My Belize Yacht Club T-shirt often provokes the query: “”Where the hell is that?”
In Central America, I explain. It’s the cutest nation on earth. With a population of 220,000, it has its own Governor-General and a Parliament of 21 who occupy two impossibly out-sized buildings in the capital Belmopan, population 7000. Yes; 7000. The capital was moved inland from Belize City in the mid-1960s after Hurricane Hattie virtually wrecked the place.
The tallest building in the country is a 300-metre high Mayan ruin. And the second-tallest building is a 280-metre high Mayan ruin. The Mayan mysteriously deserted their cities in Central America before Columbus arrived.
The Spanish claimed the whole of Central America, but in 1683 shipwrecked British sailors made the first settlement in Belize, setting up logging camps for mahogany along the Belize River.
Most of the dwellings in Belize City are timber. The city (pop 80,000) and all the other towns in Belize are like Queensland provincial towns (though more ramshackle) with their timber houses on stilts.
The loggers had a terrible time from the Spanish for 150 years until they drove the Spaniards off with a little help from the Royal Navy in 1798. The place became the colony of British Honduras in 1862 and became independent Belize in 1981.
The main political fight was between the pro- and anti-independence political parties, but since independence the two parties have nothing ideological to fight about so political attacks are mainly personal. It seems Belize doesn’t have a defamation law and the papers are full of the most delicious and malicious gossip about politicians and political candidates.
It is in direct contrast to most of the controlled press in the surrounding Latin countries.
Most tourists (usually American) fly straight to the reef islands for sun and diving. The diving is the best in the world outside Australia’s great barrier reef, but it is silly not to spend time on the mainland, especially as very few tourists do. The caving, Mayan ruins, canoeing along jungle rivers, the wildlife, the absence of hordes of tourists and some of the most relaxed people on earth make an exotic gem.