Prices

We have made shopping here a game.   Of course you can nickel and dime yourself to death but it is fun to see where you can get the best price on various items.    We find more stores almost daily and enjoy comparing prices with our normal shopping. 

(I am going to be giving you prices in Belize dollars so, to compare with US dollars, you have to divide by two.)

We shop for all of our fruits and vegetable at the stands on the street.  Bananas are five for a dollar, oranges are four for a dollar, and a pineapple sliced and cut into pieces cost us six dollars once, seven another time and eight the last time—all at the same place. 

Tomatoes range in price from $4 to $5.50 a pound.   Eggs are twenty five cents each as long as you have your own carton.  If you don’t have your own carton, it will cost an extra fifty cents.

We were paying $5 for a loaf of wheat bread but have now found a bakery where we buy it for $1.75.  Milk is $3.25 a liter (that is about $6.50 for a little more than a half gallon).

You want to avoid name brands.  One of the worst examples was this box of Post Raisin Bran:

That’s right, $38.95 Belize dollars for a box of cereal.  We have found Post Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds for $6.50 and it is wonderful.

Gail got sick again and needed some Benadryl.  We found a box of twenty four tablets for $14.

Here is a short list of a few more examples:

28oz jar of Peter Pan peanut butter--$16.25

180gram jar (6.3 ozs) of Nescafe Dolca Tamano Economico (Instant Coffee)--$9.70

400ml jar (13.5 ounces) of AXION El Verdadero Arrancagrasa (Liquid Dish soap)--$2.60

10oz bag of marshmallows--$3.80

Betty Crocker Cake Mix

Snacks get expensive (the main reason Gail makes our own salsa and we buy locally made tortilla chips for $6.50)

And, unless you are buying Caribbean rum or local Belikin beer ($48 a case as long as you have your own bottles and case.  Otherwise you add twenty five cents per bottle and $5 for the case), alcohol is atrocious.  Dick Armstrong likes Yellow Tail wine.  He might not like it so much here since it is $79.50 a bottle.

I did find a bottle of local gin for about $20 but it has a strange taste.  And, the tonic here is colored pink so you don’t confuse it with soda.  It seems strange drinking a pink gin and tonic.

In addition to all of this, there is a 12.5% sales tax on many things.  However, I do not see that this is consistently applied. It is not on everything and some things have it included in the price.

I hope this gives you an idea of some of the ins and outs of the game of shopping and why you have to be careful.