¶ Exploring Belize With Stephen Honeybill
Hi , welcome to our podcast when Next Travel with Kristen and Carol . We are two moms with a passion to travel . Each episode we interview people around the globe to explore where to go next . So today we're meeting with Stephen Honeybill from Belize . And how do you say the town that you're in ?
The village of Chinouche , which is in Corozal District .
Do you want to tell your story , like how you found Belize when you first went there , how it came to be that you created a hotel for yourself , and is this your first entree into hosting and hotel ownership ? That would be awesome .
Well , it started way back in 2010 . When I came here , you know , I retired , and this hasn't been a real retirement for me , because I designed this little bed and breakfast , which was doing great , until COVID hit and then we were closed down for months . I eventually got my gold standard , officially a hotel .
Well , that means I have to do three meals a day if they want them and there's really just me here , so it is a little bit of a challenge . Bed and breakfast is okay , but doing the other meals can be difficult .
The BTB , who is the arm of the government that I pay my taxes to , made it mandatory that , if you're going to open , you had to become a tourism gold standard and because we're out in the sticks , shall we say , you have to be able to provide everything for everyone seven days a week .
Since I applied for my license in , or I began the application in July of last year , but it took until I wrote it down November 5th to receive my license .
Did you have any visitors during that time ? Yeah , I could imagine how difficult that was .
But even now I don't have visitors on a regular basis . Back in 2017 , I built a yoga palapa out back , basically 30 by 30 . I built this gorgeous building out of warrywood , which is a type of wood that grows along the coast here . It's really gorgeous , it's all indented and it's waving in and out , and so those are my posts all the way around .
And then there are different types of logs for the roof and it's all thatched . So when you go inside , people sort of go ah , a little side note about wood in Belize . Did you know that mahogany is considered a soft wood here ?
Wow , and when I was building , I was able to get planks 14 inch wide , 20 feet long , an inch thick for framing lumber and there was not a single knot in it . Let's use once and throw away . Let's use once and throw away . The woods down here are so hard that you have to drill them .
Drill holes in them so that you can put a fastener through , whether it be a bolt or even a screw , because the wood is so hard . Orchid Inn , bed and .
Breakfast . I don't know if that's the older , what is that ? That's yours , okay , oh , and I see a picture . Very nice , oh , this is great and it's right on the water .
Well , it's a couple hundred feet from . I can see the water from the rooftop .
Yes , that's what the picture I see here .
And then there's some sort of there's a long dock , long dock , few small boats and then some sort of round , circular uh structure .
So that's a palapa out on the end of the dock , got it . Okay . Is that that's not the yoga ? Is that the yoga ?
no , no , that's something different , okay if you go to my website , the crimson orchid inncom . I'm there okay , somewhere in there , I don't remember exactly where , but there are multiple pictures in there it says uh , there's home about dmb guest rooms , amenities , things to do , dining , yoga , retreats , packages , weddings .
I see in the packages I see and the bottom of the packages , there's the girl paddleboarding and there's the yoga studio . It looks like with the , with a thatched roof on it and very yummy grilled food , grilled vegetables . It looks like great job on the cooking . I like that well .
The thing that I found with yoga retreats is you really have to expand your repertoire . When I do yoga retreats I do all the catering here . I occasionally get Bill from Bill and Jenny's over here and he likes working in my kitchen because you can see the kitchen on the website somewhere .
Yeah , I would love to host a yoga retreat there sometime and like just do all the marketing and co-do it with you at some point . I mean , I have two more years , I have a little bit more free time to do stuff like that , but that just would sound amazing .
Well , maybe you need to do it for a search so that you can set up a small yoga retreat . I can only hold a total of 18 people here .
Oh , okay .
At the inn if there are two people to a room . But I've only got two rooms with two beds . In All the rest are either queen-size beds or the bridal suite , which is a king-size bed . Okay , or we need to get with dave burger and put people in casitas I did one retreat where I had 30 people , which is an awful lot of people to have on a yoga retreat .
Yeah , and that was challenging , let's say okay , is there yogis instructors down there , or I would bring it . I have one in but that's what she does .
A lot of people who do yoga retreats do them as part of their , their business , you know . Therefore , they'll set up a yoga retreat , they will come down and some of their instructors will come down , and I've had as many as three or four instructors , or 20 people , and they're all good at one thing or the other , and I have paddle boards .
So I've got a dozen paddle boards and that makes it good if you want to do paddle board yoga and you can anchor the paddle boards in the bay .
I'm just thinking of my business , when I have um , like , just all my contractors and employees bring them down . So that's what companies would do their own . Yeah , bring their people down , say , hey , we're gonna have this community building thing , we're gonna do yoga we're gonna do this other stuff you can do a lot of them don't do yoga 24 7 .
they'll do an early morning yoga and then they'll decide they want to go off and visit somewhere and they'll have an afternoon yoga . When they get back , or when they run over to Ambergris Quay , they'll take a boat from here , because David's got a boat which can handle 14 or 16 people .
They'll run over there for the day and come back and they'll have got the experience of going to Ambergris Key Is there any wake surfing there ? No , Just curious . This was looking at . You know , that's what I do For you individually .
I can do it because my girlfriend bought a boat at the beginning of the year and since I'm a licensed skipper , I get to look after it , and she's actually up in Maine .
Oh nice . Yeah , the boats for wake surfing are a little . They're modified and totally different and they're usually like three story I don't know that's the newer boats , they kind of call it . It's just a totally different . Like you put 6,000 pounds of ballast in it , so it like tilts the boat and then it creates'm like looking at it , I'm sure it's shallow .
We've only got about eight feet of water .
That's what I figured too . I was looking at that too , that maybe it was a little shallow . But yeah , you can't generate the power to get a wave , if it's not at least ideally 12 feet and 10 or 12 feet , but it's still beautiful there and tropical and gorgeous .
And I know Carol had mentioned Belize and just her interest in it and I was curious also just what people tend to do there , what the climate's like things that you should see and do while you're there , and how long have you been there ?
I'm coming up on 11 years .
Wow , amazing . And so what ?
are the things I guess I'd start with you . What are your favorite things to do ? And then , what do you see that people come and really
¶ Experience and Lifestyle in Belize
enjoy ? Transitioned into power boats when I was 20 , 21 , when I was teaching sailing in the States at a summer camp . I run over during the summer to teach sailing , but I learned water skiing at the same time and I got my license in the States in New York State , who are captain of a boat up to 300 tons .
Now I never went on a boat that big , but that's what it said I could do .
Where were you living right before ? Belize ? In the United States ? Or Canada ? In upstate New ?
York and I used to be a member of a yacht club , and I used to be a member of a yacht club a club they didn't call it a yacht club , it was the Lake George Club which is in upstate New York , above Albany . And then there's a lake that's 32 miles long .
There is one yacht club on it and the depths of water would go down to 300 or 400 feet in places . It's an old glacial lake . It's absolutely gorgeous .
Okay , so some more questions about Belize . So there's . So I've been to Orchid Bay before and that's , it is a bay , so it is pretty mellow , and then you can go to the Keys so people go scuba diving there , right , that's the big attraction . They also have jungle like , and then Mayan ruins .
Those are the things that I've been to Mayan ruins are everywhere .
All around Belize there are structures . Most of them are unexcavated , and the best of them , in my opinion , is the closest large one to here , which is actually in the center of the country , which is called Lamini . That is the most beautiful trip . You take a boat from just over the toll bridge .
There's one toll bridge in Belize which is now closed because of COVID . The owner of the outfit that takes you up the river is a gentleman by the name of Errol Cadle . He no longer runs the river himself for the purposes of taking people on tours , but he's got a whole host of people driving boats that go up and down the river daily .
That's the New River , not to be confused with the Belize River . The Belize River starts over in the west and comes all the way down to Belize City . The New River starts at Lamini Lagoon , which is I forget how long it is , but it's the largest body of fresh water in Belize . It's at the lower end of the northern end of the lagoon .
When you come into the lagoon you can't see anything around . You go on shore and there's a nice little museum .
There are jalapas scattered around in the jungle for eating lunch , because , basically , when you go to Lamini , you go for several hours Now you're going to do a mile walk , which is the minimum you can do and you go up all of these beautiful temples and I think the place is only 5% excavated .
But when you walk from one structure to the next , to the next to the next , you know five or six structures is all that you're going to see . But you look around and you see the land rising around and you realize that that was a town square at one time . I have done that trip well , I stopped counting at 150 times back in 2015 .
And I've also gone fishing up there , because that's what Errol does now is he goes fishing . Three years ago I had the great pleasure of fishing for tartan with him , along with my lady friend , and she hooked just a little fish weighed 140 pounds . It was huge , wow . In the river up by the , where the warm water flows out of the sugar mill .
You know the sugar mill that is below orange walk , uh , but above , uh , carmelita . I .
I guess , technically , the , the place that you start your tour from is in carmelita , uh , ted's tower hill , actually , and um , an arrow goes out on the river from right there , and so we went out on the river and he said , you know , because he's out there almost every day . And he said , oh , the fish are running down here , you get this fish up there .
And so we went out and she hooked the fish , but it took six of us two and a half hours to land it .
Well , I was curious . I was just on the website and looking at what things you can do there so you can fish there . It sounds like definitely yoga . I see hiking , relaxing on the beaches . I see ropes course there , birding I didn't know . If there's other things that someone , what would they come to Belize to do and experience ?
Let me say that your shopping experience in Belize may leave a little bit to be desired , because you're not going to find Macy's down here or Starbucks or anything that you recognize . That's good , because they're all little mom and pop places .
There are what is referred to as chinos , and they are owned by a great supporter of belize , which are the , the taiwanese , and they're the ones that are actually . They lent Belize the money and they provided all the skilled labor to actually build the roads , and they've done a remarkable job around Belize . There are lots of Taiwanese families living in Belize .
The biggest hardware store in Corozal is owned by John Lam . There is now a supermarket here which is nothing like a US supermarket . You walk into this big barn of a place . It's all metal and they've got huge fans just circulating the air and that's all they have .
There's no air conditioning in any of these places , but you can now buy most things right in Corozal , which is only 12 miles from here , despite the fact that it can take you currently an hour or two to get there .
Is it pretty inexpensive to go there . I know , for example , hawaii . It's triple the cost of groceries and things , for example .
Hawaii , it's triple the cost of groceries and things . Well , you'll be very pleased to come down here to retire or just come down for a vacation , because there are two Belizean dollars to every US dollar , and yet things like fruit and vegetables are dirt cheap , you know , if the food is grown locally .
I believe they still have a stipulation , if you're going to come down as a resident alien , that you have to have $2,000 US a month for you and your family to survive , and I've not seen that change in all the time that I've been here . But that's not the way I came down . I got my residency the moment that I could , and therefore I can work .
I sort of work here at the inn , not too much though .
And it's safe to go there too .
It's pretty safe for people to travel , the only place that there is any concern at all is on the south side of Belize city , in a known area of gangs . By day you shouldn't have any problem . It's a little dodgy at night .
And then with the folks that come as well , and I'm assuming Spanish is spoken there mostly- Well , the language of the country is actually English . Oh , fantastic .
Okay , now that's not to be confused with American . Yeah , Because the British were here for so long . It was British Honduras back 40 years ago .
Okay .
And then it became Belize when the queen handed over the country to them . If you're just coming down to visit , you don't need Belize dollars . You can come down with US dollars and then you'll get twice the value of your US dollar .
If you bring down a lot of small bills , you can tip people a buck here and a buck there , or buy anything you want with US money .
Very easy , yeah , and most of the people that travel there , and just from your experience and hospitality , where do they come from ? What countries typically ?
Probably most of them come from either US or Canada , but I've had people from South America , from Europe . The Europeans tend to come here during the summer months , which is when they get the opportunity to travel . All the other countries tend to come between December and June .
And what's the food like too , I was curious about what's typical standard diet there .
The standard diet , anything that is fresh fruit is used , and you'll find a whole bunch of fruit that you've never even heard of .
Like , for example , what's your favorite fruit that's not heard of and what does it taste like , if you can describe ?
No , the skankiest fruit .
I like how you start with that .
It's green and it's knobbly .
That doesn't sound good so far .
And it hangs on a tree . And what they do with it ? They rot it down . It turns into this super high-powered brown drink , which tastes disgusting you have a lot of antioxidants
¶ Belize Cuisine, Climate & Travel Tips
or something . Yes , oh , yeah , oh it stinks . Yes , there are quite a few . So a few of the fruits that stink yeah , bananas are the one fruit that everyone seems to enjoy , because you don't just get regular bananas but you get red bananas and little tiny green ones , apple bananas .
They're all slightly different in flavor , but when they're fresh they are to die . For the trouble with bananas that are transported up there , they leave here green , correct , and so they . It's not like going to a tree and plucking you know a few bananas off a big bunch yeah , you know the taste is very different , I mean everything has
flavor that's goal . To pluck a banana off a tree in a jungle .
Yeah , and all the oranges , all the different types of oranges which are green . I've never seen an orange orange here in Belize .
And it's fully ripe at green ? Yes .
And they are so juicy and sweet . Now there is an orange which is meant for cooking , which is it's called a sour orange . You don't want to eat it , but for mixing it's good . And probably the biggest fruit around is lime , probably the biggest fruit around is lime .
I'm a big fan of limes .
Yeah , and when I go to the store I'll buy a couple of dozen at a time and they're only about two inches long and you cut them up and you make wonderful lime juice up . And you make wonderful lime juice , you know , just squeeze it out and and use it for cleaning up the chicken . Or you know , chicken is fabulous here .
That again has got way more flavor than any brand of chicken in the us which has been factory fed . And you know it's to die for nice .
What's the traditional I'm assuming fish has got to be big . And what's the traditional fish that's there ?
um snook never heard of it .
It's a white fish , okay but it's white fish .
And that leads me on into uh , where do you get fish ? Well , in corozal you go to the butchers . Interesting All the fish actually goes into Belize City to the cooperative and from there it's disseminated throughout the country . Now there are a lot of fishermen around here that will hold back on their supply of fish to the cooperative and you can buy it here .
If you know the right person . You can buy big red snapper and yellow snapper and it's , you know , fresh off the boat literally yeah , the lobster that they have here as well .
What was ?
it Lobster , it's only the lobster tails . It's not like the northern lobster that's got claws and things . There's basically a tail going along with tiny little lobster claws which don't have any meat in them .
Yeah , oh , that's interesting and I'm assuming they have also steaks , beef type things as well .
The best steaks are currently imported , but my best friend here in Belize is starting a herd . It's taking him a few years and he's been slowed down by COVID but it's going to be hoping the best meat that you can , the best beef you can buy in Belize . It's a cross between an Angus and a Brahma . It's called Brangus .
Makes sense .
And there has to be the right proportion of one to the other . So you don't just make what you want and you're good to go forever , because there is always an interbreeding component that will be more , more fat in it , because Brahma is really I mean it's very tough meat the way they butcher it here , because it's butchered and eaten .
They haven't learned that you need to hang meat for 26 , 28 days or whatever it is , and so they're trying to eat the local steak way too soon . But fortunately , my friend knows all about beef because his father is from Texas . They moved down here in about 1960 .
He married a local girl and so he's of mixed parentage , but he is the only one that has remained here in Belize . I'm proud to say that he's my very good friend .
And do they have also pork ? Pork is exquisite .
I figured that's one thing that they do really well . Yeah , I consider that when I go out to eat anywhere , I can easily order either chicken or pork , and I know that it will be excellent .
And the vegetables , oh sorry .
The vegetables are wonderful , but if I go out for a steak then there is probably only two or three places down in Belize city that I will go for a steak . Because they are raised , they're mixed breed again , and all of the establishments are owned by Bowen and Bowen , which is the Bellican company .
I was going to ask the name of a restaurant , like if someone were to come and want that , where should they go ?
where ? Where's it ?
When you , when you uh fly into the airport , you , you drive down the road where you you can see the bellican plant across the field , so you can't get there from the terminal building going straight across the field , because plant bellican is the main brewer of beer and so and soda in belize and it's owned by bowen and bowen uh , and it's the brothers of the
original owner that now own it and they have a restaurant right at the brewery , which is , frankly , an excellent restaurant .
And then I was also curious . I was curious best time of year to come there . What's the climate like there ? What you know ? Is it humid ? Is it you know some new cotton kind of thing ?
well , I just I just opened the window . Yeah , is it blue ?
this is a dull day yeah , well , ours is brown in california right now because we've got so many fires going , so it's got to be better than that for yeah .
Well , this is theoretically the rainy season . The rainy season begins in June and lasts maybe a month , month and a half . It doesn't rain every day . One day it can be gloriously sunny , blue skies , little white puffy clouds floating by , little white puffy clouds floating by .
And if a storm hits well we had a storm hit well , supposedly hit two days ago we didn't see more than three drops of rain . I would recommend that the high season would be from December 1st through May 31st .
Whatever it is , the low season is the rest of the year during which it could rain , but the chances of it raining in December , january , february , march , april , may are it can , but it would be pretty unusual .
And is it the northern part of the country or the southern that has more rain ? I forgot .
The south has up to four times the amount of rain as we do in the north . So , historically speaking , we are in an area that gets 40 to 60 inches of rain per year , which falls mainly during the rainy season , which don't be scared by the name rainy season , because you could have three days of glorious sunshine and a day of gray , and it might rain .
Now , the heaviest rains traditionally are in September or October . So unless you're here and you know what you're doing , it's not a good idea to really come down in September and October . But you know , theize is such a small country that you can go from end to end if you're driving very slowly in eight hours .
So maybe if you want to be an ex or like a digital nomad and work on a lot of computer work , it's fine to go down in the rainy season , keep you focused and then , when it breaks you just go explore .
Yeah , and it's only recently that being a digital nomad has been possible and I just changed services to a better service at less money than I was paying before , and I average a download speed of 30 and an upload speed of at least 15 , probably 20 . And I could get more .
That is for less money than I was paying for five down and one up six months ago .
That's fantastic . This has been such a great conversation . I loved learning . I don't know , carol . I know you always have a lot of entire questions . Yeah , we've got my final questions here . So what's the most popular religion there ? Save the bottle Alcohol
¶ Belize Culture, Scuba Diving, and Cuisine
.
I think there are Irish . Then yes , catholic Seventh-day Adventist , very Christian .
Yeah , they're all basically Christian , yeah okay , and what did you have for breakfast today ?
I had homemade granola yogurt and papaya and fresh watermelon juice .
Oh wow , very fruity , lovely , sounds good , yes , yeah . And then is there popular music , there , local music .
Yeah well , the local music is punta , which I don't have an ear for , I must admit . It's just boom , boom , boom , boom , boom , boom , boom . The young kids .
Is it like rap music hip ?
hop . I'm not sure it's something unusual to Belize . Oh , okay , so .
Have to listen to it or look it up and then what's the closest place you can surf ? There are no surfing on the East Coast .
I don't know of any surfing anywhere in Belize . What we do have is the largest living barrier reef , which stretches from the North to the south . That's why there's no surfing , because there's no surf .
Right , but amazing scuba diving and snorkeling .
Oh , there is scuba diving . There is tons of it Just out on Ambergris Cay . you can go scuba diving or you can certainly go snorkeling directly from Orchid Bay diving , or you can certainly go snorkeling directly from Orchid Bay . It takes about an hour and a half to get up to Bacala , Chico .
Then you just go through a Mayan cut which actually a couple of thousand years ago the Mayan people cut through a channel and that divided the peninsula of amagris , key from mexico yeah , so we have a amazing reef that probably rivals the great barrier reef and it's so close to the united states the great barrier reef okay , I mean the great barrier reef may be
the biggest , but it's all dead okay , this is the largest living reef . Yes , to go scuba diving on . It is wonderful . There are many , many people who can conduct scuba dive . Or , if you go to Amagris Key that you can go and you know , rent all your equipment and they'll take you out and down and okay , I , I was out there .
What a week and a half ago and we were , you know , hunting around . We pulled up conks , um , which , which are these shells ? Shells that you know that they , they , they batter on the the end and they pull them out and in . In my boat I had a tour guide , because I'm not allowed to , I'm a skipper but I'm on a tour guide .
You have to have a tour guide conducting the tour and he dropped anchor on this side of the reef and went for a swim around while other people were swimming around .
And then he came with eight or ten conch and he then chopped them all up and made a ceviche and , you know , fresh conch is unbelievable , you know , with fresh vegetables , and that's one of the staples of Belize okay , this is awesome .
Yeah , all right , so , so , to wrap it up , it sounds like scuba diving amazing fruit , amazing pork and chicken , great food overall , and but that was my experience when I was there . I just remember the food was so good and so fresh . And and then our listeners look up the crimson orchid in for a stay .
Steven will take amazing care of you and show you around . This has been really great . Stephen , I'm pretty pumped to go visit again post the COVID world .
You can now come to the inn today . If you happen to lie down or I'm here . California's back on lockdown so I'm sure that they would love to get back out To be fully inoculated .
Yeah .
I mean , the first people to get inoculations here in Belize were people like me , because I have a hotel and tourism is the largest industry here , so you can feel safe here .
Right , excellent , okay , well , thank you so much . Hopefully come visit you sometime soon .
Okay , thank you very much . Thank you so much . Have a great day Bye-bye .
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