiend, the rest of the weekend I took far fewer pictures than I usually do. I did take a few, but many more are on other people's cameras and I'll have to get them later. Anyway, I'm going to break with the narrative style now and just put pictures up with captions to finish detailing Friday:
The docks are so photogenic! You practically can't go wrong taking pictures at the beach. Amazing!
Pete and Jake just chillin'.
The team, taking a swim in the Atlantic! (Don't worry, I joined them too!)
Sarah and Emily in the pool.
Jake and I with a palm tree.
Emily, Rin, and MacKenzie work on cooking up...
...a delicious spaghetti birthday dinner with garlic bread and watermelon!
I wish I didn't look so creepy in this picture.
By the way, aren't those enormous rum goblets awesome? Obviously, we only filled them with water! :)
So, that was my fantastic Friday birthday--travels, a sweet penthouse, swimming, chilling out, enjoying scenery, and then a birthday dinner! A major festival was going on in San Pedro this last weekend (basically like the Ms. Central America Pageant), largely sponsored by Heineken beer, so we decided it was best to stay in the penthouse and hang out together at night rather than be outside among all the drunk partiers from all over Central America. So, after dinner I taught the team one of my favorite games--the Progressive Pictionary game--and we had an absolute blast! We also ate homemade Oreo cake-batter cookies instead of a cake since I love them just as much and nobody could find any birthday candles anyway! :)
So, onto Saturday:
Most of the team went Scuba diving or snorkeling on Saturday, but Katie and I, for reasons of frugality to put it softly, refrained and stayed back on the island and hung out together all day. Rather than mere pictures, I can show you a much more vivid detailing of our day as we created a music video together (one of may favorite past-times) at each of the various locations across the island that we explored! See for yourself:
As you can probably tell, it was a particularly enjoyable day! :) Let me share a few other pictures from Saturday:
Can you find the lion fish?
Can you find the sea horse?
One of the locals told us that this is the most photographed tree on the island, and I believe it! I also got to know this tree pretty well as I climbed it to the top to try picking a coconut, but there were no good or ripe ones left. I climbed it in local fashion, where you hug the tree and then push away with your feet to kind of walk-shimmy up the tree. They have absolutely no hand or footholds, so they are rather hard to climb! One local lady walked by as I was climbing and said, "that man is a true Belizean!" That was pretty awesome! :) Katie got a picture of me at the top, but I haven't gotten it from her camera yet. I'll post it once I do!
This building was perfect for Katie as she is a dual citizen of the US and Canada and is currently in Belize--a perfect set of 3 flags, not to mention a funny looking scuba tiki!
Can you find the crab?
On Sunday we attended Church in the San Pedro branch, in the little building we saw when we first got off the dock on Friday. It was a wonderful experience! The ward is bilingual, so one of the missionaries (who is also a counselor in the branch presidency) translated all of the testimonies either from English to Spanish or vice versa depending on the speaker. It was a smaller branch than either Santa Elena or San Ignacio, but everyone there still carried that marvelous spirit of faith and conversion with them. The missionaries there are truly the glue holding things together and often run the whole show on Sunday. They didn't have a teacher for the youth Sunday School class that week so I volunteered and taught a wonderful lesson on the conversion of Paul to 4 young women and 1 young man. They were so attentive and interested and it was an absolute delight to teach them! Sunday School was followed by a wonderful Elder's Quorum discussion on one of Pres. Monson's talks from this last conference. There were 9 men there, including the missionaries, Jake, and myself, but that little quorum had one of the most relevant, on-track, uplifting discussions I've ever had in a priesthood quorum. One of the men shared how when he joined the Church he realized that his business, which sold Alcohol, needed to change. He himself had quit drinking to get baptized, but realized that if God didn't want him to drink, he shouldn't "peddle that poison to others", to use his own words. He gave up his business entirely on faith and switched to selling arts and crafts items. He hasn't necessarily done as well since, but has always gotten by and been provided for and is much happier because of the choice he made. Overall, the San Pedro Branch may have been one of the most uplifting Church experiences of my life.
The rest of my Sunday was mainly travel. Some of the team would be using one additional vacation day the next day, but some of us had projects we couldn't wait on to get back to. So, a few of us packed up a couple hours after Church and began the long journey back to San Ignacio, arriving there in the evening. It was hard to leave that paradise, despite my deep love for the Cayo district on the mainland, and I definitely could enjoy returning some day! Meanwhile, this is Kenneth Kenworthy signing off from this detailed report on my brief by fantastic visit to that wonderful piece of heaven we mortals have borrowed and named San Pedro.
P.S. I will write about my Monday work tomorrow night. Lots of great stuff with the Succotz project today!
I can't even describe how happy I am that you had such a good birthday. :D what a blessing to be with such generous team mates!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteSan Pedro sounds like a piece of Heaven on earth. The island of Rotan, off the coast of Honduras was very much the same. The people were wonderful and I find it hard to describe such beauty. The Caymens were similar.
Though it sounds exciting, I personally didn't live on Grand Cayman. My parents lived there. Your grandpa was a dive master at a resort there and your grandmother ran the office.
I was lucky to spend a lot of time there, but I took care of the house in the states and was my brothers "parent" for his senior yr in high school.
I absolutely love the music video!! Such a charming leading lady. Fun, fun, fun!
I can hardly wait for more pictures and the next installment of, "The Amazing Adventures of Ken" :D