The next few days were lazy jaunts exploring Hopkins. Most of that exploring was in the 50 feet between the back door of our vacation rental and the beach, but we did occasionally make it into town.
Hopkins is a delightfully sleepy village of about 3,500 people. It has a fascinating history and ton of charm. But most importantly, it has managed to retain that charm while still opening its doors to visitors. It’s the kind of place where every restaurant is attached to the side of the chefs’ homes, and daily life carries on all around you. Even getting to our vacation rental involved walking through several people’s laundry lines, a cemetery, and what appears to be an expat’s home made from shipping containers.
And then we get here.
Yep. This is daily life in Hopkins. You buy groceries looking at that. You go to the ATM looking at that. Hard to see how anything can get done in a place like this. It’s actually pretty striking to come across something as mundane as a medical clinic or police station. But even those have a distinctly tropical charm.
But back to the view from our rental. In case you forgot:
The dock next to the property could just as easily have been added for ambiance at a more heavy-handed tourist destination. But it wasn’t. Every morning, I saw local fishers using it to cast their lines or unload their boats. It’s a real, actual place. Not a post card. Still having a hard time wrapping my head around that.
We intentionally under-scheduled ourselves during our time in Hopkins to counteract our time at Caves Branch. We normally have a strict one activity per day rule when traveling with the kids, and had some extreme relaxing to do so we could recover. Multiple hours were spent by just watching the kids jump off the end of the pier (with me in the rescue kayak).
This is our kind of place.
It was a full 24 hours before we ventured more than a 100 feet. And even that was just to a charming little beach shack 10 minutes down the beach. It was the kind of place where the “fry fish” plate was just a whole fish fried and put on a plate. It was delightful.
Further adding to the charm, we had seen one of the local fishers walk ashore and pass his catch over to the cook just before our meal. There was a real chance that we saw our meals get brought ashore. But perhaps the best part was that every meal in that town is served with a couple slices of fried plantain. There’s no food on the planet that evokes a feeling like fried plantains, and it was fun to share that with the kids.
Continuing that pace (or lack thereof), most of our second day in Hopkins was spent just looking for a bakery. And unsuccessfully at that. Since this town is not a major tourist hub, nothing is marked and most businesses are open whenever they want to be. Locals know who the baker is and when they’ll be baking. Everyone else just needs a bit of luck. But we weren’t complaining. That’s why we’re here. Belize has several resort islands that can deliver a very comfortable vacation, but we wanted a bit more diversity of experience. And cruising around in a golf cart on an extremely low-stakes quest for some baked goods to keep around for second breakfast was just the kind of non-experience we were going for.
