April - one week after arrival

Most of the people reading this should have received an email from us by now, with news from our first week here in Belize. If you've not had that, but would like to, please email one of us and we'll gladly send it to you. Most of the descriptions of what we are doing will be sent out by regular emails. What this blog allows us to do easily is add some photos or even video to supplement what we've written.

So let's start with where we are. Thanks to the wonderful people at Google, we can grab an image of Belmopan using satellite photos. We'll begin with a large scale image. If you double click your mouse on any of the images, then they should open at a much bigger scale.


As you can see, the town is laid out quite formally, with an inner ring road circling the oldest part of town, where we are, and then newer estates being added around the edge.

The inner ring road is the rectangle around the four coloured purple and blue - green markers at the centre of the image. The Northern ring road follows the word "Belmopan", the Eastern road starts at the capital C of Cayo, Belize. (Cayo is the district of Belize). Now let's zoom in a bit.



The odd shape at the top right of the image is the upper of the two purple markers. ie, this image shows the area to the left / west of the two purple markers on the first picture.

The red roofed building at the bottom left is the ATI = Anglican Theological Institute, where Malcolm will be running training courses. The green roofed building with a six sided roof is St Ann's Church. There is a path / walkway running in at the top right / East of the image. The cluster of buildings below / south of the path is a preschool / nursery. The first building you come to above / north of the path is our house.

The cluster of buildings on the other side of the road from the house is Belmopan city Hall; and the large blue roofed building North / above St Ann's church is a children's home. You should be able to see the yellow bus belonging to the children's home parked on the access road to the Church car park.

Now some more pictures of Belize.


This was taken just a couple of hours after we arrived, at the Bird's Isle restaurant in Belize City. With Ruth is Bishop Philip Wright, and Tess Meadows from Canada. Our first meal in Belize included kingfish, rice and beans and fresh fruit juice. We'll probably take you there if you come to visit us!


This is the view from the verandah of the Bishop's house, on the Southern Foreshore. We are looking across the inlet to the marina. If you come in by boat and travel to the left of this picture you come to the swing bridge that gives access to the river which divides north and south Belize City. The buildings on the far side include some of the posher hotels, as well as a dedicated tourist area for some of the people who come to Belize City on cruise ships that dock here for a day.

I'll try to add some photos of the house next time.