Fundraiser of the year in San Pedro

On Saturday night, the island had a fundraiser for Mama Vilma's, an organization that is trying to build a house for women, men and children that are in need.  Apparently it is the biggest fundraiser, and THE place to be on this special night. The event was hosted at San Pedro Fitness Club.

The Snack Shack was not directly involved in the fundraiser, as the event was set up prior to us opening.  However, it was awesome exposure for The Shack.

That's us in front of our Snack Shack, which is where the bar was located.

The evening consisted of a fashion show, silent auction, and some art being sold. The fashion show was the main attraction, so we got our seats early and then enjoyed a few drinks with some friends.

Lynn and I in our seats. Lynn just moved here from Seattle.

Lynn, Kent, and Rob

EVERYTHING was donated so there was no expense to put on this fundraiser.  The alcohol, chairs, tables, cups, ice, beer, auction items......everything. It was a pretty amazing night.  I am glad that we went.  The Snack Shack also got a little exposure over the microphone as the night went on as well, which was awesome.

The Snack Shack got some new paint this past week.....looks great.

Rob, Hayden, Carolyn, and Surendra. (Carolyn and Surendra just moved here from Tennessee,
and Hayden is the man to see about anything mechanical)

It was a great night to spend with some friends and to meet new people. The fashion show was neat to watch, as it was all local volunteers in the show and also included Miss San Pedro. The music was rockin' and the heals were clickin'.

Rob won a sunset cruise for two in the silent auction.  So we will be posting one day about our romantic cruise, which is very exciting.  It will be a great day off.......

Just a reminder, if you attended the fashion show (and read this blog), bring in your ticket stub this week to The Snack Shack and get BUY ONE GET ONE  on rum, beer, or soda. 

CHEERS!

Our first official visitors

After being here only a month and a half, we had our first visitor this past week.  We consider her a friend, although we have really only spent a few days together the last time we were in San Pedro. Her name is Donna and she stayed in the condo next to us when we visited Belize in May.  We have stayed in touch and she has been to Belize more than us, but it was great to have a friendly face around for a few days.

So with Donna and her friend, Jenn, in town, we had much more activity after work than we normally would. On Saturday night, we headed to Pedro's Inn to participate in the poker run. You pay an entry fee and receive one card at 4 different bars.  At the final bar, they flop 4 more cards and you can use 2 of your cards in your hand and 3 of the cards on the table. The person with the best hand wins the pot.  The pot was at $780bz this time-that's $390 American!  That's a good chunk of change. 

Beginning of the poker run at Pedro's Inn.

Fourth stop at Croc's Sports Bar.

The four of us did not win, but it was fun and if we had visitors in town again, we would probably participate. After working a long day, staying out past ten seems to get tougher and tougher!

It was a great opportunity to meet others, both tourists and those that are living on the island.  Joe caught up with us at Wayo's (see picture below) and we also met a high energy guy named Ron from Seattle.  He is here for 25 days and was SOOOOO excited to be on the island and to describe how the "ride in the golf cart" goes. Long story.... 

There were a total of about 40 people that participated.  I thought that was quite a few and it was funny to watch all these golf carts pull into one bar at one time. Everyone got a beer or a drink, waited to get their card, and then headed to the next bar.  Props to all the bartenders for handling that big of a group at one time.

Until the next poker run.........






Donna and Jenn came to The Snack Shack a few times during their visit.  They hung out on Sunday for the BBQ and then stopped by on Jenn's last day on the island to grab some lunch.  Here is a picture of Rob, who has now earned the nickname CABANA BOY.

Donna and Jenn gave the sandwiches two thumbs up and it seemed to help their hangovers, which is always a plus! So until next time friends!  We will be in San Pedro for your next visit.

Day off for Rob and Krista and we are headed to Caye Caulker with some great people.  Rum punch, sun, boat, island, snorkeling.  What could anyone else ask for?

What the heck is the chicken drop?

The Snack Shack is where we spend most of our time during the day, as we are open from 8am-5pm everyday except Wednesdays. Oh, and Sunday is BBQ from 12-5. So when we are not spending time at the shack, we try to find something fun to do at night (when we have the energy).

We have a friend in town that we met the last time we were in San Pedro. Her and her friend picked us up from Average Joe's on Thursday night and we headed into town. Their goal was to head to the chicken drop.  You ask, "what the heck is the chicken drop?"

Rob and Krista-downtown San Pedro

The chicken drop consists of a big board put on the sand that looks like a bingo card. You can buy tickets for each "chicken drop" that consists of numbers. One lucky girl gets to shake the chicken, blow up the chicken's butt, and then drop the chicken on the board. Everyone cheers and yells at the chicken until it poops.  The number that the chicken poops on is the winner and wins $100BZ, which is $50 American. Yes...you cheer for the chicken to take a poop on your lucky number. It's actually extremely fun and hilarious. Oh...if you are the lucky winner, in order to get your money, you have to wipe up the poop. We didn't buy any tickets, but we got Jenn to be a lucky chicken dropper....which was something she had on her to-do list while here in San Pedro.

Spindrift Hotel-home of the famous chicken drop

So after a fun-filled night with some friends and a few chickens, we were back to The Snack Shack for Friday. Wayo and a few of his friends have started coming to the shack to play ping pong and drink a few beers. They are serious table tennis players, bringing their own balls and paddles. The competition gets fierce and it is so fun to watch. Wayo owns Wayo's Beach Bar, which is on the north side of San Pedro. It's an awesome little bar with friendly people and they make some mean rum and cokes-2 for 1 happy hour.

Wayo and his friends at The Snack Shack

After the ping pong hour, a new iguana decided to get some sun and walked the deck by the pool. He was moments away from going into the water, but somehow he managed to stay dry. I got a few good pictures of him.......before he scattered off into the trees.

Plans for us for this weekend? The Snack Shack is open both Saturday and Sunday. We are hoping for some locals to come and hang out at the pool on this great day and tomorrow is our BBQ. Sunday is my favorite day, as Kevin cooks BBQ all afternoon and it smells AMAZING! We play some awesome local music all day and the beers are flowing. The Snack Shack is a great place to be!

It's Karaoke Time!

It has been a few days since our last post, as we have been very busy at The Shack. The shareholders for Exotic Caye International were in town and we were able to help host a few events. What a wonderful time we had while also meeting some amazing people.

So...now back to the grind and hoping our business continues to grow, as we have increased our revenue each week we have been open.  We had a little time for some fun last night, as we spent the night with some of the ECI people after work at Average Joe's.  We hung around long enough to partake in the Sunday karaoke......


Rob and Nancy.....not sure what song they are on.

Well, I guess I can say Rob participated in the karaoke. Myself....I took the pictures and laughed at everyone. Karaoke is not my thing. But I guess it is better to be at Average Joe's watching and listening than at our house (which is right next door) and listening to the karaoke while trying to watch TV. It ended up being a fun night......

Rob and Nancy even did a little dancing.

Thanks Nurse Karen for taking this...not too many pictures of us together.

Tonight is 2 for 1 martinis at El Divino, however after last night's excitement, we may be staying home for a nice quiet evening.

Tomorrow is our 3rd wedding anniversary and we will be enjoying it at The Snack Shack for our first card night event. We have quite a few people attending to play some euchre. Let's hope Rob and I can win on our big day!

Hope everyone has a fantastic Monday.

How Pretty is San Pedro?

So we always knew San Pedro and the country of Belize were beautiful, but until you get to see an aerial view of the city and island, it really isn't put into perspective. Here are a few pictures that we took while on a fourth floor balcony the other day. Hard to believe this is our environment.



The Snack Shack is starting to get around town and people are learning that we are now open by the pool. We have made the Ambergris Caye message board and have had over 700 hits in about 3-4 days.  That seems crazy to me!  But so excited that everyone is learning about us. The business is definitely increasing and we are happy that everyone is leaving satisfied and looking forward to coming back for more. The paninis, especially roast beef and BBQ chicken, along with our smoothies, tend to be the most popular at this point.

We are running a special event tomorrow for Exotic Caye so we will be closing at 3pm. We will also run a special private BBQ on Saturday for the same group. Busy weekend ahead, but we wouldn't want it any other way.

I took a walk down the beach the other morning and got some great pictures. These are just a few of what I saw.

Sailing club down the beach from our house



Gorgeous sunrise near Banyan Bay



More to come on "why we moved to Belize" another day.  Sorry, I am extremely tired and need to get some good sleep before our big weekend.  Hope everyone has a great evening.  For those of you back in cold weather-stay warm...we will be thinking of you while we are in our shorts and flip flops.

New sandwich is a hit and the beginnings of WHY?

So we did the Sunday BBQ, which went really well, however, we had some leftover chicken. I put together a BBQ Chicken sandwich with grilled onions, cheddar cheese, tomatos on our special butter garlic bread....and it was a hit!  We sold out of it by yesterday at 11:30am, thanks to all the wonderful ladies in water aerobics. (If you haven't tried Eileen's class, give it a whirl-it's super fun and you meet some awesome people). I keep saying I'm going to get back in it (I've done it twice), but if the shack keeps doing business the way it is, I won't be able to jump in the pool.

So someone asked us "why did you move to Belize?".  I guess our answer is, "Why not?". Everyone always says they would love to live here or there and wouldn't it be awesome to call "this" home. So Rob and I decided when we met about 5 years ago that one day, we were going to live out our dream and move to the Caribbean. We were both unhappy in our careers and would consistently come home and just complained about the day and week we just had. We decided that is not the way to live and this is something we both have wanted to do before we met each other. So why not make it happen? (there are definitely some other perks we will get into some other time)

Sunrise this morning..you can't see this in Ohio.

All our friends' thoughts were "awesome, sounds great, can't wait to visit", but deep down, I believe NO ONE ever thought we would actually go through with it. And not only that, but do it so suddenly and this quickly. I have to say, neither did we, but the right opportunity came up and we jumped on it.  We kept putting off buying the flight and I finally looked at Rob and said, "December 8, that is the day we need to leave. Just book it." And we did. Since that day we worked diligently to sell, sell, sell our possessions. I have to admit, it was extremely difficult selling almost EVERYTHING you own and to move in 8 32"x32" bins. When it got down to it, we realized that all we owned was the stuff in the bins and it became very, very real. Was it sad to see things go that we had in our house?  Yes. But I kept telling myself, "it's just stuff, it can be replaced."

Who wouldn't want to live here?

So December 8th came, we arrived at the airport at 4am, thanks to my mother-in-law, and the journey began. After doing paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, to make sure we had our bank accounts in order, both in the states and in Belize, bills taken care of, the house under control, mail forwarded, and taking care of all the shots and papers to bring Jager, we were off. It sounds that easy, but in all honesty, it truly is.  There are steps you need to go through to get everything organized, but moving to Belize was not that difficult.

So this is the beginning of WHY MOVE TO BELIZE?  We have many stories to share and much information to give. Each day is a learning experience and we are soaking in everything we can. We have a day off today, so time to do laundry (oh...something else different-we do not have a dryer, so everything is hung on the line outside), take care of some paperwork, and prepare for the big weekend we have with Exotic Caye and their shareholders' meetings/cocktail hours/BBQs.

Kids, geckos, and swimming iguanas, OH MY!

So we learned today that iguanas, wild ones at that, enjoy the large swimming pool at The San Pedro Fitness Club. Saturday was a great day to be out and enjoy the weather, so the pool filled up with quite a few families. After serving plenty of fresh fruit smoothies, roast beef paninis, a few frozen Snickers bars, and some nachos.....we noticed the kids came out of the pool and the cameras came out of the bags. I asked Rob, "Um, is there something in the pool?" The kids were pointing and following something around the edge, then a gutsy boy got in the water with his goggles and starting following this "marine life".
Came to find out a wild iguana had jumped in the pool for a swim.  Who knew!  So I did a little research and found that iguanas can hold their breath for up to 30 minutes, however, sometimes they can have a problem resurfacing if their body has gotten cold. So be ready to go in for a rescue! Here is a picture of Rob, and a few new friends, fishing the iguana out of the pool.  Sorry...I didn't get an actual picture of the iguana (someone had to watch over The Snack Shack), however it was a big one-about 2 feet.

I also found that you can give an iguana CPR, if indeed he/she does stay under too long and needs assistance. The article stated: depending on the size, use your thumb or finger tips to do the chest compressions, and administer breaths by cupping your mouth over their nose and mouth, expelling your breath into their nostrils. Remember your lizard has lungs far smaller than yours so do not force your breath into him. Remember to keep one hand on his chest to feel it expand; keep the other around his upper and lower jaw to prevent him from biting your lips should he come out of it quicker than you thought he would.  OK.....IS THIS ONLY FUNNY TO ME?  But I will make a mental note of "how to give CPR to an iguana (or any other animal of likeness for future need)."

Onto a new subject, our Sunday BBQ is on for today!  The weather has done a 360 from last weekend, so we are hoping we have some families come out and enjoy the day at the pool. Kevin is back on the grill for us and, as always, he will bring his smiles for free. He also cooks great BBQ-chicken/coleslaw/beans/tortilla-all for just $12BZ.

Just a few more pictures of the pool for you to enjoy......

Everyone have a great day!

First Day Off

After pretty much working straight through in order to get the Snack Shack up and running, and then actually running the shack, we finally decided that we needed to take a day off and simply enjoy the fact that we live in a tropical paradise.  So we had breakfast at Ms. Sara's, our favorite spot (after the Snack Shack of course.) Jager was willing to pose for the shot but then again he is willing to do almost anything for bacon!!!!

And just so everyone knows, it isn't all work.... we did enjoy at least one shot on New Years with the best bartender on the island.  Totally love the work ethic, fun, smile, energy, willingness.... well pretty much everything about Kevin!!!  Not to mention he found me a bike which is maybe the most important addition to my job for the year

So we are into the new year, we weathered the 12 inches of rain and are ready to hit the ground running.  The good news is that they tell us the rain was an anomily, the bad news is that it rained for two days straight both days of our grand opening.  We will recover move on and grow. 

So I am wondering, how many people are actually reading this? What are you guys thinking? Any comments? Any desire for additional information, anything we should be covering.... what do the masses of readers we have want to know?