February 16
Breakfast was fruit and breakfast breads again.
Today we toured the town of Corozal. In the weeks before the trip, when I told people I was going to Belize, everybody asked where we’d be staying. Nobody I talked to had ever heard of Corozal, and gave me blank stares when I told them it was close to Mexico. Undoubtedly, this reaction is natural. Corozal is not at all a tourist mecca.
We’re in Consejo Shores, not Corozal town itself. Consejo is an enclave of Canadian and US expats. It’s about 11 km of bad road northeast of Corozal and only a bit over a mile as the vulture flies from Chetumal, Mexico. Chetumal and Corozal are on the shores of the Caribbean (or Corozal Bay). A peninsula and islands to the east protect the shore from the worst effects of hurricanes and tropical storms, and the water here is too shallow for anything like a cruise ship. The closest tourist attraction is Ambergris Caye. All of Belize’s tourist attractions lie to the south of Belize City, which is a 2.5-hour drive south of Corozal.
Between Belize City and Corozal, the land is pancake flat, planted with sugar cane, palm trees for palm oil, and fruit orchards.
I was surprised to learn of the large presence of Taiwanese. Most of the stores and markets in the area are owned and operated by Taiwanese. Chinese names abound – Deng Shen, for example.
The official language of Belize is English. (The place was called British Honduras until 1981.) Spanish is common, and there’s quite a lot of pidgin English/Spanish – billboards with messages such as “Di Sun Serious!” abound.
There are hundreds of Mayan ruins in the region. I struggle to convey this properly. There are hundreds of sites, with each site ranging from a single structure still overgrown by the jungle to sites spread across hundreds of acres containing dozens of structures that are active archaeological projects.
Greg knew where one of these sites is in the middle of Corozal town. It took us a couple of attempts to find it, missing it by a block this way at first, then by a block that way. When we finally stopped to ask for directions, we were just a couple of hundred feet away, on the other side of a building.
The Santa Rita Archaeological Site is not much larger than a football field. It was first settled some time around 1200 BCE by about 150 people, eventually growing to about 6,800 people and controlling trade along the Rio Hondo river (which today separates Belize from Mexico). People here traded as far south as South America.
My inner 8-year-old couldn’t resist the urge to climb to the top of the pyramid.
We finished the day at a local pizza place. Rather than have another Belikin, I opted for a Landshark, brewed by Margaritaville Caribbean Brewing Company, based in Jacksonville, Florida. It was launched in 2006 by singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett to compete against Grupo Modelo’s Corona. So, yeah, I went to a foreign country to drink a beer from Florida.
