February 2, 2011 (The Winding Road to Hopkins)

Today- Wednesday- was destined to be an interesting travel and "business opportunity" day. As it turned out, it was also a day when the initial spark was ignited relative to a possible land purchase in Belize (which has continued to persist now for two months past the date of this blog entry. From the moment I first met Kirby-- on the main dock at Corozol Town waiting for an early morning water taxi to San Pedro-- he made it clear he was planning to visit an orange farm located along the Hummingbird Hightway which was listed for sale on the Internet. I had told him that I would love to tag along on his trip to the orange farm, and today was the day. The first leg of the journey was a "bargain bus ride" from San Ignacio Town to Belmopan. The cost of this ride was a whopping US$1.50. In Belmopan (the capital city of Belize) we switched to a different bus -- also costing US$1.50-- that would bring us along the Hummingbird Highway to the exit ("mile 25") at which Kirby had been told we had to get off the bus to drop in at the Orange Farm in question. Kirby had been told that the farm was only a short walking distance from the highway-- and just a block or two from the "mile 25" drop point. The plan after looking at the orange farm was to go back out on the highway and wait for the next bus-- which we hoped would not require too long of a wait.

When we arrived at the mile 25 point, we jumped off the bus, grabbed our luggage, and walked to the nearest house to ask about the whereabouts of the person Kirby had been told to see. We eventually found the man, who had been acting as caretaker of the place, and he gave us a guided tour of the 25 acre orange farm-- which Kirby had been told was on the market for a price of US$45,000.00.


Kirby and the Caretaker (Who We Nicknamed "Stretch")

The farm was located in a valley between two incredibly picturesque mountain ridges, one of which is shown in the following photograph:

The Orange Farm Kirby Was Interested Is on the Left

The surrounding area was breathtaking, but I think Kirby realized in about five minutes after talking briefly with the caretaker and the next door neighbor (also from Canada), that buying the farm would probably be a losing proposition for a number of reasons. First, everyone was saying there was no money in oranges as the pricing structure, supply and demand made it impossible to make a profit  Second, Kirby - who had grown up on a farm in Canada and had been a landscaper for the past 25 years- immediately saw that the trees and the soil were in terrible condition. Well- that didn't take long!  Both Kirby and I were wearing shorts and T-shirts--a definite no no in this part of Belize-- so after about one hundred bug bites each we were ready to get the hell out of here.

The Area Surrounding the Orange Farm

We walked back to the mile 25 pick up point, and thankfully the bus to Dangriga came by within about one half hour. We didn't intend to stay in Dangriga -- we wanted to somehow get to the nearby Town of Hopkins which we had heard really good things about -- so we traveled to the Dangriga bus station and caught a bus to Punta Gorda with the intent of jumping out in the middle of nowhere and flagging down a ride to Hopkins.. We were incredibly lucky that a van was waiting right at the drop off point when we jumped off the bus with several other people. We climbed in the van and were promptly shuttled to Hopkins by Elwin and Barbara-- who operate a Hopkins-based tour operation called Barb and El's Taxi and Charters-- who subsequently became our friends.  I will pick up our initial introduction to the magical Town of Hopkins in my next installment.

Some More of the Beautiful Scenery Along the Hummingbird Highway