What are the best and worst things about living and retiring in Corozal?

To me, the best thing about living in Corozal is the sense of community; knowing everybody. People don’t sit around at the restaurant punching in their cellphones. Instead, they all have conversations.

 

There are lots of gatherings. People play darts a couple of times a week, and they play poker. There are charitable activities as well. They have a little sailing club they established through the local gentlemen and people get involved in the...

To me, the best thing about living in Corozal is the sense of community; knowing everybody. People don’t sit around at the restaurant punching in their cellphones. Instead, they all have conversations.

 

There are lots of gatherings. People play darts a couple of times a week, and they play poker. There are charitable activities as well. They have a little sailing club they established through the local gentlemen and people get involved in the community. That to me is the nice thing.

 

As far as a possible worse thing, if you’re really, really looking to duplicate your American lifestyle in Corozal, it’s not going to happen. There’s no movie theater. There’s no Sam’s Club here.  There is a Sam’s Club across the border, a short drive to Chetumal, Mexico. There is also a Home Depot they just opened and a movie theater in Chetumal.  But for the most part in your local area there you’re going to have to entertain yourself and the infrastructure is a little rough. The roads can be bad, especially out in the country at certain times of the year.  They’re doing a much better job the last few years of keeping the roads drivable but they’re mostly dirt roads.  When you get out there they get washed out, so it’s kind of an adventure drive on some of them.  

 

(Crowd enjoying Independence Day at Jam Rock Bar, Corozal, Belize, pictured.)

The low cost of travel to Corozal is one of the best things about living or retiring in Corozal.  I don’t know what the travel expenses are from other parts of the country, but from our local airport here Greenville–Spartanburg, South Carolina (symbol is GSP), we can routinely fly round trip for around US $500 per person, and you can get a direct flight from Atlanta for less than that. Sometimes you can get a direct from Charlotte for a little less than that.

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The low cost of travel to Corozal is one of the best things about living or retiring in Corozal.  I don’t know what the travel expenses are from other parts of the country, but from our local airport here Greenville–Spartanburg, South Carolina (symbol is GSP), we can routinely fly round trip for around US $500 per person, and you can get a direct flight from Atlanta for less than that. Sometimes you can get a direct from Charlotte for a little less than that.

 

My wife and I do not like cold weather, we’re tired of the cold winters in the States, and we can’t afford the kind of lifestyle we’d like to live in Florida, so Belize is the perfect answer. Properties in Belize on or near the ocean are a fraction of the cost of similar properties in the States. 

 

Another good thing about Corozal is the friendliness of the locals / the culture. I can relate an example of something I witnessed personally that was very moving. I was coming back into town and approached the ferry over the river just outside of Corozal. The ferry wasn’t running and there were cars everywhere and a lot of activity. Even though everyone speaks English, when most of the locals they speak to each other, they speak either in Creole or Spanish, so it was difficult to understand what was going on.

 

A friend of mine pulled up shortly after we came to a stop, and his wife is Belizean so I asked if perhaps she could find out what was going on. She told us that an elderly farmer had pulled his truck up on to the ferry, and for some reason his truck went over the ferry and into the river. As a result, the whole community had come out to make sure that he was okay.  Once everyone realized that everybody was safe, the ferry resumed running and we went on back to the hotel.

 

The next morning, our route took us back the opposite direction so we had to get back on the same ferry.  Lo and behold, it wasn’t running again. So there are several dinghies with men in them that are going across the river with long poles trying to locate the truck. Eventually, they did locate it, and came back to shore to take out some other guys with masks and flippers, who dove down, retrieved the farmer’s wife’s purse, and brought it back up to him.  A big cheer went up in the crowd when the farmer rang out the water and the money from the purse. Then another farmer came in with a big truck and they pulled the first farmer’s truck out of the river for him. A couple of weeks later, they had totally renovated the truck, and the first farmer is driving it and just as happy as he could be. 

 

The thing that impressed me most is while we were sitting there and the ferry wasn’t running in order accommodate all these people helping the farmer getting his truck out of the river, nobody blew their horn, nobody shouted, “Hey, I’m late for a meeting!,” and nobody was antsy. One guy turned around and went back to Corozal, got a case of beer and brought it back to share with others who were waiting. It was just so refreshing to see how the members of that community put all of their personal needs aside just for a little while so that they could help that fellow retrieve his truck. I even asked my American friend Mark Leonard, who lives in Belize, “When I get back to the States, do I need to ask around, raise some money and buy that guy a truck?” Mark said, “No, don’t worry about it. They’ll have it running in a few days.” And sure enough, they did.

 

Being there and witnessing that, I thought that what I saw would have never have happened here in the States. Maybe in some communities around the States, it might happen, but my experience says it probably would not.  It really hit me, just watching how that community in Corozal turned out to help that guy, and the fact that nobody resented it or had an issue with it interrupting their schedule or what their priorities were. It was all about “Hey that guy needs help and if my small part is just sitting here quietly and chatting with the people in line for the ferry, then that’s what I’ll do.” 

 

(River ferry in Belize, pictured.)

The best things about living in Corozal would certainly be the weather, the family orientation of the people who are from here and live here, the laid back pace of life, and people who are generally unaffected by materialism and consumerism.

 

The worse things about living here in Corozal are that Belize doesn’t have the same level of customer service that we North Americans come to expect. However, I don’t even think that that is a negative. I...

The best things about living in Corozal would certainly be the weather, the family orientation of the people who are from here and live here, the laid back pace of life, and people who are generally unaffected by materialism and consumerism.

 

The worse things about living here in Corozal are that Belize doesn’t have the same level of customer service that we North Americans come to expect. However, I don’t even think that that is a negative. I have actually come to appreciate it and get a kick out of it because why do I need to impose a certain level of customer service? There is no Wal-Mart here to walk in where somebody would greet you. It’s the exact opposite. Sometimes you feel like you’re inconveniencing the workers at the store but they are not being unkind; it is just not in their DNA to go over the top for you. You have to probe them. You can’t just come here with that consumer instant gratification mentality because you will be dissatisfied and you won’t like it. You have to eat that up and roll with it because it is just part of the charm of the place. I don’t want them to be like a developed country and have that consumer mentality. I don’t want to be bombarded with advertisements, so I like it this way. Yes, it does inconvenience me sometimes when I need to get things done. If you don’t get a handle on that, you’re going to be frustrated and not enjoy your experience here in Corozal.

 

(Corozal and the Caribbean Sea, Belize, pictured.)

I’ve become very used to timing my visits to different places to coincide with the best time. As a newbie, if you go into the vegetable market in Corozal on a Wednesday, a lot of the products have been in the little stores for a couple of days, so it’s not fresh, although it’s still good. I time my visits to the market to be on Monday and Thursday when all the fresh produce comes in.

 

It’s not always possible to get what you want....

I’ve become very used to timing my visits to different places to coincide with the best time. As a newbie, if you go into the vegetable market in Corozal on a Wednesday, a lot of the products have been in the little stores for a couple of days, so it’s not fresh, although it’s still good. I time my visits to the market to be on Monday and Thursday when all the fresh produce comes in.

 

It’s not always possible to get what you want. Belize is not like the US where it doesn’t matter what time of the year it is, you can always get what you want from the big supermarkets because they’re bringing stuff in from overseas. In Belize, that doesn’t happen.

 

Three weeks ago, I found a particular coffee that I like to serve in the place where I buy coffee. All of a sudden they ran out of this kind of coffee, so I had to look around for other kinds of coffee. It was a kind of coffee that was modestly priced and had good flavor, and it came from Veracruz, which is in Mexico. It costs more, but not as much as the other kinds that are available. I ended up having to buy some American products that cost a bit more to give me a similar taste.

 

You can’t get what you want necessarily when you want it. Today, I went in and I got four of the largest bags of coffee, and the guy at the store told me, “I’m bringing in cases. Just hang on. I can get things in bulk.” What I love about Corozal is that there are several wholesalers of a myriad of products. I can go in and buy these products, and it undercuts even the Chinese stores. From a shopping standpoint, admittedly, I use more than a regular single family home, but I can get things in bulk, and I get a lot of things that I need and want.

 

Out in Corozal District, there is a lot of sugarcane. During sugarcane harvest, they torch the fields to get rid of all the critters out of there, and the crystallization process of the sugar in the cane begins. A couple of days after burning, they go in and cut it down. There’s very little extra to deal with, so they can throw all the cane onto the trucks, and they take the sugar canes to the sugar club in Orange Walk to process it.

 

Once the sugar cane is processed, it’s exported back into the bay of Corozal, and then the barges tow it all the way out to wherever the sugar ships are waiting for it. There are barges a couple of times a day. If you’re crossing the New River to visit other parts of Corozal, you may get held up for 10 or 15 minutes because they’ve had to drop the cable on the ferry to allow the sugar barges to come down the river. 

 

The other absolutely magnificent thing about living in Belize is the fact that property taxes are basically nothing. To counter that, one will find that all but the main roads, which are the Northern Highway, the Western Highway, the Hummingbird Highway, and the Southern Highway, along with a few spurs off of them, and everywhere around the country, are made out of what is called “White Marl,” which is either white, brownish or reddish, depending on where it was dug out. The problem with roads made of White Marl is that they basically turn into an ice rink in the rainy season. 

 

I found that out when I’d been here for two weeks and I was driving into Corozal.  I was going down the road not thinking about my speed. I was dodging around potholes and everything else, and I went around one pothole, turned back on to the road, and my car kept going out into the weeds. I was stuck there for four hours. That’s the worst thing because your property taxes basically don’t cover anything. If you want magnificent roads, Belize is not for you.

 

(Crimson Orchard Inn, Corozal, Belize, pictured.)