San Pedro Visit
A fellow intern from the U of L has been completing her internship in San Pedro, Belize. We were lucky enough to get the chance to visit Laurie’s school and see how her experience in San Pedro compares to ours in PG. We started our ‘business’ trip with a visit back to Caye Caulker. My friend Steph met us there as she has come to Belize for a month to see the sights and visit. It was a little weird returning to where we spent our first few days in Belize, but it was good to see some familiar faces of some of the locals we had met there. We made sure to visit our favourite spots, one of which is the highest point on the island and the chairs are hanging swings. We then caught the water taxi over to the island called Ambergris Caye, where San Pedro is located. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we stepped off the boat as San Pedro is very touristy and quite developed in comparison to the rest of Belize. We went on a bit of a shopping spree, as San Pedro had many things that just aren’t available in PG. Bathing suites for example are nowhere to be found in PG as locals simply swim in their clothes. Another one of the differences was that almost everyone in San Pedro gets around via golf cart. We were shocked at the prices, as most places are geared towards American tourists. The hostel we stayed at reminded us all out of something from a horror movie and was next to the airport’s landing strip. It did the trick for a cheap place to stay and ended up being right next to the Laurie’s school. Island Academy is a private school started by a wealthy American woman who didn’t agree with teachers disciplining her children with corporal punishment in. It is the only school of its kind in the country and we had actually walked by it on several occasions before we realized that it was in fact a school. The vast majority of the students are those of North American families living in Belize, although there are a few of the wealthier Belizean children enrolled. All but two of the teachers are North American, and have dream class sizes of no more than 15 students. The school was a tight knit community of only 80 students, with a morning greeting and meeting held each morning under the school’s palapa. I got quite the chuckle out of the morning’s warning of not to play under the coconut trees as the coconuts had been falling off, and apparently more people die from falling coconuts than shark bites.
I don’t think Laurie’s and our experiences could be more polar opposites. Thanks for a great experience Laurie!