Prince Harry in Belize: Succotz visit

The thing about small countries is that there aren't that many roads.  So if you know where someone started, and where they are going, there is only one road to stake out.  Which works out nicely when you want to see a Prince.

 I arrived home from the market this morning to a very enthusiastic, flag waving British mother-in-law.  We knew Prince Harry had stayed the night at Chaa Creek resort, which is right up the road from us (this wasn't announced, but when you refinish a road to a resort right before a royal visit, people are going to figure it out).  So we knew the Prince would have to pass by our driveway to get to his scheduled event in Benque in the morning.

Sure enough, he went right by- and waved right at us!  That's his silver range rover in the bottom left corner.  I dropped my camera in surprise when he waved, so  sadly no pictures of that.

Since the next scheduled event was Xunantunich, we decided to stake out the ferry crossing and see if we could catch another glimpse.

On my way in I saw these two little ones, washing old cans in the river to sell for scrap.  They weren't quite sure about a visiting prince.

Lots of people had the same idea I did.....

Including this chicken, who caused some swerving in the royal motorcade.  Welcome to Succotz....

Then Prince Harry arrived.  I was surprised at how casual it all was-- no barricades or anything, and the Prince just got out of his car and walked down to the ferry.

oh, hi!

The media followed. I had some zoom- lens envy.

Prince Harry was scheduled to "christen" a boat for next week's Ruta Maya, which was sitting right in front of me.  They painted on the Queen's Jubilee year logo, pretty neat.

We decided to try and get a bit closer for Prince Harry's return.  The police didn't seem to be very worried about people, so we headed down to the river bank, as close to the ferry landing as we could get.  And it turns out as close as we could get was about 15 feet away from the landing... cause this is Belize, and we don't do "boundaries.'"

Prince Harry christened the boat.... with a bottle of Belikin (Belize's beer).  I find that very appropriate.

Then he crossed back on the ferry with his entourage....

And walked right in front of me.  I might have been waving and yelling hi while taking these pictures.

Evidence that I am not a professional-- Prince Harry walks 15 feet in front of me, and somehow the only post around ends up in my picture:

This one is better :)

And off he went.  The Prince only spent 23 hours in Belize, so I guess he went straight to the airport.  I felt a little bad for him-- the weather is gorgeous and hot today, a perfect day for some swimming, but his schedule was packed (with non-swimming events). 

So that was my first encounter with a prince.  He was so.... normal.  I would never have picked him out from all the other tourists if it wasn't for the motorcade.  I'm not sure how I feel about that, it does shatter some childhood illusions about princes, I think :)