Free lobster dinner!

---

From Tikal I jumped on a tourist shuttle across the border to Belize, where I then caught several different local buses to get to Sitee River.

Before I entered Belize I wasn't really sure what to expect. I here very different things from peoples experiences, with some people loving it and others thinking very little of the place. Even just for the language I didn't really know what to expect, despite the official language being English. When I jumped onto my first local bus I was even more confused. I knew that, aside from English, Creole was spoken a lot and Spanish in many places too (there are also other languages spoken in places). Creole I had been told was kinda broken English and so I half expected to understand it. However, on the bus (where most people were speaking Creole, just two people Spanish and none English) I couldn't understand a thing. Everynow and then I would hear the remnants of an English word but it was all way too confusing. Thankfully people seemed to understand me when I tried English so I decided to go with that despite the fact that I couldn't understand them.

Thankfully either people started to speak a little clearer or I just became better at understanding creole (or the thick accent some people have when using english) because after a while I had no problems. Although Creole could be described as broken English it is without doubt definately its own unique language. The differences between Spanish-Italian-Portuguese are smaller, in my opinion.

Anyway back to the point of this blog. My first destination in Belize was to be Glover's Atoll Resort. Based on a small and very picturesque island far out at sea on top of Glover's Reef/Atoll the place offers cheap dorm or camping accomodation, cooking facilities and various activities - diving, fishing, kayaking etc etc. There's a boat that goes there from Sitee River only once a week, which was one of the reasons I had been flying through some of the other places without stopping for long elsewhere on my trip.

I'd turned up with loads of food (and a small bottle of rum) with grand ideas of diving and maybe taking part in some of the other activities on the island. The only other tourists to turn up where a Canadian couple (Katy and Dave) and so the three of us headed out to the island on the once weekly boat.

When we arrived we discovered the owners, who normally run the place, had disappeared to Guatemala and left the place in the hands of their 16/17 (aprox) old son - Warren. The only other people on the island were a 17 year old mayan guy (responsible for general island maintenance) by the name of Romeo and an older mentally handicapped guy by the name of Tommy. Warren had better things to do with his time and spent a lot of it on long fishing trips or on the mainland so we only ever got a glimpse of him at a time.

The downside to all this is that there was going to be no diving or fishing trips for me. And Dave and Katy, who had been told there was a restaurant that could provide for all their needs, didn't think they had enough food.

The upside, however, was that we had basically been deserted on an amazingly beautiful island with the whole place to ourselves!! We were allowed help ourselves to basic supplies (flour, spices etc) from their kitchen and upgraded ourselves on the accomodation front. Dave and Katy, who were previously camping, chose their favourite cabin over the water, where they could wake up to the sunrise every morning and although I mostly continued to sleep in the dorm (next to the kitchen and where we would have a fire in the evenings) I slept in a nearby cabin over the water on a couple of occassions.

I got to know Katy and Dave quite well and we all became good friends, spending a lot of time together. We also became good friends with Romeo who was infinately helpful and was always doing us favours. Turns out he has already been to jail for 7 months (which sounded horrible) for smoking weed. He's covered in quite a few tatoo's, some of which were done in prison using a home made machine that involves a bent and snapped toothbrush. One of them identifies him as a blood - one of the main gangs that exist on the mainland. Apparently if he goes into Guatemala he could be killed on sight for being a blood. Nice. All this makes him sound quite scary but he's the nicest guy you'll ever meet.

There's way too much that happened to list it all but a basic description of the weeks activities, a random collection of events and some photo's should sum it up pretty well.

After waking up around sunrise we'd make a leisurely breakfast - eggs with homemade bread or fruit salad using the masses of fruit we had brought from Sittee river - mostly picked from the trees around there.

Then, during the day we'd wander round the island, read, eat coconuts, go snorkelling and/or kayaking and of course go fishing for our lunch/dinner. That sort of thing.

For fishing we'd been given a couple of hand lines and used sardines or the back end of hermit crabs. Hermit crabs are everywhere on the island and especially the communal kitchen we had - it was a constant battle to keep them out. For bait you smash their shell, which reveals their big sack of gue normally hidden behind their powerful pincers and armoured forebody. Then you rip of the sack, which is filled with a puss like substance full of tiny little worms and that is the bait you use - looks gross but fish love it.

We also did some lobster fishing, for which you use a thin pole with a big hook on the end. When snorkelling, and you find one, you stick the pole in, hook its tail and pull out the lobster from it's cave. Simple as that. To fish we paddled a mile off the island along the reef (to get out of the marine reserve to where you're allowed to fish) and looked around in water no deeper than waist deep. Romeo came out with us and acted as a guide. We managed to catch 7 lobsters (including a couple of huge ones) in no more than 2 hours! By this time we'd also caught a couple of fish and a conch and decided we couldn't possibly eat more in the next two days so called it a day - Romeo was like a man possesed when it came to lobster fishing and was almost unstopable, he REALLY didn't want to stop.

Days would fly passed and in the evening we'd cook dinner, normally barbequeing some sort of seafood on the fire. The lobster we split over 2 meals - boiling three for dinner one night and cooking the others on the fire (my favourite) the next day.

One night Romeo fetched a big drum from somewhere and we sat around the fire and later on one of the huts over the water taking it in turns and attempting to play something on it.

A couple of nights there were big thunder storms (despite every day having glorious weather) and one night Dave, Katy and I sat on their porch over the sea watching not only that but a big light display from some tiny fish in the water that were flashing somehow. Everynow and then one of them would spawn a bright green cloud of something that would spread through the water and slowly dissapear.

Oh, also, every evening at dusk it seems (we didn't go down every night to check every night but saw this on several occassions) that nurse sharks and eagle rays come down to the main peer on the island and circle around for a while. Eagle rays had huge long tails and would go right into the beach to just an inch or two of water where they'd splash around digging for food. Even in the day you can see the occassional sting ray, and lots of other fish, swimming around anywhere on the island.

One day at about 10am Tommy, the handicapped guy came up to me and asked if I had any rum - he must have seen it. I said yes and offered him some, which produced an immediate smile on his face. I then gave him a mug, the bottle and some water (which he wanted to mix with the rum) and told him to help himself. It was only a small bottle (less than 500ml) and I was gobsmacked to watch him pour in over half the bottle to almost the brim of the coffee mug and then add just a dash of water. Surely the quantities should be the other way around! Needless to say Tommy had a good day that day. The next day at about 6.30am he came and asked for more! this time I had to decline but shared most of the remainder with him the night we had the drum out. We later found out that Tommy has a serious taste for rum (no shit Sherlock!) and when he has time off he goes to the mainland and spends his whole time plastered. One morning he found the owners stash of One Barrell (the main Belizean brand of rum) and swiftly polished off half of it before he got caught. Gotta love him. When we went fishing romeo had to bring the owners stash of rum with us for fear that Tommy, who had clearly shown high hopes of finding it whilst we were away, would get hold of it, get blind drunk and try to swim to the mainland (3 hours by boat) for more!

Leaving the island was a bit of an adventure because the weather was pretty bad - seriously windy causing rough seas. After we had become a day late we really had to get off the island and the next weeks lot of tourists arrived on a bigger boat (also a bigger group because high season was just about to start - where they can have up to 70 people on the island!) so we pushed to return straight away on that (we all had places to be). I say bigger but it was still a very small 'speed' boat. It was basically a fiberclass hull (aprox 25-30feet) with some shelves in it used for seats, a steering wheel near the back and 2 engines with a total of 400 horse power! Being such a small and light boat the thing flew. Once we got off the reef, where the waves were much bigger we got some serious air a couple of times but after a particularly big wave, which normally averaged about 6feet nearly came over the front of the boat the driver toned things down a bit. Only a bit.

Just before we headed to the mainland we had to salvage a small boat that had mysteriously beached itself on the reef with no people in it (spooky). While waiting to drag it off we saw a big school of dolphins that swam by close to the boat and were following the reef. I jumped in hoping to swim with them but they dissapeared under the surface until I came back onto the boat. We saw the same school later too as we headed back to the mainland - they jumped in the wake of the boat a couple of times.

Anyway that's a random collection of events and there's much more but I think I'll have to leave the blog there. Needless to say I had an absolute blast for a week on the island and LOVE the place.

Oh, one final thing, as a personal memory is the way in which the three of us left.

---

Photos

Paradise
Looking back towards our island paradise. Paddling out over a mile away from the island the water stays shallow (about waist deep, sometimes a little more and sometime only a few inches deep). The colour of it when your over sand like this is just amazing and scattered around are patches of coral reef - which are just recovering from a serious episode of bleaching but are still beautiful.

Sunset
Like I said the weather during the day was (luckily) pretty much perfect. In the evening, around sunset, huge storm clouds would form and regularly during the night we either had a big lightning storm or could see one in the distance. Only a good thing in my opinion.

Red Snapper Tonight
We had sea food every day and a lot of the time we cooked it over a fire made from drift wood and coconut husks.

Drums
One night Romeo fetched a whacking great Djembe type drum and brought it up to our fire where hoped to have a bit of a dance. Unfortunately none of us could properly play it but we had fun messing around and I taught people the (very) little I knew. This photo is from later on when we'd moved out over the water no one of the cabins. Tommy (the handicapped guy) came with us and I shared what was left of my rum (after he drank half of it neat one morning!) so he was happy. Left to right it's Tommy, Romeo, Me, Katy and Dave

Sunrise
From the cabin over the water where I slept a couple of nights.

The boys are back in town
Although we never really saw anyone else, on one brief occassion where Warren (the kid supposedly left to look after us) and a local fisherman did come back they returned with, amongst other things, a whacking great reef shark - caught on a hand line!

A fishermans tale
Aswell as the shark the other big fish they managed to catch was this huge Wahoo. Warren was incredibly excited about it and he and the fisherman swear that warren grabbed it by it's tale and just pulled it out of the water as it was swimming past... Normally I wouldn't beleive such a fishermans tale but he was so proud, the way he was calling to tell everybody and the way he couldn't stop looking at these photo's I took, that I might just beleive him.

Peace and quiet
Looking out from the island to one of the huts on the west side of the island. Belize is 3hours away in that direction by boat. I'd come to one of these huts in the mornings to sit and read on the pier or balcony. I slept occasionally in one on the other side of the island - where I could watch sunrise from.

Home
Looking back to the island. The weather was always good during the day and although it was a little windy at times this only helped to keep us cool and keep off the sand flies.

Heading out for fishing
Dave and I on the way out for a fishing trip where we mainly hoped to catch lobster.

A lobsters worst nightmare
Romeo came out with us on the lobster trip and was incredible at finding and catching the things. Here he's caught two at once, another time he caught one with his bare hands when the hook couldn't get round a corner. After we'd caught 7 lobster in like 2 hours Dave and I decided we wanted to head back as we had more than we needed to keep our bellies full for the next couple of days but Romeo, who was like a man possessed, took some serious persuading to come back with us.

A days catch
Mostly down to Romeo we came back with more than enough food.

Catch
6 lobster (one missing from the photo for some reason), Conch (I kept the shell), yellow tailed snapper and a sheapshead porgy.

Eagle Ray
Every night, just before sun down, eagle rays and nurse sharks could be seen swimming around the main pier - looking for scraps incase Warren has been back from a days fishing and gutted the fish on the pier.

Nurse shark
Again you could see these most nights just before sun down at the main pier.

Close encounter
Even sitting with your feet gently splashing in the water the eagle rays would swim right under them only inches away. An amazing experience.

My buddy
Simba! There were three enormous alsations and this ridge back cross on the island. They'd all bark ferociously all the time and occassionaly charge you but when you get close they're all loveable and big dopes. Simba (the ridge back cross here) was by far the most playful and sociable and was our favourite - Even if he did steal two tins of open butter down from a high shelf during the night and eat the whole thing on each occassion!!

Hangin' around
Coconuts were more than plentiful and could be found on the ground everywhere but it seemed rude not to at least try and climb a tree acouple of times. This is me almost at the top of one after which I had a bit of a battle to get a coconut down but won out in the end. I was quite impressed with myself.