San Pedro, Belize

Living in the Pacific Northwest, USA is a dream in the spring and summer seasons, but fall and winter can get a bit dreary and mundane. This winter was a wild one and we got nearly two feet of snow in just a few days. We were tired of being snowed in and decided to escape the snowpocalypse and head to Belize for some much needed vitamin D!

The morning of our departure we woke up at the brutal hour of 3am to catch our early morning flight to Dallas. Due to the limited number of flights to Belize we got stuck with a 24-hour layover, but we wanted to make the most of our time in Dallas. We arrived at our hotel around noon and asked the receptionist where the best Texas BBQ place in town was. They recommended Hard Eight BBQ and even provided us with a free shuttle there. Score! I had been craving BBQ all day and this place exceeded all my expectations. I had the most amazing BBQ chicken and Marshall and the boys had a hodgepodge of meats with some fried okra that Marshall had been missing since he lived in Texas as a kid.

We planned a special surprise for the kiddos that evening to kick off the trip doing something they had never experienced. A magical castle known as Medieval Times! As we walked in, we were handed black and white crowns (like Burger King crowns, only they didn’t smell like greasy fries) and officially pledged our allegiance to the black and white knight for the show. The lights dimmed and all the knights came out galloping on beautiful horses into the sandy arena decked out in their regions garb and introduced themselves to their teams.

The boys loved shouting and saying ‘Go Black and White’ while the knights performed tricks on their horses and competed to win the affection of the princess watching the show from her thrown. During the show, the servers brought out a huge serving of food for each person. A massive half chicken, beans, corn bread, and all the lemonade you could drink which the kids took full advantage of. As we downed our food and watched the show, we started to realize it was probably our knight’s first day on the job. He kept messing up on all the tricks, losing all the fights, and ended up in last place. Boo!! Oh well, we all had a lot of fun watching them joust and battle with their swords.

After the two hour show we headed back to the hotel and kids and I were so tired from our long, exhausting day that we zonked right out. Marshall had made plans to meet up with his two childhood best friends, Matt and Daniel, that he grew up with in the Dallas area. So after the show his friends picked him up at our hotel and drove over to the Texas Roadhouse restaurant for some late night snacks. He had a great time catching up on the past two years since they had all seen each other.

The next morning we were all excited to board our three hour flight to Belize City to start our epic adventure! Little did we know, the epic part would start sooner than we’d expect. As soon as our flight was about 50 feet from touching down on the Belize City runway, the plane all the sudden sped up and took off in the air again. We thought “did our plane seriously just miss the runway? What the heck!” During our 30 minute detour back to the airport, the pilot said there was another plane in our way that we would have crashed into and had to abort the landing at the last second. Close call!  

After finally landing (safely), we jumped on a small hopper plane that only carried maybe 10 people max. There was no debrief of the plane or even an explanation on how to use the seat belts. They just told us where to sit to evenly distribute the weight on the plane and then closed the door on us. Before we even had our seatbelts buckled, we were off the ground. Dang, this pilot must be on a tight schedule!

Along our 15-minute flight to the city of San Pedro on Ambergris Caye island, we had the most amazing views of the turquoise blue waters below and several scattered islands. The kids enjoyed pointing out all the boats they could see driving around. Once we landed, we hopped in a shuttle bus and drove 20 mins through town to Coco Beach Resort, our beachside destination that had the most pools we’d ever encountered at a resort. This place felt like luxury at its finest! We were all handed a welcome drink at check in which the boys were obsessed with. For the rest of the trip they were asking for welcome drinks everywhere we went. We dropped our bags off in the room and the boys were so excited to go swimming that they wanted to head straight to the pool.

Since it was dusk by the time we got to the pool, we thought the hot tub actually sounded much nicer. We had dinner delivered to us by the hot tub and we were serenaded by the live Jamaican sounding music playing at the pool bar. The perfect way to end our long day of travel and our official first night in Belize! The kids split a lava flow (half pina colada, half strawberry daquiri…virgin of course) and enjoyed every sip of it as we finished our food and watched the stars from the poolside. Once we were shriveled up like prunes, we were ready to head back to our room. We actually had an entire level to ourselves which included a full bath, kitchen, tv area and two full bedrooms. For the first time ever on a trip, the kids got to stay in their own room by themselves together. Lucky them…and us!!

We spent the majority of the next day swimming in all the various gorgeous pools at our resort. In the largest pool there was a rock structure in the middle that had waterfalls surrounding it and a tube waterslide coming out of it! Tyson could hardly finish breakfast fast enough because he was so excited to go down it. He had never been on a waterslide in his life! Marshall went down the slide with Tyson and I made sure to take an awesome slo-mo video of them shooting out. The slide was a faster and splashier than he was expecting so he didn’t immediately ask to go again, haha.

Wesley was a little hesitant but eventually got up the courage to go down with Marshall. It was a little scary for him but still impressive for a 2-year-old to try though! Once the kids were done playing in that pool, we meandered over to the hot tub to relax. There was a dad and his three-year-old daughter soaking in the hot tub that had been coming to this same resort for the past 10 years. Not our travel style as we never go to the same place twice, but he knew a ton about the area and gave us great tips for the rest of the trip. We love recommendations! The boys really hit it off with the little girl named Eliana and they ended up playing in the pool together several times during our stay. She was only three years old but was teaching the boys some tips on swimming and jumping between poolside bar tools.

That evening we rented a golf cart from our hotel to venture into down. Golf carts are actually the primary source of transportation on the island which makes sense since the roads are super narrow. We drove about 15 minutes toward the town and crossed a tiny bridge into the main part of San Pedro that is tolled by a man standing on the side of the road collecting cash. The man gave me a thumbs up and so I gave him a thumbs up back and he let us drive on by. I guess maybe he thought that we already paid? Sweet! We later noticed that he randomly stops some people but not others and also takes nap breaks throughout the day. You just hope you get lucky when crossing!

By the time we got into town It was lunch time, so we headed to a popular restaurant that the cool pool dad recommended called Palapa that is at the end of a long pier. When we walked in, we noticed it was a dive bar playing Jimmy Buffett on loop and there was writing all over the walls, floor, tables…. literally everything. They just leave markers around and people just write whatever they want on anything they want. When the kids saw all the random drawings they didn’t want to eat and just wanted to draw on the ground the whole time. We managed to get bites in between enjoying their various creations. After lunch we found a cute little chocolate shop to stop for a treat for the boys. We were all sugared up and ready to make our way back to the resort. We were excited to spend the rest of the evening relaxing by the pool since we don’t get much pool time living in Washington other than our occasional trips to my parents’ house in Leavenworth. So we gotta soak in as much pool time as we can!

The following morning, we headed straight to the pool. Surprise surprise! Tyson and Wesley were excited to see Eliana there again. They started a little game together called “The Challenge” where they jumped across the bar stools at the pool bar without falling in. After spending several hours at the pool we wanted to go check out a beach called Secret Beach. We rented a golf cart again and drove down the bumpiest pot holed dirt road I’ve ever encountered. I figured I’d drive there and Marshall could drive back. My method was to drive as slow as possible over the pot holes to feel the least bumpy. However, we were going less than 1mph and at that rate would take all day to get to the beach. Marshall said to pull over and let him drive so we could get there before midnight. Haha! His theory was to drive as fast as possible over the pot holes to feel the least bumpy. He was actually right!

Along the way we wanted to take a break and stop for lunch. The cool pool dad had recommended we check out a beachside restaurant called Rojo. We’re so glad we stopped by! It had lots of outdoor games, a little plunge pool, and even a pet parrot. It was a really cool spot for both kids and adults. The boys sucked down another lava flow while Marshall and I had some yummy spicy cocktails. Unfortunately, it was super windy that day so we didn’t spend as much time there as we would have liked.  

We got back on the road and about 30 minutes later we finally arrived at Secret Beach. It was pretty crowded and almost all of the lounge chairs were already taken. We had to trek all the way to the end of the beach to find the only two open chairs. We had brought some beach toys for the kids to build sandcastles so that kept them busy for a while. Marshall and I each ordered a drink as it’s required in order to sit on the beach chairs. That’s how the bars make their money. Smart!  Marshall took one sip and then Wesley decided to scoop up some sand with his shovel and dump the entire thing into Marshall’s drink. Yum! The sand at this beach was full of little seashells and was so unique that we scooped some into a coke bottle to take home for future show and tells at school.

We were hanging by the beach for a couple hours, then out of nowhere we see a plume of black smoke roll towards the beach. Yikes! We turn around and saw the kitchen in the bar not 30 yards behind us had caught fire! Marshall immediately ran over to see if he could help. Turns out the bar’s gas generator had caught on fire. He grabbed a garbage can, threw out the trash and ran down to the beach to fill it with water and then ran back to the bar to throw it on the fire. It took about a half dozen guys doing the same thing to make any difference. Eventually it got tamed and Marshall brought the final bucket that put it out. **My hero**

After all that excitement, we were ready to head back to hotel. As we’re walking back to our golf cart, out of the corner of my eye I see an old hairy man wearing nothing but a hot green thong laying face down on a beach chair with his butt staring right at us. I look over at Marshall waiting to see his reaction and as soon as I saw him do a double take at the guy I start busting up laughing. I then look over to see if he was with anyone….because I can’t imagine any woman being caught dead with a guy wearing something so outrageous. But to my surprise, I see a woman sitting with him who wasn’t wearing much more. Just wow.

That evening we drove the golf cart back into town to have dinner at another over water restaurant called Losers. It was actually a lot better than the name suggests. They really should consider changing their name. We had planned our evening around San Pedro’s famous attraction “Chicken Sh*t Bingo” that takes place on Thursday nights. How could we possibly pass up such a ridiculous event? We scarfed our food a little too quickly so we had a good chunk of time to kill before the event started.  We took a nice stroll along the beach and found an ice cream shop to stop for desert which killed just enough time.

We made our way over to the beachside bingo board where there was a local DJ hyping up the crowd. This event is clearly a big deal in this town! He chose a random girl in the crowd to shake up the chicken in hopes its stomach would girgle enough to quickly drop some sh*t. Talk about entertaining! We watched the first bingo round just to get some funny pictures and a good laugh and then headed back to the hotel. As soon as we got back, Tyson really wanted us all to sit around a table at the poolside lounge and take turns telling funny stories. We let the kids go first and they made up some pretty hilarious stories that made us all belly laugh. Then Marshall and I told them real stories of our previous travels that included some pretty gross potty humor we knew they’d enjoy.

The following morning was our last day in San Pedro. You guessed it! We spent all morning hanging out at the pool. Once we checked out of the hotel, we stored our bags at the front office and borrowed two free rickety old bikes to explore the area more. Marshall put Tyson on the back of his bike and I put Wesley on mine.  We rode about a mile to a modern rooftop restaurant called Rain. It had gorgeous views of the ocean and a nearby lagoon. I had a heavenly passion fruit cocktail that was by far my favorite drink on the entire trip! It was so delicious I just had to get a second one! After lounging there for a couple hours, we got back on our bikes and rode to a random beachside bar to see if they had a beach area suitable for the kids to play. Although it was super windy, the kids enjoyed swinging in the hammocks and competing with each other at cornhole.

Once we arrived back at the hotel, we returned our bikes and hopped in a taxi to the San Pedro airport. We walked straight to the check in desk and told the lady that we were here for our 4pm flight. She didn’t even ask for our name or want to see our any proof of ID which was odd. She just handed us four generic plastic boarding passes and sent us to the upstairs bar. The security at this airport is slightly questionable.  It was also the smallest airport we had ever been to but had the nicest waiting area with a full bar, fancy tables and chairs, and modern art all over the walls. While we waited for our flight, Tyson went to the restroom and came out shouting “There are GIANT SKID MARKS IN THE TOILET”. He then had to check the women’s restroom for skid marks but luckily didn’t find any. Only my child would do such a thing!

When they announced our plane was boarding, we walked outside toward the wrong plane and then someone came running out to tell us we needed to get on a different plane. Oops!! As we boarded the plane, we noticed it wasn’t a full flight. The pilot asked Marshall if he’d like to ride up front with him and be his copilot for the short 15-minute flight. Heck yeah! He was ecstatic since his goal in the next couple years is to obtain his pilot’s license for similar sized planes. Marshall, Tyson and I all enjoyed the majestic views below while Wesley decided to nap instead. It’s ok buddy, we took pictures and videos of the scenery and you snoozing.

Tomorrow we are excited to head to the jungles of San Ignacio Belize!