We discovered San Pedro via Internet. We talked to experienced divers/frequent visitors and they told me it was Paradise.

When we got to the Belize City airport, we were absolutely surprised to see the small airport and the undeveloped conditions. The taxi ride from the airport to the water taxi was no difference. During the taxi drive, we saw many females selling their home cooked meals in the corners and several males worker line-up to eat. The cooked meals where kept in simply pots and pans as they will be at home at the kitchen table. My heard broke; here I was in a taxi visiting a country that needs tourist's dollars but I couldn't enjoy the country because I felt guilty. Guilty that we had shoes and that our idea of fast food was a McDonalds and not a female in the corner with a pot of home cooked meal.

Our waiting time for the water taxi was long as we met several locals and tourist in the small waiting room. Interesting enough, they had a bathroom lady that sell small pieces of toilet paper for 50 cents. We speak both English/Spanish, but the Belizean Creole/Kriol language was hard to understand. At this early stage of our trip we choose to stay with the Spanish language, unless we encounter the Creole and then we switch to English.

One hour and 45 minutes later, we arrived in San Pedro. The first thing a notice was the beach front. It is looked like a lake, but it had sea grass and trash. The water was dark green and it was missing ocean waves. We talked to locals and they told is that San Pedro beach front are NOT like Bermudas. That we need to rent a boat tour and check the reeves. As local they don't care for the beach front water and that they prefer the split at Caulker.

It rained every night, but during the day it was very nice. We rode our bikes south and north of San Pedro several times during our stay, we did that in 4 hours. We meet several vendors form El Salvador, Nicaragua and other Central America countries. They bring their merchandise once a month to sell to the tourists.

During one of our bike rides to the north side, we encounter the toll staff asking us for $2.00 per person to cross the bridge. We had no idea we had to pay; we had crossed the bridge several times before in our bikes for free. In this occasion, we didn't have any money. Our wallet got stolen from our backpack, but we had NO idea. At this point we notified the Police and they filed a report. We asked the police if we could cross the bridge for "free" and they told us sure! The Police escorted us to the bridge, but the toll staff told us that we couldn't cross the bridge for "free" because we weren't "workers".

We saw much trash on the street, many street dogs and many locals without shoes. We asked other tourist what is the attraction, they told us scuba diving. That San Pedro what we see is what it is, nothing else to talk about.

To complete our trip, we had to paid $36.50 pp as a departure tax, collected by unfriendly staff. Ironically, the tourist staff was in the airport asking tourist to complete a survey and to tell then if we would return to visit in the future.

The fact is that, we didn't think it was an Isla Bonita, we didn't think it was Paradise…. we don't think we can ever go back.