Booking it to Belize: Hiding from Winter in Paradise

A sunny day in San Pedro

 

Nobody smiles in February. Cop to it. The only time I ever smiled in February was when I saw someone snowshoe right into their own car. February is mostly just slush. Things start to get a little better in March, when hope starts to break through the grey and give us spring, but the last leg of winter is just there as a test of human patience.

So it's usually around this time of year that I make like a bird and migrate south. My family has a condo in San Pedro, Belize and it's the perfect place to hide and wait out the slush.

Belize is a third world country with a population of roughly 357,000. Located next to Mexico, the mainland is beautiful and lush, exploding with jungles and humidity.

San Pedro is on a little island called Ambergris Caye, which is off the coast of mainland Belize, about a twenty-minute flight in a propeller plane. (Belize fun fact number one: Ambergris is a waxlike substance found in the intestine of a sperm whale. It's used in the manufacturing of perfume.) It's an adventure town and about the only place on the Caye, unless you count the jungle.

Belize fun fact number two: Madonna's song "La Isla Bonita" was written about San Pedro, and it's easy to see why. It rains once a day for about a half an hour, but apart from that, the sky is this perfect, deep Prussian blue. It looks like china, like a cloud would break it. The sunlight is effusive by the Equator. You can actually feel it soaking into your skin. (For a pale blonde, that's not necessarily a plus.)

There are blossoms everywhere. The air is heavy and laden with the scent of pinks and hibiscus. It's slow, heady, prelapsarian. The Atlantic ocean is as warm as a bath and the blue-green of something prehistoric and ancestral. It's easy to feel like you might be just about to bloom with the rest of the flowers.

San Pedro is ultimately an adventurer's town, though. About the only sport you can't take up there is cross-country skiing. There's a Jet-Ski rental on the dock about thirty feet from our apartment. Those things can get up to 80 kilometres an hour. Nothing beats cresting the shining waves over the barrier reef on a Jet-Ski with a full tank, knowing you could take it around the island twice and be home for dinner. If you cut the engine and drift, you'll see manta rays the size of tables rippling lazily around the coral.

If under the water is more your speed, you can try SNUBA diving. It's like scuba diving, but rather than carrying the air tanks on your back, they float on top of the water in a raft, and you breathe through a hose. You don't need a scuba certification, either. It's amazing to see all the colours of the reef and the tropical marine life. I chased a sea turtle the first time I went down.

Next time I go, I want to try cave tubing. It's a slow journey through the damp caves of the Belizean jungle in an inner tube, and it sounds glorious.

Belize fun fact number three: It's a Commonwealth Realm, just like us. A picture of the beautiful, younger Queen Elizabeth II adorns their currency. It's a friendly, welcoming, and fun place to lose yourself for a while, especially in the dusk of pre-spring weather. I can't wait to go back.