This being the tropics, some days it gets quite warm. The average daytime temperature in April and May is over 30 degrees, falling to a cool 26/27 at night. And the Caribbean sea is about 1 1/2 hours away - too far to drive for a quick dip in the middle of the day. And you don't get cool swimming in the Caribbean - off the coast of Belize, the water temperature is like a warm bath.
So one of our questions has been: where do the locals go when they want to cool off? The answer is: the river - the 'Belmopan riviera'. That's a good answer - but the river doesn't actually go through the town, and we didn't understand anyone's directions. (You know where Junior lives? No? What about John's house? OK: you know the shop where people go to get ...) It seemed you had to know where it was already, in order to understand when people told you where it was.
Then, success! We found it by accident! And it's lovely. Very lovely. The route we found involved going through a local national park (with paid admission). But now we know where to go, I'm sure we can find another way to get there...
So here are some photos of the river. Clean water. Amazingly clean, clear water - despite having people wash their laundry / dog / self in it.
So we've found our local place to swim. Only problem: because we weren't out looking for it, we didn't take our swimming things with us. As a result, we haven't actually been swimming here yet :( although we did take our shoes off and let the fishes nibble our toes for a while ...
So one of our questions has been: where do the locals go when they want to cool off? The answer is: the river - the 'Belmopan riviera'. That's a good answer - but the river doesn't actually go through the town, and we didn't understand anyone's directions. (You know where Junior lives? No? What about John's house? OK: you know the shop where people go to get ...) It seemed you had to know where it was already, in order to understand when people told you where it was.
Then, success! We found it by accident! And it's lovely. Very lovely. The route we found involved going through a local national park (with paid admission). But now we know where to go, I'm sure we can find another way to get there...
So here are some photos of the river. Clean water. Amazingly clean, clear water - despite having people wash their laundry / dog / self in it.
So we've found our local place to swim. Only problem: because we weren't out looking for it, we didn't take our swimming things with us. As a result, we haven't actually been swimming here yet :( although we did take our shoes off and let the fishes nibble our toes for a while ...
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2 comments:
We finally had a swim! We went down to the river yesterday at the end of one of the hottest days yet - 37 degrees C in the shade, over 45 at the height in the sun!! The river is even better than it looks - cool, flowing, refreshing... but we have to watch out for the current and submerged branches. Welcome to Belmopan Riviera!
found your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later
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