For the next three days I stayed in Belize City. I was planning on going for a ride into the countryside and explore the Belize capital of Belmopan and the town of San Ignacio. It was just so freakin hot though. I just couldn’t put on my riding suit and head out into the heat. Even the locals said it was hot.
La Petit Cafe
The La Petit Cafe was my refuge in the heat. Each morning I would head out to the cafe to do some work and enjoy the air conditioning. One of the main projects to do was updating my GPS.
GPS Travel Maps gave me a coupon code for a free update for my Central America maps. I was sure hoping this would fix my Belize maps.
There were a few problems doing it. First, my SD port didn’t work. A coin had gotten stuck in there and after I took it out the port was “read only.” I tried everything to change it but I am guessing the coin set something off. The Device Manager said it was working fine though. Oh well.
So next I hooked up my GPS directly to my computer to update it. It wouldn’t read! After a lot of experimenting it turned out to be a bad cable. It took hours but my GPS updated. I just hoped the map for Belize was fixed.
Restaurants
As the evening approached the temperature cooled off to go out exploring the City. This exploring mostly consisted of walking to different restaurants recommended by Tripadvisor and seeing the sights along the way. First it was Riverside Tavern for a much needed salad. Then to Celebrity where I had a really nice chicken curry.
But what I was looking for was a “home” where everyone knew my name, to quote the song from Cheers. The next restaurant on my list was the Wet Lizard. Come to find out it was only available for cruise ship passengers!! I walked around a bit and stumbled upon Spoonaz. It had a patio along the river. I ordered Salbutes.
And enjoyed the wonderful views.
The server was a bit sassy, as was the outdoor cook right behind me. I like that. I found my home.
Exploring Belize City
As I mentioned in a previous post, Belize City is not that big. Especially the downtown area. One evening I walked through downtown to Bird Island. The downtown is run down. It always seems to be filled with school kids in the uniforms.
I passed the Belize Supreme Court.
The Channel 7 News station.
I stopped at the St John Anglican Cathedral. Not really much of a cathedral but an historical building in the city. It was built using slave labour from 1812 to 1820 with bricks that had been used as ballast aboard ships and was the first church to be built in the colony of British Honduras.
There is a small residential area on the island.
One of the reasons for going to Birds Island was to check out a restaurant. It turned out to be closed. But I loved their sign.
Evenings
When it got dark I headed back to my guest house passing by a candy store.
I really didn’t want to be out too much after dark here. All the closed stores have those metal blind on their windows. And the stores that are open, have metal bars between the clerk and customer. So to order something you look through the bars and say what you want. The transaction is completed by a small hole in the bars. That was my hint that it may be dangerous after dark 🙂
The one awesome thing about Belize is English ha ha. That meant English TV stations. Not good for me learning Spanish, but nice to relax to in the evenings. Especially since the Final Four NCAA basketball tournament was on.
Nice! Staying in at night was probably a great idea 🙂
Hi Rebecca …. Yes … I always take precautions when traveling in different countries … especially when I’m not familiar with it. Need to stay safe 🙂 Already taking enough risks ha ha.