A Short Stay in Belize City, Central America

As you can see from the picture above, it was warm in Belize City, Belize, Central America, less than a couple of weeks ago. We stopped for a snack of local meat pies and a bottle of the famous local beer, Belikin, for me, and a glass of watermelon juice for my husband. In addition to Belize, we also visited several other places. We returned home before Thanksgiving. We had a great Thanksgiving meal with the family of our daughter’s husband. I hope that all my blogging friends also had a great Thanksgiving celebration.

Vintage Thanksgiving postcard -
“A Thanksgiving Token: Everyone has cause for Thanksgiving but the turkey…”

It was in the mid 80s when we visited Belize City. Belize is a tiny country bordered by Mexico’s Yucatan to the north and Guatemala to the south and west. It is roughly the size of the state of New Jersey. It has the lowest population density in Central America – one of the lowest in the world. The population of Belize is predominantly Kriol Black – the descendants of African slaves who mixed with other races in the region. It is a unique culture where English is the official language but Spanish is also spoken.

Map of Central America

Here is a bit of history: the Maya Indians settled Belize as early as 1500 BC. Then it was claimed by Spain in the late 1500s and in 1638 Scottish and English buccaneers known as “Baymen” settled on the coast to attack Spanish ships. Spain agreed to let the British buccaneers occupy the area (but not to own it) and cut log-wood and mahogany in exchange for their end to piracy. African slaves were brought from Jamaica in the early 1700s to harvest timber. More British settlers came to Belize and in 1864 it became a British Crown Colony under the name “British Honduras.” It became independent from the United Kingdom in 1981; it had already been officially renamed “Belize.” (It was the UK’s last continental possession in the Americas.)

Flag of Belize

Belize is now a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. It is the only English speaking country in Central and South America.

Example of Belize currency

We arrived at Belize City on a small powered boat like the one below.

It was warm and sunny and I quickly took a picture from the moving boat.




Belize City (population around 70,000) is a busy town with diverse ethnic groups: Creole, Maya, Indians, Garifuna, Mestizo, Chinese and Hindu. The city has been battered several times by powerful hurricanes. It was hit by Hurricane Hattie (category 5) in 1961. Many people lost their lives and thousands were left homeless, so the government relocated the capital from Belize City to Belmopan in the interior of the country. About 3 weeks before we visited Belize City, on October 25, 2010, Hurricane Richard made landfall about 20 miles from the city. Many of the older homes were blown off their stilts and thousands of trees were knocked down. We could still see much debris on the roads as in the picture below, behind the lady in national costume, as well as damages to old houses and roofs.

Click on collage to enlarge, then click on each picture

The scenery around Belize City is as diverse as its people. It is divided into north and south – beautiful colonial houses on one side and poor housing and slums on the other. A manual operated swing bridge divides the city. Twice a day it turns open – it is the last manually operated swing bridge left in the world. We drove on it and I could not take a good picture but below is a vintage postcard showing this bridge.

Vintage postcard of Belize City manual swing bridge.

There are still a dozen Mayan sites with temples and pyramids around the country, but we did not have time to visit them. We drove by several historical sites in Belize City though, like St John’s Cathedral, the oldest Anglican Cathedral Church in Central America. It was built by slave in 1812 from bricks brought as ballast on European sailing chips. The interior is fitted with mahogany, but we did not go inside.

We also drove by the Superior Court House with its lovely ironworks. It was built in 1923 by the same construction company that built the swing bridge, a New Orleans company, and it shows.




A school, Wesley College, which had opened its door in 1882 as a secondary college in Belize is now a music education center since 2006. Close by was another school, for the Muslim community. We also saw little grocery stores in the poor area of Belize City.




We came back to the harbor area to have a snack, as pictured in the heading. It was quite warm by then.




In the distance we had seen the slim lighthouse. It is called the Baron Bliss Lighthouse Monument. The story is told that Baron Bliss, Henry Edward Ernest Victor Bliss, 1829-1926, an English paraplegic sailor, visited Belize in 1926 in his yacht, the Sea King. Baron Bliss had traveled all over the world but fell in love with Belize’s clear blue waters, the climate and the people. Two months after his arrival he died in his yacht – he had not set foot in Belize City yet as he was paralyzed after being struck with polio. He left Belize a $2 million legacy. The interest from this sum has been used to fund many projects in Belize, like roads, schools and many others.




With such a short stay we could not see what Belize is known for, and that is its wonderland of Caribbean reefs. When he visited it with his ship the Calypso, French explorer scientist Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910-1997) made the Great Blue Hole famous, declaring it one of the top ten scuba diving sites in the world. Lying about 60 miles off Belize mainland the Blue Hole is a circular underwater limestone sinkhole more than 300 ft across and 412 feet deep. The Hole is located in the Belize Barrier Reef, the second largest Barrier Reef in the World. There are over 500 species of fish, 300 species of mollusk, stony corals, sponges, etc. in this reef. It was designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. I found a picture of it on the Web.




Eco-tourism is growing in Belize because of its crystal-clear water, coral atolls, its 185 miles long Barrier Reef System, its rain forest with more than 570 species of birds, its national parks, marine reserves and wildlife sanctuaries (more than 40% of the country’s area is protected.) I heard and saw some of the birds, but am not good at catching them with my camera. I am good at buying postcards though… here are several.


Birds of Belize: from top left Roseate Spoonbill, then Green Heron. In center Reddish Egret. Lower left Yellow Crowned Night Heron then Brown Booby.

Mealy Blue Crown Parrot

One animal I would have like to see but did not was the coati.

Postcard of three baby coati – found in many districts of Belize.

Evening came too quickly. It was time to say goodbye to Belize City. Maybe we’ll come back some day. Belize is still relatively undiscovered by tourists but they will come more and more to enjoy its beauty. One early tourist was the English writer Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) who wrote in Beyond the Mexique Bay in 1934 “If the world had any ends British Honduras [Belize] would be one of them. It is not on the way from anywhere, to anywhere else. It is all but uninhabited.” But it has changed – a little…