Christmas in Belize

Merry Christmas everyone. Hope you are all having a great holiday celebration what ever you are doing. So far my Christmas morning has been spent puttering chatting on the coconut phone, Linked In group Belize Life, tacogirl.com facebook, Ambergris Caye Message Board,  texting Lara & Leisa, chatting with family, drinking instant ice coffee and listening to the Christmas Eve Special 2012 on Coast to Coast am radio.

George Noory was joined by Santa Claus  aka Sal Lizard in the first hour. Lizard He who has been playing Santa Claus professionally for over 20 years and shared some of his favorite memories, as well as observations. He’s found that the true meaning of Christmas has to do with the spirit of generosity, where in some cases people make anonymous donations or gifts in the mode of a “Secret Santa.” The rest of the show featured Open Lines, with callers telling memorable Christmas stories, as well as holiday miracles – perfect Christmas morning entertainment.

When I left off yesterdays blog, I was heading into town to do gifts for the gift game today. I started out at SP Hardware and saw some nice Rubbermaid coolers that were slightly over the $70 bzd budget and a rice cooker, but we did that one last year and I wanted something new. Since they were open till 8pm on Christmas eve I decided to continue on and leave that as a last resort.

Next stop was wings, they were having a big sale outside and their music was blaring, it almost made me not want to go in but I am glad I did. It was much quieter inside and I hit the jackpot in the appliance section with a 15% off sale to boot, got a nice Proctor Silex slow cooker and a fancy Black & Decker iron with vertical steam option, I also scored a cute baby present for Tinker.

For a long time Wings has had a customer service sign by the cash about how the customer is number one and I have to say they lived up on that yesterday. I mentioned the sales guy that was helping me shop and take my stuff to the cash that the big heavy slow cooker box was coming open a the bottom to make sure the item did not drop out as he was carrying it. When I finished my shopping and got to the cash, I was going to ask them if they could tape up the box and I saw it was already done 🙂 They were also great about letting me leave my shopping there while I ran the rest of my errands in town. Did you know Wings was our first and only department store on the island and they have been around since December 2005? Check out Wings Department Store video commercial by Manuel Media.

I had to drop off a last min donation at  Wayo’s beach bar in Boca Del Rio for the Chapin Duran fundraiser from my mom and ended up getting the most delicious tacos on backstreet afterward. La Hora restaurant is across from Super Buy, the sight of them carving  meat off the skewer and the smell stopped me dead in my tracks. Nothing like authentic Mexican style tacos and they had pineapple as a topping option which turned out to be super delicious. I highly recommend stopping by there, I did not check their menu but the tacos were very reasonable at $2.50 Belize dollars a piece.

When I got back to Wings to get my stuff, I decided I needed to raid their half price Christmas ornaments section for fancy wrapping paper and present decorations. Scored well on both counts nothing like a glitter poinsettia to decorate  our great secret santa gifts. As I walked out of the store with my heavy bag I was thinking about catching a cab and no sooner did I cross the road, Ricardo stopped and offered me a ride to Pedro’s Hotel which was perfect as I was able to wrap the presents in the office and leave them there.

Hung out with Beth and Pedro a bit at the bar while tacoboy and I waited for our order of deep fried chicken wings. We were both pretty tired and were fully intending to go home eat and have an early night, but that was not in the cards. When we reached Maria’s fruit stand we saw Cowboy Doug and he stopped us to go for a drink [or 3] at Roadkill bar which as fun as we got so see more friends and hear All Cayed up play the blues for a few songs.