Belize's Annual National Agriculture and Trade Show

The annual National Agriculture and Trade Show is held in Belmopan at either the end of April or beginning of May. We visited the fairgrounds for the expo for the first time with this year’s show. Being that it is help at the hottest time of the year, we never could quite motivate ourselves to pack into a crowded bus and walk around a crowded fairground previously. Living in Belmopan we would have no excuse not to attend this year.

The agric show, as it is commonly called, reminds me of a big state fair – only smaller. It’s filled with booths devoted to farming, agriculture, Belizean products, and of course, food, beverages, and games. There is even a little carnival section complete with dollar games like balloon darts and such. The show wouldn’t be a complete Belizean affair without double and triple up deals from the two cell phone providers and deals on toilet paper (though this time around we didn’t buy the tp because we thought we were leaving in July and didn’t need that much, oh well, there’s always the expo in Belize City for September celebrations!).

We sampled some new juice flavors at the citrus products booth, met the famous Marie Sharp and sampled some of her other products (and then bought them), watched the fastest ferris wheel ever fill up with people and then spin them rapidly both forward and back for a good 15-20 minutes (see the video below), and watched the fair's first ever dog show. The dog show had to be my highlight of the day as several categories had only one entrant and oftentimes the judges did not even watch the dogs as they paraded around the ring; I picked out the Doberman Pinscher from the start to be best in show and I was correct – yay me! If I’d known, I would have entered Maya in the hound dog category and put her up against the awesome blood hound, she’s got some pretty defined musculature; she could do well. Maybe we would have won the giant bag of dog food she could not possibly finish in the time we have remaining in country!

The event was fun and definitely worth it for meeting Marie Sharp, tripling up on phone credit and being entertained by the dog show.