Belize Day One - Belize City

Belize City is a painfully hot, trashy, poor city that feels and looks like prison. Everything is rundown, but expensive. The cost of the taxi ride from the airport for five miles is $25. Fuel is $5 a gallon. Even though Belize is a net oil exporter, it does not have the infrastructure to refine petrol. Belizean fuel is piped to Texas and refined oil is purchased from Venezuela. Nearly every item at the grocery store is imported from the US, even some agriculture such as apples and peaches. The key products created in Belize are bottled water – there are at least two major competitors, a few agriculture products such as citrus, hot sauce and a unique sweet and syrupy yogurt from the Cayo district, and Belikin “The Beer of Belize,” which tastes like darkened and diluted rubbing alcohol.

Belize City itself is crowded, dilapidated, and abandoned. There is a port where cruise ships dock and a five mile strip along the coast called “Old Belize” for cruise patrons to visit. The few visitors who do fly into Belize City quickly make their way to either Flores, San Ignacio, Caye Caulker and Placencia or this small section of the city.

I wondered around the downtown for about an hour last evening. There are two or three homeless males outside of each store. The homeless in Belize City seem much younger and potentially more productive than the homeless that I’ve seen in other places. Also, they don’t beg – they threaten and demand. Nearly every block I hear a “big man give me a dollar; what, why not bitch?” This is usually followed with something like, “I’m gonna fucking kill you. You have no friends here man.” Twice already I have been uncomfortably followed. I’d like to add that there are little or no street people that I have seen in other Belizean cities. A partial explanation for its problems it that Belize City is on the cocaine route to Miami, which means drugs are cheap and abundant – supposedly drug filled missiles are shot into the coast every morning, although this is not something that I have personally encountered. There is no industry in Belize City itself and tourism jobs are limited, which means that most people either work in limited private or government service industries. There are three principal types of business in downtown Belize City, bank branches, run-down and frequently closed small restaurants, and open aired vendors which sale a combination of high margin fashion and basic appliances. Also, there is Payless Shoe Store and a boutique with shaded windows and double security that claims to sell Ralph Lauren. Outside nearly every store is a sign written in sloppy sans serif, which when in red and from a short distance looks exactly like a sign written in blood. Additionally, there are many heckling taxi drivers who sit on sidewalks and are usually not discernable from vagrants. This town was partially destroyed twenty years ago and it looks like no one bothered to rebuild.