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How Each Region Of Belize Reveals Another Lifestyle Option

Kathleen Peddicord by Kathleen Peddicord
Jan 22, 2018
in Belize, Lifestyle, Travel
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Palm Trees by the blue sea in Belize
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Finally, It Was Time To Bug Out Of Belize City

Finally… after three days inside the meeting rooms of the Ft. George Hotel, it was time to bug out of Belize City…

Belize City is poor, underdeveloped, and, in parts, unsafe.

I don’t mind the place. Beneath the gritty surface, I detect a long-faded charm. Or maybe I project one. Either way, I enjoy passing through.

And this visit we have observed more infrastructure works in progress and more active construction projects (shopping malls, hotels, casinos, restaurants, and condo buildings) in Belize City than I’ve seen in all my more than 30 years of coming and going to and from this point on the map that a friend refers to as the Calcutta of Central America.

“What is fueling this Belize City boom?” I asked Belize’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Wilfred Elrington when we met on the opening morning of last week’s conference.

“Locally it’s the Mennonites, who are reinvesting their considerable business profits into new business development,” Minister Elrington explained.

“Plus we are enjoying ever-bigger foreign investment from China,” he continued. “The Chinese see Belize as virgin territory full of untapped potential. The Chinese value undeveloped land and open spaces. Belize has a great deal of both those things.”

Still, I know that, for many, the best part about traveling to Belize City is leaving Belize City. We hold our annual Live and Invest in Belize Conference here because it’s the only place in the country with facilities big enough to accommodate us.

Finally, though, Friday afternoon, our conference attendees were free to take off to see for themselves what this little country is really all about. Armed with the know-how and wisdom shared by our Belize experts and expats over the three days of the event, the readers in attendance dispersed to Belize’s four very different corners.

And that was when the real fun began.

Many of these soon-to-be expats took a quick hop over to Ambergris Caye, home to the largest expat community in Belize and one of the biggest expat communities in the world. These folks want Caribbean, and now they’re spending time on Ambergris, Belize’s most developed Caribbean island, trying to determine if this is the Caribbean outpost they seek.

Ambergris is unadulterated, unpretentious Caribbean… the sea, sand, and sunshine of the Caymans or the Virgin Islands… without the price tag.

Another group of attendees headed in the opposite direction… and for the hills, the Cayo, where the appeal isn’t sand and sea but wide-open spaces, a back-to-basics lifestyle, and really cheap land.

Lief and I were among those who took off from Belize City Friday afternoon headed west for Cayo. As I write, I’m sitting on the long, breezy porch of a charming cottage built from the local Belizean hardwoods looking out over the meandering Belize River.

In the distance I hear roosters crowing and cows mooing. All around birds are singing and the sun is shining.

And, yes, it’s as idyllic as it sounds.

Here in this almost-too-blissful-to-be-real setting, developer Phil Hahn is creating the forward-thinking sustainable community known as Carmelita Gardens that many of the attendees at last week’s conference back in Belize City have made the trip out specifically to see.

The Carmelita plan calls for solar power and community gardens and orchards. The intent is a place where you could live completely independently if you wanted, reliant on no public services or third-party infrastructure.

We’ve been watching progress at Carmelita for several years, and, this visit, we see that Phil’s vision is becoming reality. Carmelita today is not a development but a neighborhood of tidy cottages bordered by white-picket fences. It’s like Mayberry by the river.

“Maybe you should rename the place Carmelita RFD,” Lief joked with Phil after we’d had a look around.

In this part of Belize, you do feel like you’ve traveled back in time to 1950s America… a time and a place where you don’t worry if you forgot to lock your front door, where neighbors greet passersby from their front porches, and where the best way to find out what’s going on is to stop by the local watering hole or community center.

Friday afternoon, after our formal program concluded, a third conference contingency headed south to explore this country’s mainland coast around Placencia. This is another face of the beachfront life on offer in Belize. Several master-planned communities are popping up here, catering to those with bigger budgets. You’ll find marinas and golf courses alongside large homes within gated neighborhoods. That said, plenty of affordable and charming options exist outside of these higher-end options.

Lief and I will travel from Carmelita to Placencia later today to meet with friends and key players in the boom that is emerging on that seaside peninsula.

Finally, a fourth scouting party headed north to see the northern mainland Belize coast around Corozal. While Ambergris Caye is a fully fledged expat community with all the trappings… Carmelita and the Cayo are all about being off the grid and embracing a self-sustainable lifestyle… and Placencia offers luxury… Corozal is about kickin’ back and layin’ low. This region is low-density and low-impact. The biggest attraction for some is the uninterrupted peace and quiet.

Meantime, Chetumal, Mexico, with its 17 hospitals and clinics and big-footprint shopping, is only 15 miles away.

Those attendees able to make the time are traveling among two or three or even all four of these spots, to get a better picture of the different lifestyle options Belize has to offer.

Each has its pluses and its minuses. Island living is always more expensive than life back on the mainland… meaning Ambergris is the most expensive lifestyle choice in the country. Most expensive and also most developed, turnkey, and fully appointed.

Carmelita is being developed on a river. For some, river views don’t substitute for ocean vistas. Others prefer them. Plus, Carmelita is off-the-grid and back-to-basics. In today’s world, those two things can carry big upsides.

Corozal boasts easy access to Chetumal, which could be a big advantage in case of medical emergency. On the other hand, day-to-day, you could feel secluded here. Maybe that’s a plus for you… maybe a minus.

The northern coast around Corozal sees about 50 inches of rain a year. The southern coast, Placencia and south, can see three times that much rain or more each year. Maybe that bothers you… maybe it doesn’t.

Big picture, of course, all four of these regions are in Belize… which means the people speak English, the government is typically nowhere to be noticed, and your annual tax bill can be highly controlled.

Kathleen Peddicord

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Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord

Kathleen Peddicord has covered the live, retire, and do business overseas beat for more than 30 years and is considered the world's foremost authority on these subjects. She has traveled to more than 75 countries, invested in real estate in 21, established businesses in 7, renovated historic properties in 6, and educated her children in 4.

Kathleen has moved children, staff, enterprises, household goods, and pets across three continents, from the East Coast of the United States to Waterford, Ireland... then to Paris, France... next to Panama City, where she has based her Live and Invest Overseas business. Most recently, Kathleen and her husband Lief Simon are dividing their time between Panama and Paris.

Kathleen was a partner with Agora Publishing’s International Living group for 23 years. In that capacity, she opened her first office overseas, in Waterford, Ireland, where she managed a staff of up to 30 employees for more than 10 years. Kathleen also opened, staffed, and operated International Living publishing and real estate marketing offices in Panama City, Panama; Granada, Nicaragua; Roatan, Honduras; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Quito, Ecuador; and Paris, France.

Kathleen moved on from her role with Agora in 2007 and launched her Live and Invest Overseas group in 2008. In the years since, she has built Live and Invest Overseas into a successful, recognized, and respected multi-million-dollar business that employs a staff of 35 in Panama City and dozens of writers and other resources around the world.

Kathleen has been quoted by The New York Times, Money magazine, MSNBC, Yahoo Finance, the AARP, and beyond. She has appeared often on radio and television (including Bloomberg and CNBC) and speaks regularly on topics to do with living, retiring, investing, and doing business around the world.

In addition to her own daily e-letter, the Overseas Opportunity Letter, with a circulation of more than 300,000 readers, Kathleen writes regularly for U.S. News & World Report and Forbes.

Her newest book, "How to Retire Overseas: Everything You Need to Know to Live Well (for Less) Abroad," published by Penguin Random House, is the culmination of decades of personal experience living and investing around the world.

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