We woke up at 8am and realized that the first great thing about Settlement day was that they don’t start the boat-landing ceremony right outside our hostel! Nice. We got some yummy scrambled eggs and Journey/Johnny Cakes for breakfast.
Then we stumbled across our new friend CJ who works at a stock photo/ web design company. He was the only float in line for the 10:00 parade… it was 10:30. We wandered down to the closed and possibly abandoned Garifuna museum then back to the parade. On the way we discovered a bike race. Those guys looked serious.
At around 11:30 the 10 o’clock parade was under way. We made our way to the beginning of the parade so we did not miss anything.
Jessie’s favorite part was the Chinese float. They had firecrackers, gongs and these fancy dancing dragons. (Random Factoid: Nearly all of the shops in Belize are owned by the Chinese because they don’t pay import taxes and can get goods cheaply. Somebody worked out a nice trade deal…)
The parade concluded with a Punta Rock float sponsored by Western Union. It was just a flatbed semi-truck with a band and an insane number of speakers. All the spectator rolled off the curbs and into the street to follow this last float through the city, dancing all the way. 
We did our best to keep up but eventually the heat and the constant dancing wore us out and we had to go for smoothies and naps.
FestiBelt Adventures 