Jitterbugging for Jesus

I once stopped on the side of the road to take pictures of it when I was in town and a couple of Belizean security guys with forbidding, automatic weapons came running up to me and promptly took my camera, while I fumbled with my wallet for the photocopy of my passport, and deleted the pix I had just innocently snapped of the U.S. Embassy with its big, pretty U.S. flag.

I always drive by the Embassy when I’m in town and pull over and watch the American flag wave and thank God, literally every time that I do, that I was blessed to be born American.

But I always cooperate fully with people bearing large firearms and badges who prefer, strongly, that I don’t take pictures of the U.S. Embassy in Belize for American security reasons.

Even if pictures of said Embassy, official and unofficial, are all over the internet including the Embassy’s web site. Click here and look around and you’ll see it.

Belmopan is a quiet, charming, pedestrian-friendly little “garden city.” It has some shady walking trails and the “outer ring” that encircles the city always has walkers or joggers on the side of the runner-friendly “Ring Road.”

Belmopan is an interesting little city, if you can call it a city. It holds the distinction of being the smallest national capital in this great big world.

Located an hour east of my home in San Ignacio and a little longer drive west of Belize City, Belmopan was created out of nothingness, years after Hurricane Hattie, in 1961, blew away most of the longtime capital city of Belize City.

The new inland capital that is Belmopan was built to be hurricane-proof, far enough inland for extra protection to-boot.

Hurricanes are hell on Belize City and always will be–but monsters like Hattie are rare, thank God, and merciless.

Click here for more about how Belmopan–it’s “Bel” for Belize and “Mopan” for the big Mopan River that runs from the Guatemala border down to the sea near Belize City–and how it came to be.

And see here for more about Hattie.

And if you’re a bird lover hankering to come to Belize for its great birding–if you’re not a “birder” when you move here you will be– click here for an Audubon-protected site in Belmopan.

Another shady path that ends at the “Ring Road” that encircles the nation’s laid-back little capital city.

Belmopan is no Belizean tourist town, except as a stopping point for tourists to get to more interesting places. And the beautiful and scenic “Hummingbird Highway” on the outskirts of town takes you to good, now fully-paved highways to all the famous coastal beaches in southern Belize.

But Belmopan is a pleasant, quiet little master-planned city at that, and an important one for expats. It is, after all, the capital, and we expats can buy some things or get some services that may be hard to find other places.

Belize, remember, is a tiny, third-world country, a population of only 300,000. There’s no Wal-Marts or malls or shopping centers–not even a McDonald’s or any other American fast-food eatery in the entire country.

Some, especially old vagabonds and free spirits like me, find that refreshing, especially given all the color and unique opportunities for laying back and living large on little money in a country always described as a piece of Eden on the Caribbean.

Others find they can’t deal with no mall at all.

Anglican Church in Belmopan, near its denominational cousin First Methodist Church of Belmopan, which is opening its new Belmopan Methodist High School next month. Your intrepid American Methodist reporter will be there to send dispatches from Belmopan for that event.

Monday marked my one-year anniversary in Belize and I’m all in. But it’s always reassuring to know that Old Glory is always waving in Belmopan for me.

First Methodist, Belmopan, opening its new high school next month. Your intrepid reporter will be there with his camera for that big-bang Belmopan event.