And in other news, can Corozal Town become a tourist destination? Well, that's the goal of Marvin Humes, one of the owners of Maximum Waterpark. If you've visited the northern most town recently, you'd notice the giant attraction splayed across the Corozal Bay. Well, it also caught our attention, so we asked Humes how this idea came about and, more importantly, why they decided on a waterpark in the middle of a pandemic.
Marvin Humes, Co-owner, Maximum Waterpark
"I have a business partner and he was in another part of the US and he was overseeing something like this and he thought more or less how equal friendly that could be and how more or less the people in Belize can benefit from something like that and we are not going to have to jeopardize our ecosystem and be able to still entertainment to Belize and then together with me, I'll put some things like basketball court, volleyball court and I know the people would enjoy and that's how we came up with it. The concept of this waterpark is dependent upon all of Belize being a part of it, so we already have a bus of 40-seater leather seats, air-conditioning and we are planning to go pick people up from Belmopan, Orange Walk and different parts of Belize. We also had a meeting with BTIA and they loved the idea and they said that they are prepared also to send people here to Corozal so we can hopefully make Corozal the next tourism destination in Belize."
"I went to Health and environmental departments; they did a lot of rigorous things to make sure that those will be safe for the people and Corozal Town Council they also made sure that I am committed to have a 8 bathroom stall and a parking lot too, because they didn't want congestion to happen. They also didn't want me to have something so nice and when it comes to using the bathrooms that it would be something classy for the people. I had to invest in that and make sure that everything I did was by the books and everything I did was going to be for the benefit of the people. We are not going to open until the health department comes one more time and check to make sure that this is going to be safe for the people."
"I made a lot of strives when it comes to safety measures. We have industrial toilets in the bathroom, you don't even have to touch it, just get up and it will flush itself. We also have contamination machine which you will have to walk through it before entering the waterpark and this is what I believe is the biggest thing: this waterpark is a salt water, this is the biggest natural disinfectant known to man and there are already not too many measures against people - there could be 30-40 people, they really don't have a stipulation on salt water, but I'm still going to adhere to the things on land."
This project has been in the works for about two years, according to Humes. He also said that the only thing holding them back from opening the park is the need to train lifeguards.
