“Kathleen, a couple of comments on Belize after short trip to Placencia.
“My wife and I flew Tropic Air from Belize City International airport to Placencia in their one and only Cessna 172 that holds four including pilot. Loved it. Flew return in one of their single-engine turbo prop Cessna Grand Caravans that hold a dozen or so and got to see the crowd of people on the streets of Belize City for their Independence Day parade plus many other airports and sights.
“Flights within Belize don’t have all the security stuff we have here in United States, so we left our villa 30 minutes before our flight departure time and still had a 15-minute wait for departure after we checked our bags and checked in at the airport in Placencia. I had forgotten how much fun it was to fly before the TSA.
“As far as crime, we saw none, but I did rent a golf cart for three hours and managed to find myself at a license checkpoint set up in front of the police station. Also, when we used a small pontoon boat to cross a 30-foot canal, the Belize Coast Guard pulled by us.
“A lot of development going on.”
–Carl S., United States
***
“Kathleen, in reality you are just a promoter for the tourist industry. I say this because it took me a long time to discover that Belize is not a swimmer’s paradise. Your newsletter always presents things in such a slanted viewpoint that it seems you are just another promoter. If you want to retire on the beach, the assumption should be that you also want to swim in the ocean. Please tell me I am wrong about Belize. I read that most of the island is not hospitable to swimming, let alone thought of as a swimmer’s paradise.”
–Holly S., United States
First, Belize isn’t an island…though it includes several small islands, or “cayes,” as they’re called, just offshore from Belize City.
I’m not sure what qualifies for you as a “swimmer’s paradise,” but I can tell you that I’ve swam many times in the waters offshore Belize, both in the ocean off the mainland coast (at Placencia) and off the shores of Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker. I’ve seen dozens of people at a time in the ocean offshore Ambergris…hundreds over the years. Would they qualify the experience as “paradise”? I don’t know…but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.
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