Mom is gone back home again now. We took her to the airport last week. Miss you, Mom! We all had a really good visit.
So many people worry about missing family and friends when you make a move so far away but I like to think of everything in terms of airplane rides. We are still only one day away from almost all of our family. That is the same as when we lived in northern Canada and amazingly, it's actually cheaper to fly to Belize from a lot of Canadian cities than it was to fly to our isolated northern town! And thankfully for us, northerners like to travel so if you've kept up on my blog over the last few years you'll see that we've had no shortage of visitors.
On that note, when we took Mom to the airport in Belize City we picked up friends, Daryl and Jennifer from Fort Nelson. We don't believe in any visitor downtime!
So many people worry about missing family and friends when you make a move so far away but I like to think of everything in terms of airplane rides. We are still only one day away from almost all of our family. That is the same as when we lived in northern Canada and amazingly, it's actually cheaper to fly to Belize from a lot of Canadian cities than it was to fly to our isolated northern town! And thankfully for us, northerners like to travel so if you've kept up on my blog over the last few years you'll see that we've had no shortage of visitors.
On that note, when we took Mom to the airport in Belize City we picked up friends, Daryl and Jennifer from Fort Nelson. We don't believe in any visitor downtime!
This is trip #2 for Jen and Daryl. They were here last year. I'm always a little surprised when we have repeat guests. Not that I think Belize is a boring place to visit and I like to think that we are pretty good hosts but vacation time and dollars are precious. It's a bit of an honour to be included in someone's holiday especially more than once. I'm not being sarcastic...I really mean that!
They arrived in Belize on a morning flight which was kind of a nice change for us. Most of our visitors get an afternoon connection through Houston and arrive around 4pm. After collecting luggage, the necessary stop at Duty Free and then Immigration we don't usually get on the road to home until it's getting close to dark. But this time we picked up Daryl and Jen, did a bit of running around in the city and dropped Mom back at the airport and we were well on the way home by 1pm. And that gave us a chance to stop at the Belize Zoo! I haven't been to the zoo for a couple of years so I was very excited.
Now that Adam and I have our official residency status we get into all sorts of places cheaper and the zoo is one of those places. It's a nice treat because we do a lot of things with visitors so when I am on my 17th trip to Cahal Pech it's nice to only have to pay the 'local's rate'. It's a little pricey for us retirees but not overly so considering what it takes to run a zoo. Before getting our residency status we would often wait in the parking lot while friends toured a site. The cost for the zoo is $30BZD for non-nationals and $7BZD for locals. This time I was armed with my official Belizean ID so in I went!
I was so impressed. They have done so many improvements since my last visit, the largest being a new welcome centre, cafe, and gift shop. New sidewalks all around and many of the animal enclosures are upgraded with swimming holes and such. This is a really special zoo. All of the animals are rescues or have been born in the zoo. Their biggest focus is education. The children of Belize are learning about conservation and how to value and respect the wildlife in their environment. Unfortunately, this is a somewhat new idea here but there is definitely positive change happening and the zoo can claim a lot of credit for that.