Pics of Caye Caulker and San Pedro Lobster Festival

Lobster season in Belize is 8 months long and always starts off with countrywide celebrations honoring the fishermen and the environmental reasons for the season. I managed to attend two lobster festivals again this year. I had a great time at each one as always and both were a little different than the time before. I also caught the fair a few times with a few different people and included my 2 favorite pics from that as a bonus collage below. I will start with the last lobster fest first.

Caye Caulker Lobster Festival

I’m thankful for Ecologic Divers owner and good friend Kendall’s invitation to join mutual friends Aimee and Kenny on the Impromptu. I was ready for a relaxing social sail and was excited to see who else was on the boat. Other than 2 Karen’s I had no idea who else was coming to the party. It turned out to be a great mix of a few more people I knew and many I did not. I have always liked Caye Caulker Lobsterfest because it is daytime and it’s smaller in size. Caye Caulker is also such a cute colorful island and is always fun to visit especially by Catamaran. Even before we touched the ground, I was sure of 2 things:

1. The group would immediately start drifting to the Lazy Lizard ebbing and flowing along the way.
2. I was going to do my own personal eating crawl on the way there.

I was right on both counts. By the time we eventually hit the Lazy Lizard I had eaten a pork rib, a lobster skewer, 2 cupcakes and a pepperoni pizza slice. I drifted back and forth with various party boat crew and also enjoyed some alone time along the way. The Lizard was a beehive of activity and the most entertaining sunny day people watching. People were loving the water, chowing down and generally having a great time. A few of us opted for a short getaway and secured a taxi. The first one wanted around $80 BZD for 5 of us and we decided to try again and we ended up with a guy willing to take us on a short tour for $10 a head and dropped us right back at the party when we were done. Below are 9 of my favorite pictures I took that day.

San Pedro Lobster Festival

Normally San Pedro Lobsterfest runs for 1 week, but this year’s event ran for a full 10 days, (June 15 – 25) celebrating its 10th Anniversary. As with previous year’s, there were several venues’ all over town where if you attended you would receive a special Lobsterfest “Passport” that you would keep throughout the week to get your official stamps from each of the day or night time locations. On June 15th Amber Beach Bar & Grill was the kick-off venue this year, ending at Rain Restaurant on Friday, June 24 (with 19 others in between). It was well worth it to attend as many locations as possible on what is called the “Lobster Crawl”, because upon taking your passport to the official Lobsterfest booth at Central Park on the evening of the 25th, for each stamp you had, you received a ticket for a huge prize of a vacation for 2 to encourage a return trip to Belize for the 2017 Festival. The annual package includes complimentary local airfare, hotel stays, tours, golf cart rental, bar tabs, dinners, massages and much more). This year’s lucky winners were Tony and Suzy who were sitting in the Dallas Airport on their way home when they found out they had won. I did not really hit the events as I had 2 sets of friends in town and was enjoying time with them. Of course, the big Block Party was the one we all agreed not to miss. For me, it was different this year though as I was helping man the San Pedro Red Cross booth and I had two runners bringing food. Victoria and Ryan started me off with an order of egg rolls since one of them decided they wanted Chinese food. Even though this was lobsterfest, I was not about to say no to delivery from anywhere decent. Thankfully, it was not long before my lobster lover friends from Colorado, Maureen, Tracy, and Briley turned up and kicked up the delivery service a notch. Knowing their taste in food I was down for whatever they had a hankering for. I got lucky and it turned out to be lobster sliders and chowder from Casa Picasso – double yum. Actually triple yum, I ended up with leftovers. This years street party was jam-packed all night long and everyone that stopped to talk to me was having a great time. Condolences go out to the Rebecca and Elito (the main organizers) and the Arceo family as sadly, Elito’s dad passed away. Both he and Rebecca did an amazing job of making everything happen in spite of their loss. If you did not make it this year and need a bit more convincing to come for the celebration next year? International Living writer and Belize expat, Ann Kuffner’s video of the big Block Party will help twist your arm.   Since I was too busy hula hooping for donations at the San Pedro Red Cross booth, I had my food runners Ryan and Victoria go snap some crowd shots for me as well. I did snap a couple near the bottom and My Beautiful Belize (visitor guide) got a great one of our Red Cross Booth.