Rediscovering Canada – Things To See and Do If You Live in Canada

Often, when we con­sider tak­ing a vaca­tion, we do not nec­es­sar­ily think about places within our own coun­try, as the trend is very much about vaca­tion­ing abroad. Res­i­dents of Canada will already know that it is one of the most beau­ti­ful coun­tries in the world but may not be aware of how much there is that they can do with­out hav­ing to cross a border.

Back to the Maya World: Chichén Itzá

Chichén Itzá is prob­a­bly the most famous and most vis­ited Maya arche­o­log­i­cal site. The main tem­ple is one of the icons of Mex­ico and it never fails to impress. We’ve been there three times and I’m still in awe!

Ambergris Caye, San Pedro and La Isla Bonita

Orig­i­nally, Caye Calker was the back­packer hang­out while Amber­gris Caye, more devel­oped and big­ger, catered to richer peo­ple. We shrugged the stereo­type off and hopped on the boat.

In The Chicken Bus

Take a chicken bus, one of these old U.S. school buses painted blue, pur­ple, red or any bright colour. Lis­ten to reg­gae music blast­ing through the loudspeakers—by the end of the trip, you will know the lyrics to every Bob Mar­ley songs, resis­tance is futile. Observe the peo­ple as the hail the bus on the side of the road or as they get off in the mid­dle of nowhere. That’s Belize for you.

Caye Calker

Some­times, going back to places you love isn’t such a good idea. It’s like see­ing an old crush again—you know you prob­a­bly changed, that he prob­a­bly changed, and that noth­ing good can come out of it.

Yet I was look­ing for­ward to our trip to Caye Calker, one of the small islands off the shore of Belize City.

Belize City

Belize City, like a lot of cities in Cen­tral Amer­ica, doesn’t have a good rep­u­ta­tion. It is much less laid-back than the rest of the coun­try and few find it charming.

Yet it changed.

Dangriga

The ride turned out to be sur­pris­ingly pleas­ant. Sure, my legs are always too long to fit com­fort­ably in buses orig­i­nally designed to shut­tle North Amer­i­can kids to and back from school, but the road was good and the scenery quite relax­ing. Reg­gae music blasted through the loud­speak­ers for the entire 2.5 hour long trip but this too was relaxing.

Back in Belize, Placencia

Our first stop in Belize is Pla­cen­cia, a small town some­what pop­u­lar with British, Cana­dian and Amer­i­can tourists. It’s quiet, pic­turesque and the pace of life is Caribbean-slow. Rows and rows of colour­ful wooden houses, more or less dam­aged by the humid­ity or the rain, kids in oh-so-British school uni­forms and clus­ter of tourists at the bars.