When anniversary trips turn into content

By Randy Capps

SAN PEDRO, BELIZE — I've been lucky enough to do a little traveling, but I've never actually gotten to use an international dateline. It's nice to still be checking journalistic boxes at this point in my life.

Shanna and I took a trip recently in celebration of our 23rd wedding anniversary, and as the aforementioned dateline suggests, we found ourselves on Ambergris Caye, an island off the coast of Belize.

For reference, it's southwest of Florida and a few hundred miles south of Cancun.

Without getting too deep in the magazine weeds, our 2023 deadlines are tighter than last year's, so our vacation took a week away from my editorial process.

So, in my normal, draw-a-straight line style, I've decided to turn the trip into content.

The idea for this trip, and others like it, is retirement planning. The idea of not going to work everyday is appealing enough on its own, but the notion of doing so near a beach on a tropical island is jet fuel for the imagination. So, we're looking around the Caribbean (or in this case, Caribbean adjacent) for the perfect, not-too-expensive spot to spend our rapidly approaching golden years.

Belize ticks a lot of boxes. English speaking? Check. Good currency exchange rate? Yep. Proximity to beaches? On paper, sure.

Before I tell you everything I love about Belize, and there's quite a bit, I have to tell you why we've crossed Ambergris Caye off the list.

It's an island with no beaches. Sure, you can jump on a golf cart and drive for 45 minutes to Secret Beach, which as one of the only beaches on the island and one that's heavily populated with tourists, is probably misnamed.

In our journey to Lamanai, our tour guide shared that, for beaches, you have to hit the southern tip of the mainland. I'm intrigued, because the people of Belize are wonderful.

Everywhere we went, we made friends. I don't want to get him in trouble by naming him, but one of the front desk clerks at Alaia Belize drove us around San Pedro on a golf cart. We hit a farmer's market where Shanna bought a unique and oddly-shaped cutting board, he took us for ceviche (raw shrimp or fish in citrus juice) and got us a bag of jicama (an edible root that takes on the flavor of the things you marinate it in).

Another one of the guys, Jesus, told us about his place on the water and all the plans he had for building a dock in front of it. His eyes lit up when he told the story of one of his friends from Colorado bringing him some snow, since he had never before seen any.

We had tea in the morning at a shop that only takes cash, Belizean or American, run by French-Canadian expats and that place is across the street from a local restaurant that serves johnnycakes. Good luck finding a chain store or restaurant in San Pedro. It's all local, though an American eye can see the humor in the Marbucks coffee shop or Patz Cafe.

My favorite part of the trip was going to Lamanai, which is loosely translated from the Mayan for submerged crocodile. It's a bit of an ordeal, though.

As the crow flies, it's only about 50 miles from San Pedro to the Lamanai Archaeological Reserve. But we had to take a van to the airport, take a 20-minute flight back to the mainland, ride in another car for about and hour and 15 minutes before taking an hourlong boat ride down the New River, or as the Mayans called it, the River of Strange Faces, before reaching the ruins.

Lamanai was built around 1500 BC and was occupied for more than 3,000 years before being abandoned in approximately 1600 AD. The main attractions are the Mask, Jaguar and High Temples, and even today, the site is still being excavated.

It's amazing to stand there and realize that, thousands of years ago, a thriving civilization once inhabited an area that has since been almost buried by the surrounding jungle.

For a history nerd like myself, it was quite a day.

As usual, the work piled up while we were gone, and the first workday back on the job was a Monday in every sense of the word.

And then I remembered something. The fact that I can string sentences together — and am lucky enough to have married a marketing genius — means that I get to walk around ancient Mayan ruins and then turn it all into content.

That's not too shabby, my friends.