SO I Was Thinking…Maybe Belize Electricity Should Turn Off Power Every Sunday

Yesterday there was a long inconvenient but announced power (or current – as it’s called here in Belize) outage.  6am to 3pm for the entire island.  BEL would be replacing poles and things, maintaining radiators and things.  Who knows.  But in the heat of early summer that is a very very long time.  Minutes without your fan seem to double…maybe triple.  Hours?  An eternity!

The US government website says that food is safe for up to 4 hours in your fridge when power is out.  Questionable but not good.  But REALLY not good?  Yesterday was Fathers’ Day.  Yesterday was the first official day of San Pedro’s 2014 Lobsterfest and maybe most importantly to the local population?  Yesterday was day 3 of the WORLD CUP.

Disaster I thought.  But as I often am, I was totally wrong.  Yesterday was a beautiful day with a stiff breeze.  A few generators were running for the die hard football fans but most people just went OUTSIDE.  Fancy that.  Outside on the beach on a gorgeous gorgeous day.  HERE is what I saw around town…

The first stop was Caribbean Villas.  It was early still, around 12:30pm but the crowd was filling in for the first day of Lobsterfest activities.  Christine of the Crawl Crew was stamping the official San Pedro Lobsterfest Passports.

Cute nails, cute stamp.

The high winds had the water churned up a bit but still very nice.

I started walking up the beach.  My ultimate destination was the 1:30pm game for the National Elite Belize Basketball finals.  Our San Pedro Tiger Sharks Vs.  The Western Ballaz (awesome name, right?).

The tide was quite low revealing lots of pretty sand.  Here is a view of Hurricane’s Ceviche Bar.

 

There was tons of kids and families out swimming.  Best way to cool off when you don’t even have a fan available.

Just beautiful out.

Farther up by Fido’s Restaurant.

 

These beach shrubs are flowering.  I don’t know what they are…but they are everywhere and I had no idea that they flowered.

These ones were outside the beautiful Phoenix Resort.I made it up to the High School at 1:30 (game time) and a huge pack of Cayo fans and players were outside the locked gates.

The auditorium had been used for graduation the night before and workers were still putting up the back boards.  This game wasn’t going to start for a while.

My friend picked me up and we headed farther north.  After 2 days of what I deem “clean eating” I wanted a burger.  And I knew the best place to get one.  (Read all about the best burger in San Pedro here.)

DJ’s Belizean Heat Burger.  Yum.  Yum.  Yum.  HOT.

No electricity needed to prepare this PLUS look at the scenery around the restaurant.

The basketball court, kids in the water, families parked on golf carts catching some breeze…

I have not adjusted these photos one bit…the water is just GORGEOUS.

I polished off my burger and headed back to the game.  Big crowd.  This guy (the guy who is at EVERY event country-wide) was selling super loud, ear drum injuring horns (and everyone had one.)

And the game was in full swing.

The Ballaz and their fans were LOUD and in good spirits.  Behind by 10 in the first half, they rallied in front of our Tiger Sharks for a bit…

The game was so rough and so close but OUR TIGER SHARKS WON!  53 to 52.  Game Two of the Three is Friday in San Ignacio.  GO TIGER SHARKS.

So, as you can see, we don’t need no stinking power!  What a gorgeous day to force everyone outside…there was certainly plenty to do.  And so great to see so many people out in the water and the breeze.

So, my friend jokingly suggested it and it got me thinking…maybe BEL should turn off the power every Sunday.  Just for a few hours.  What do you think?  Sometimes I need to be forced to take advantage of what this island has to offer.

If some how they could also turn off cell phones?  I think it could be ideal.