February 19th-Day trip to San Pedro
Can I really compare a Caribbean island in Belize to the island of Manhattan? Maybe it’s not such a stretch….
We set out early on Sunday morning on our bikes to catch the water taxi. We would spend the day on the neighboring island of Ambergris Caye. For $16 each (USD) each way the water taxi would deposit us in San Pedro, the islands town. Once to San Pedro we walked through town and found a golf cart to rent for the day.
After being on Caye Caulker, San Pedro seems very large and extremely busy. It’s similar to the feeling I get when I take a trip from Brandon to Manhattan, so great is the difference. We rode around for a time, just re-familiarizing ourselves with the town. We headed south of town since that’s where the church we wanted to attend was located. The roads were a lot rougher than I remembered. I wondered several times how the golf carts here held together, and several passed us at (what seemed to me) an unreasonable and dangerous rate of speed on these roads although it couldn’t have been more than 20 mph.
We finally arrived at church about 20 minutes later and pulled our golf cart into the tiny parking lot. The road leading to the church may have been the bumpiest road I had ever been on in my life, so everyone here must be fully committed. The crowd was pretty diverse. At least 75% were Belizean with the rest being either tourists or resident Americans or Canadians. The church itself was nice, with A/C, plush chairs, and a large stage. The service was not so different from a service in the U.S. with some touches that are decidedly more Belizean.
After church we found some BBQ near the beach for lunch and then continued our ride around the island for a couple more hours. We stopped a few times along the way, but mostly we just rode. Ambergris Caye is a large island, and a busy one. It’s beautiful in its own way and there is certainly always something going on. Many people prefer it to Caye Caulker, but after spending time on Caye Caulker I now have the same thing to say about this busier island as I do about the busy island of Manhattan. It’s a nice place to visit but….
link to the video of the day https://youtu.be/WqM88yYzxSE
