Advertisement
Published: September 23rd 2007
Caye Caulker
Hanna under a coconut-tree at the "beach"... well, actually, the whole island is a beach.After being off the coast for so long it was high time for the Caribbean Sea once again. And where better to reacquaint us with it than Caye Caulker, the island of dreams?
Belize is a small country, so our journey from San Ignacio to Caye Caulker wasn't as long a haul as we're used to by now. First roundabout two hours (in a Belizean chicken bus!) to Belize city and then another 45 minutes by boat to get to the island - and of course, that part of the journey wasn't boring at all. I love boats!
Caye Caulker itself is a lovely, small (pop. +/- 400) island 30 miles from Belize city and another 20 from Ambergris Caye (/San Pedro). The atmosphere there is VERY relaxed and "Go Slow" (sometimes adorned with "or else you get a speeding ticket") one of the most-used catch-phrases of the locals. Said locals are great people, most of them speak a very cool mixture of english, creole and sometimes spanish and you can find every skin color under the sun there. They mostly live of tourism and fishing - and go about their days nice and slow indeed. What else on an
island with only two main streets (non-paved, of course - "no shoes, no shirt, no worries", as the locals put it) with golf-carts and bikes as the only means of transportation?
One more thing: being in the Caribbean and all, Reggae Music is of course the islanders' first choice - and who couldn't develop a bit of a crush on Bob Marley in THAT setting of palm trees, sand, the blue sea and amazing corals?
I LOVE that island!
That being said, back to my blog:Caye Caulker itself is just a couple of miles long and was split through the middle by a hurricane in the sixties. The Northern part of the island is mostly uninhabited (except by the Cake Man!!*) and a nature-reserve (there even are crocodiles there!), while the southern part hosts a small air-strip and the town itself, including all the diving-companies, bars, hotels, restaurants, beachside-grills (including famous Jolly Roger's - and Fran's, his sister's, who has better deserts), etc.
Our first afternoon and evening on Caye Caulker were spent in a very local way - just hanging at the Lazy Lizard Bar at the Split, having a couple of beers and a dive every
Diving plank at the Split
At the Lazy Lizard, actually. once in a while. Good times!
Group dinner was at Agave - after having discovered that Rasta Pasta's closed, aaargh, I so wanted to go there! - and I had lobster for the first time in my life. VERY good, that. And no, it wasn't cooked alive, since it was grilled. 😉
I got all the free Mojitos - I think four or five?! - coming with the special menues, so I got a bit tipsy (coughs) that night and just stumbled (slowly!) across Front Street, back to our hotel and into bed. On the way there, we had some more laughs, though. Tiago, being well on the way to being drunk (too many Belikin Stouts!) himself, kept finding coconuts and trying to open them. Not so easy that.
Surprisingly he succeeded in not hurting himself and opening two of them, the first still being far too hot from the blazing sun, but the second one quite good, actually. Well, that goes at least for the coconut-meat - since he managed to spill all of the coconut-water I can't really judge that...
Next morning it was
snorkelling time - yay!
We went out with
Raggamuffin Tours, on their very
At the Lizard
Bernhard, me, Debbie and Helen. With our afternoon-Belikins.
(Belikin is the local beer. Nice.) nice Regga Queen Sailboat. The staff is awesome; if you ever find yourself on Caye Caulker, choose them (and no, they're not paying me to say that!).
Sailing + Reggae + fruit + sun + rumpunch + snorkelling = Perfect!
In other words: yes, we had another great day.
Anyway, to start from the beginning: we set out to a 20 year-old nature reserve on the Coral Reef near Caye Caulker - no Blue Hole for us, since we had no scuba-divers amongst our little group of travellers. At the reef we anchored at three different spots, each one utterly beautiful in its own way.
Our first spot, the Coral Gardens, houses beautiful and very shallow Corals with lots of sea-life. We got into the water and accustomed to snorkelling there, afterwards, we just swam around on our own, admiring the great underwater-life. All in all, we stayed in the water for 45 minutes, I reckon.
Our next stop - 30 minutes and some refreshing fruits and drinks later - was at Shark-Ray-Alley, guess what we saw there? Right: huge stingrays and some cute (non-biting!) sharks, furthermore barracudas and green eels, zebrafish and sea-urchins, as well as a
Very cool boat at the Split
It belongs to Ras' Creek, who actually lives on there. He is the left guy in the picture and almost everyone in Belize seems to know him. ;) whole lot more fascinating sea-creatures, big and small, the names of which I sadly have forgotten already.
After getting out of the water an even greater sight awaited us: dolphins, swimming ahead of our boat, one of them jumping, just as we looked over there.
I'm running out of terms to describe the trip by now (you can only put so many "awesomes" in one blog-entry...) - I totally loved all of it!
Our last stop was at one of the few holes in the coral reef, allowing big sea-creatures to pass through. Here awaited the greatest sight of all: a sea-turtle, floating majestetically through the water right in front of our noses, until a stupid guy from our boat tried to outswim it - yeah right. It got away then, but it certainly ranks among the most beautiful things I've ever seen!
At the same time the other group saw a Manatee - I'm not sure, whether to be jealous, since they didn't see the turtle. Awesome sea-life, though, this way or the other!
I'm afraid I don't have any pictures whatsoever of all that, since none of us had a waterproof camera with them. It'll all stay
Lobster and Mojitos
At Agave. Those Mojitos were STRONG, argh!
The lobster was great, though. a great memory for me, through.
After having spent enough time in the water we all climbed back on board, stowed away our snorkels, masks and flippers and started with the rumpunch, while sailing back. After all: you can't be in the Caribbean without Rum, savvy?! 😉
We all had a great time on the boat, changing places often, sitting on deck, on the Cabins roof, inside or hanging off the sides of the Regga Queen.
Hanna, Pia, Tiago and I spent most of our time in the Cabin itself, talking and joking with the crew: Miguel (the Captain), the Rasta-Man (they really call him that - though he barely has any hair on his head) and Charlie. Tiago was allowed to steer most of the way back (at a veeery slow pace, Caye Caulker-style, of course) and the rest of us had a great time watching him do that, helping him out, drinking way to much rum-punch (as well as Miguel's rum-mix of doom) and watching Hanna and Miguel arm-wrestle. Of course he won! Pity though - had she won, he would have given her his Raggamuffin-shirt...
That evening we were free to do whatever we wanted
- which meant a bit much to drink for me (and Tiago, Mori and a couple of others for that matter) yet again...
We had some good times there, though - walking up and down front street, talking to everyone and just taking it slow!
September 18th The next day was pretty much ours to do with as we chose. That meant another day of the goooood & sloooow life for most of us and a day of Manatee-spotting for Debbie and Helen, who loved that trip.
I'm not sorry that we didn't join them, though, since I spent my day with some much-needed relaxing, reading, swimming - and of course becoming friends with half of the island's population. As I mentioned before, the people of Caye Caulker are great and talk in a sometimes hard to understand, but very cool english slur, often with a "man" or "sir" attached at the end. It'll be a while until I rid myself of that habit!
Anyway, I finished my book at the Split, had my first Belikin at exactly 12.00, bought a cake-man-cake from the previous day and had a great many cool conversations in the course
Arm-wrestling
Hanna vs. Miguel on the Regga Queen. Guess who won! ;) of the day. I talked respectively to the Rasta-Man, Miguel, Ras' Creek (he owns the cool boat at the Split) and Douane, as well as a whole lot of other people (backpackers as well as locals) whose names I never heard or forgot already. Great fun and great stories!
By the way - you'll never guess whom we met yet again on Caye Caulker: that's right, the Dutch Guy (he never told me his name) whom we had met first on the bus to Palenque, then in Palenque itself and yet again in San Christobal. The backpackers' world sure is a small one!
Other than that, Hanna got her hair braided - see pictures! It looks really nice, though it's quite a change. Meanwhile, I walked up and down front street a lot of times, talked to (and flirted with, haha) everyone and did some shopping for music (Reggae!), a shirt and a towel with the Belizean Flag on it.
On top of all that, of course we got our laundry done yet again, for the second time on the island. If you ever get to Caye Caulker, choose Marie's, it smells just SO GOOD; you can ask
Hanna and Tiago at the wheel
Seeing this picture I'm surprised we made it back to Caye Caulker alive. any backpacker or GAP-tourleader there, they'll back me up.
After sundown, most of the group met at the Lizard once more and we all enjoyed a couple of Belikins (I don't belive I payed for a single drink that night), the awesome view and more talks and jokes with Miguel and a couple of others...
The evening group-dinner was spent at Fran's, one of Caye Caulker's famous beachside grills. Awesome seafood - I had the Barracuda, man, that was SO GOOD!!! - as well as a nice chicken for Hanna, which Fran had to borrow from next door, since she's not really accustomed to people not liking fish. There was live-music there as well, and more rum-drinks for free, which, once again, were put in front of me, since not everyone seemed to like them.
The rest of the evening I'll shroud in mysteries (and alcohol-induced sleep!), let's just say, we were very sad indeed to have to leave already the next morning (although it rained heavily, which made it a bit easier to part...)!
--
* The Cake Man lives on the Northern part of the island and every evening just before sundown - if he
isn't hungover, that is - he steps into his canoe and rows over the Split to sell his utterly delicious cakes there. They sell VERY quickly, I can tell you that! Mori put it like this: "I totally understand if girls want to marry the Cake Man. Hell, if it wasn't so gay, I would marry the Cake Man!"He's right. Although it's probably the Cake Man's wife baking the cakes, so we'll have to marry her... 😉
Advertisement
Tot: 0.086s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 60; dbt: 0.0308s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
