After a couple of more trips to Belize, staying away from most of the tourist stuff and getting to know the area and people better, we had decided that this should become our new home. Most people would look for a place on the Caribbean shore, but not us. We wanted to be up in the mountains and jungle where we could have some land, no close neighbors and a place where we could grow all the plants we wanted.
In December 2014, a nice 5 acre lot came up in the area that we had been looking. January found us on a plane headed back to Belize. After looking at the property and weighing all the pros and cons, we decided to make an offer on it. The next day our offer was accepted and we are now the proud owners of 5 acres in the Belizean jungle.
Looking up at the dense green trees.
The property is located about 12 miles from San Ignacio on a very good dirt road. About a mile and a half from the property is the village of San Antonio where they have basic supplies, such as gas and beer. Our property is considered raw jungle and will take some time to clear a small clearing for a home. This October (2015) we are headed back to cut a road in and make a small clearing. The good news is that we already have someone lined up to do this for us.
Our first trip to Belize was in 2011. After a lot of research of where we wanted to go we chose Belize for everything they had to offer. We booked a package trip through a travel agent that gave us time to explore the mountains and jungles as well as the island lifestyle.
We tried to do as much as we could in the short ten days we were there. On the mainland we had our own car and were free to go wherever we wanted. We explored National Parks, went cave tubing, zip lining and went to the local zoo. Later we put our car on a hand-crank ferry that crossed the river to a Maya ruin, that was a lot of fun. Explored a lot of dirt roads, seeing iguanas, toucans, monkeys and a bunch of exotic birds. Of course we ate everything from meat pies on the side of the road to pizza in the pouring rain. The people we met in our travels were some of the friendliest we have ever met. San Ignacio and the Cayo area is a very green and wonderful place.
hand cranked ferry
The second leg of our trip sent us over to San Pedro on the island of Ambergris. This is a neat little tourist island on the Caribbean shore. Most everyone gets around by walking or by golfcarts. Of course we rented a golf cart so we could explore the island and see what it had to offer. We walked the beaches, shopped and hit all the local tourist spots. We did manage to find a fishing guide that was willing to take us out the next day. This turned out to be the most memorable day of our trip. While we didn’t catch anything really big, the surprise was that our captain dove into the crystal clear water and came up with a couple of nice lobsters and some conch. After we were done fishing we headed off to a secluded beach where he cooked up our catch and the lobsters along with some potatoes and veggies. For an appetizer we had fresh conch ceviche and cold Belikin beer all under the swaying palms on the Caribbean shore. Life wasn’t getting any better than this.
Fresh conch anyone?
After we got back to reality all we could think about was when are we going back….?
