Hello Every-one!! Hope y’all having a great Saturday. I ran out of photographs for the Blog posts yesterday and pondered upon what fun farm pictures to take. It then suddenly dawned on me that I haven’t taken any recent pictures of Punta Gorda. PG is the main town in Toledo District, Belize and we live about 16 miles outside this town. This is where we go for our shopping supplies. For all of our readers who haven’t been to PG before, you’ll be amazed at how “little” it is and the complete lack of shopping malls or centres (ie. there are none). The population of Punta Gorda is about 5021 (census 2010).
When I was walking through Punta Gorda yesterday thinking of what pictures to take, I realised that I was just “used to the place.” To many of you out there, you’ll just shudder at the “lack of facilities” and “lack of services” but these are some of the reasons why we are here. The place certainly does not over-burden you with a sense of consumerism! You can only buy necessities here. I think the place is conducive to adopting a healthier approach to living and there is a less of a feeling to “shop just because you want to buy something.”
It saves you a lot of money because there are no “nice things” to buy!! Gnome describes the items that you don’t need which end up gathering dust and occupying space in your house “kipple.”
Anyway, here is the centre of the town with the clock-tower.
When we first came here about 13 years ago, there were hardly any cars about. You could actually park you car in the middle of the road, run into a shop for 5 minutes and be back in your car without any car needing to get pass you. Now the streets are totally filled up with parked cars. This is Punta Gorda on a busy Friday morning. I know…I know…all you guys out there probably think that it looks dead!
This is the new Market Place. Not sure what to say…it’s just well, there. I’m a bit of a traditionalist and rather liked the previous market place which was just the road-side. But times are changing…and even Punta Gorda is changing:
Inside PG Market:
There are also stalls along the side:
If you don’t want to sell at the market, you can always just park on the side of the road and display your wares:
Clothes shopping is a tad dicey here. There are second hand stalls with clothes from the States. At least here you can attempt to find something in cotton but finding the right size is difficult (especially when you are wee like me). Also, the clothes aren’t cheap; cotton t-shirts go for a premium at BZD10 (USD5) and men’s cotton pants can go for BZD30(USD15).
I suppose you can always go to the Guatemalan stall to buy a dress instead…ooooh…I wonder which one of these would go best with my yellow wellies on the farm…
This is the Farm Supply Centre where we get our hard-ware and farm stuff:
This is Punta Gorda Post Office.
That’s all Folks…that’s Punta Gorda for you. It grows on you and it’s full of friendly faces!!