The Conscious Traveler: Belize
Belize is a beautiful place and although I don’t have a hierarchy of beaches, I want to say that the beach in Belize is “the most picturesque beach from a vacationer's lens” I have been to. The water is a dark rich candy blue that almost looks sweet. It looks like the blue and white shark candies I would eat as a kid when I would go to a candy store.
The air and water temperatures are always set for a perfect beach day and the towns on the coast are geared towards tourism (which is good and bad). I still feel Mexico is the best destination I have been to and you can choose for a vacation, but Belize was a personal favorite for when it came to vibes.
While visiting the beaches in Belize, I would recommend that you go to Placencia instead of the keys if you want a quieter experience, but if you want the wild party/ vacation lifestyle than the keys are the way to go. There will be cute places all over and loads of activities with locals. Depending on where you stay you can also sneak into different resorts and enjoy the amenities before they find out. It is also cool to be right on the water at night drinking a beer in a beach chair.
If you go inland there is also plenty to see there as well. There are plenty of nature resorts and Belizean culture when you get to the heart of the country. The food is also much better, some say, in the inner towns as opposed to the coastal ones. Around Belize there are many touristy types of things to do, but also ample opportunity to hangout with locals and not worry about the next excursion you have planned for your stay. Belize is not a big place and going from inland to the sea is not very difficult.
A Trip for Two
My ex-girlfriend from Oakland, Nadja, came out to visit me while in Belize. I had been staying in a nature resort out in a region called “Bermudian Landing” and she stopped by for a bit before we headed out to the coast. A man named Roy and his family run the resort and also offer other things such as horseback riding and river tours.
One of the things that we did was go and see the ancient Mayan pyramids “Altun Ha” for my birthday.
A typical day for us would be to swim in the river with everyone in town, looking to cool off from the late summer heat- rainy season was set to come a month late and it was so hot that oftentimes we would see wildfires blazing through the area. Nothing to the point of evacuating, but something to note. We would go food shopping and get ice cream from the shop down the road, ending the day with cooking dinner and laying in a hammock.
Me and Nadja took a short road trip out to Placencia for about a week where we lived in a tree house on the beach. Here is where we spent our time lounging around on the beach and sneaking into resorts to enjoy their amenities.
While Kayaking one day I had put my phone into my, what I thought was, waterproof bag and we set out to make our way up and down the coast. We paddled for about a half hour, or what felt like one, till we reached a beautiful pier and gazebo. I, thinking that the water could not be all that deep, jumped out of the kayak to climb up the ladder of the pier. To my detriment I plunged into the water submerging my “waterproof” bag about three feet deep. Something told me at that point that something was wrong. I climbed to the top of the pier and looked into my bag to see my phone soaked, which is a problem on its own, but it didn’t help that I suck at taking care of phones so it was filled with cracks on the back that had been drenched in salt water.
Oh well, things happen! While at this resort we might as well have seen what they had to offer. Me and nadja spent the remainder of our time there going in and out of various pools and areas till the security got hip to what was going on and kicked us out
Elvis
Very friendly people, the Belizean people are. While in Bermudian landing I met a man named Elvis whose entire family dealt in politics and the political landscape of Belize, but he was uninterested in the political arena and instead he took up craftsmanship. I would sit with him while he would create these beautiful works of art and we would talk about the old days and the problems with the new days. Across from him was Jonny, the painter, who like Elvis would sit and create art all day, shooting the shit. I bought 2 cowhorn carvings from Elvis and gave them to Nadja to bring up to my storage unit in Oakland. I look forward to having his pieces sit in my home wherever that be when I stop traveling around in the future.
One story Elvis told me that he looks back on and laughs about is the one about his brother never talking to him again. His brother, who is looking to climb up the political ladder throws this party one day, but Elvis never shows up. This does not sit right with the brother because not having Elvis there shows his brother that Elvis can care less about his political ambitions and that he is in support of his political opponent. There was tension in the family already with Elvis already stating he sides with the other political party. So Elvis’s brother asks him, why did he not show up to the party? Elvis gives him his excuse, but to the brother it was not good enough. So the Brother proceeds to cut Elvis off, never to talk to him again. Elvis’s excuse for missing the party that wasn’t good enough for his brother to accept? Elvis’s wife was giving birth.
Have a nice trip
While staying in Placencia, our host was having a birthday party and invited me and Nadja to it. There was great vibes, great food and for dessert, weed brownies, what a great host. The next day we had more left over, so Nadja decided to take some more and then some more and then some more. She got so high that she started to have an anxiety attack, but I was of no help, because I was also high and I was coming up with a new language in my head and was trying to figure out what words in English were considered inappropriate or not. I eventually got her to the beach where she could just lay in the water for a bit. Good time.
What can A Dollar get You
The Belizean dollar is exactly half of what the U.S. dollar is. Although compared to many other countries this can be expensive. It is still cheaper than going to many of the other English speaking countires in the Caribbean or West Indies, or what ever you want to consider Belize. You can find some pretty good activities to do for relatively cheap (America comparison). A common meal inland should run you about 8 dollars Belizian or 4 dollars USD.
Vibes
If you are looking for a place to go that has similar energy to the Bahamas, but you are on a budget I would say to check out Belize. Everything is half the price of what The Bahamas would be and it gives very similar vibes. It is on average warmer in Belize than The Bahamas if you want to take that into consideration when traveling and the water is much warmer too. Also in Belize you see such an interesting blend of people mixed with African and indigenous roots whereas in the Bahamas natives were much more efficiently wiped out so you see much less of that.
The wide mix of African and indigenous culture does make it stand out from a lot of Central America, but it is very similar to other Caribbean coastal communities within Honduras and Nicaragua. Seeing black people engulfed in Mayan culture and showing you around the ruins and hearing a man that would be presumed Mexican by most Americans speaking with a strong Caribbean accent, the contrast is beautiful. A real melting pot of Central America.
Religion and Neocolonialism
I must sound like a broken record by now, but the worst things in Belize stem from colonialism and now neocolonialism. It is a story as old as, well, colonialism. For everything I mentioned as good, white people, specifically American white people have exploited the Belizean people for. The reason I mentioned not going to the Keys is because you will be surrounded by young white people that are obsessed with letting you know how much better they are at traveling than you are. I have been running into small enclaves of them all over Central America this past year. Now if that is your thing than that is your thing, by all means check out Key Caulker, but for me personally having a guy tell me he travels by hitchhiking on container ships because taking a bus isn’t “real backpacking” is nauseating and that is only the tip of the iceberg with them.
Although inland has some of the most "Belizean" Belizean culture you will find in the country relatively untapped by tourists, it is also home to one of the largest Mennonite communities in the world. White Mennonites (which I just learned the proper way of spelling it a month ago, after calling them “meta-knights" for over a year) is along the lines of Fundamental Mormons and Amish. Within their community they operate with total immunity from the government in Belize. It is known that Mennonites are helping cartels peddle large quantities of drugs through the airfield in their community.
In 2013, six Mennonites with ties to the Juarez Cartel were charged with drug trafficking for attempting to bring marijuana to the United States and cocaine to Canada. They were reportedly part of a larger operation that included three Mennonites arrested in 2012 for similar charges. Mennonite communities in Belize have also been accused of building clandestine airstrips for cartels in this country.
It is also said that The Mennonite community has also been taking resources from the Belizean people for decades to erect American businesses in the area in which they live.
On my first night there I ran into a large group of missionaries that invited me to go to church with them the following day. Within an hour of being with them I was getting hit with the most American toxic white masculinity I've encountered since leaving Alaska. Within 10-20 minutes of meeting them, one of the guys on this “mission” was letting me know he could beat my ass because he is 250 pounds and I weigh about nothing and all this because they asked me what I do and I told them I was a fighter.
Now these people I think genuinely want to do good and what is right by the Belizean people, but the white savior complex was astonishing to say the least and takes away from that. From carrying around the idea that these people “needed a savior” and strategically tying that into sermon, and how they interacted with the locals knowing West Indian people to be religious, is in many ways sinister. They were there to “save” the Belizean people, but never addressed why they would need saving to begin with. That is a story that started in 1492.
Yet at the same time they were there building homes and fixing peoples ceilings and giving money to the community. So it leaves the question, are the locals better off now that the missionaries came to help or are they worse off now crafting a savior complex for these white Americans?
White American seniors(expats) have taken over many parts of Belize. What the Mennonites and Chinese have not taken, expats have claimed, with absolutely no right, for their own. When you speak to these expats they can come off sweet and innocent, just wanting to retire in a place that is warm and sunny where the people speak the same language as they do, but listen to the words closely and you hear the joy they have taken with this new found slavery they have discovered. The way Trump has stated "look at my black people over there” you will hear an expat state “look at my Belizean over there pouring me my margarita.” “I love it here, the people treat me with respect and are so friendly” is a dog whistle saying “those blacks back in the US don’t know how to treat a white person, but Tonya here, my lil’ Belizean maid does”.
Expats have said some of the most flat out, but subtle racist things I have heard and I was only there for a month. They have left Belize in a catch 22 where the locals and communities need the revenue from tourism and Expats, but they are stuck in an almost slave state of having to appease white people because of how much power these foreigners have over the local people. This is a common thing in English speaking countries all over the Caribbean.
Another thing that is common in Belize just as in other English speaking countries in the Caribbean is the takeover by Chinese foreign businesses that buy up land and assets within a country to one day capitalize on it, leading all revenues made to be sucked out of the country and into the pockets of Chinese government and business men. I spoke about this phenomena a bit in my very first article here on Substack about the Bahamas.
The Bahamas, like many other Caribbean countries, have put their land up for sale and Chinese businesses are buying it in droves.
Overall, Belize is a beautiful place like many places I have been to before and after. What separates Belize from the other places is its self awareness. What makes it like everywhere else is the hold colonization has on it. What the government in Belize is telling the world is that Belize is up for sale and it’s getting sold to the highest bidder, but the people have a chance. Do they fully go down the road that other Caribbean countries go down and next thing you know your whole country is no longer meant for you, but rather some expat or can they figure out a way to stop that from happening? Is it too late? Is it even a concern or just me projecting an idea on what I think is true. Well if you made it this far you probably also find some of this to be true too. I want to give a thank you too everyone who has been reading these articles on a weekly basis. I did not expect hundreds of you to actually want to read what I have to say. To you all a great week and see you next week for what I think will be one of my best articles.
