World Belize San Pedro

GunnarTravelsTheAmericas & Africa&Asia

San Pedro, Belize Aug 8, 2009

The last skirmish on the Guatemala-Belize border was in February 2000 when a Guatemalan was shot by a Belize Defence Force border patrol. To avoid further deadly accidents, a neutral zone of one kilometre on either side of the border was established. When the bus from Flores, Guatemala, finally slaloms its way around the potholes into the Melchor de Mencos border post everything looks pretty normal. I pay the 20 Quetzales to leave Guatemala (10 Quetzales is the official rate, the rest private initiative) and walk across. I clear Belizean immigration and I am the first to wait for the bus to come through.

“What part of Ireland are you guys from?” The two girls had walked through immigration right behind me, but stay in the shadow just inside the building, while I melt outside. I backtrack to follow their example. Their Irish accent stands out a mile when they answer my observation on their good sense to stay inside. “We’re from Dublin. How did you know we were Irish?” I tell them that Olive hails from Leopardstown, they know that part of Dublin of course and that we’ve been to Dublin and Galway on occasion: “And to be honest your accent is hard to miss“. “The Irish economy isn’t doing so well, is it?” Ireland is about to go bankrupt, if the news from Olive’s brothers is anything to go by. “I mean it was already going downhill before the financial crisis”. Don’t they know: they are both out of a job since the company they worked for went bust. “Your spending your severance pay then“. Actually they are. “You’re not worried about getting a new job?” (I can’t help letting my old style prudence shine through). Actually they are not (youthful optimism it seems; they probably can’t help that either) After traveling five weeks they are now on their way to Caye Caulker, one of the reef islands out in the Caribbean Sea. I still have not decided what to do beyond spending one day in Belize City and what they tell me sounds good. After that they fly on to California for a few weeks of traveling there. Their severance pay must not have been too bad then...

Across the Swing Bridge and then turn right on Regent Street West - I have figured out that I could probably walk to my hotel and when we arrive early afternoon at the Water Taxi Jetty, the Belize City terminal, I am almost the only one to do so, most are going on to Caye Caulker or Ambergris Caye. It only takes that short walk to the Belcove hotel to know they made the right choice.

Buccaneers and pirates first settled in Belize around 1650, but in that global reshuffling of the deck in 1763 (also known as the Treaty of Paris), that otherwise confirmed Britain as the foremost colonial power, Belize was ceded to Spain. The privateers would have none of that though, and after the Spanish lost out in the 1798 Battle of St George’s Caye, Belize was pretty much left alone and by 1862 it became the English colony of British Honduras. Several rounds followed and with UN support Belize became independent in 1981, but by 1999 Guatemala renewed its claim. The latest is that in December 2008 both countries agreed to hold a referendum on referring the dispute to the International Court of Justice, but a date for that simultaneous referendum has still to be set.

Frankly why should anyone bother fighting over this place? Not for crumbling Belize City that's for sure. I have to find a hotel elsewhere first, otherwise I would have left the the city that same day. I find one in San Pedro on Ambergris Caye. Leaving from the Water Taxi Jetty the next morning I am happy to leave a city behind where loitering is a day job and begging a profession (spaced out beggars, and here that really means spaced out, have this technique of holding on to your arm while waving an unsteady cup in your face; it gave me the creeps).

Trivial, the only way to describe it, trivial is the reason why Belize has stuck in my mind from as far back as 1979. Our children (my ex-Carla’s and mine that is) were then 8 and 10 and attending the Kees Boeke school in Bilthoven (next to De Bilt where the Vanderbildts came from) which was a kind of a Montessori school (instilled by its founder Kees Boeke with a strong dose of pacifism, a fact that had worried the Dutch establishment quite a bit when now Dutch Queen Beatrix and her princess sisters attended the school). To be honest the choice for that school was quite a bit more Carla’s than it was mine and she was also quite active in many of the school’s activities, but then I was asked to become the chairman of the school board to replace Rob van Oordt, a high flying McKinsey adviser who had just landed his first important directorship at Hunter Douglas. (The fact that I accepted had everything to do with vanity, but then again these volunteer jobs - I was busy three nights a week in the end with all kinds of school meetings - would never be filled otherwise). Anyway, this Rob van Oordt took one of the neighbourhood kids along with his family for a vacation in Belize and back in 1979 nobody went to Belize, nobody. So there was always this little wonderment in the back of my mind as to why anyone would go to such an undeveloped, out of the way destination. ‘To protect your assets‘, as Miss Tricia, the marketing manager of Caye International Bank, euphemistically explains the tax evasion schemes the bank proposes. Already back in 1979 Belize was a tax haven and Rob, at the start of a high-earning career, must have combined beach pleasure with banking business. That is my speculation of course, but after thirty years it finally feels I can lay that little wonderment to rest.

If Belize City is the epitome of the shadowy sides of Caribbean life, the Cayes certainly represent the sunny side and San Pedro on Ambergris Caye (La Isla Bonita in Madonna’s song, according to some, and they are not trying to deny that on the island), has that relaxed ‘sunny beach, waving palms and cool breeze’ charm. It was the perfect spot for my last few days in the region, reading a book and generally lazing through the day (except for a few appointments with bank people of course - in case you were wondering why I stopped over).