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Published: April 17th 2009
We left Livingston, Guatemala first thing in the morning on a lancha and less than an hour later, our first view of Belize was before us.
Punta Gorda was tiny, and we wondered if we had got off at the wrong stop as it seemed so empty. But then we found the immigration office and shuffled past some rather relaxed immigration officers. Jane declared here orange (she had bought it somewhere in west Guatemala and for some reason was still hanging on to it, uneaten), and after a little bit of deliberation the officers decided she could keep it. I declared my half-drunk bottle of rum too, just to give them a bit of work to do, but it wasn´t deemed interesting enough for a discussion and I was waived through.
An hour or so later, we were on the local bus bound for Belize City. The plan was to get off at Hopkins, or as close to Hopkins as the bus would take us and spend a few days there. The bus quickly filled up as we made our way out of PG (apparently that´s what the locals call it) and we desperately tugged at the window catches
to try and let some air in as the bus heated up like a furnace.
Three sweltering hours later, the bus stopped at Hopkins, or rather the turning for Hopkins. We grabbed our luggage from the back of the bus and asked the driver how we would get to into town (still several miles away). ¨Hitch¨, came the reply, and so we stood there pathetically on the junction, hoping that one of the few vehicles passing would turn down the road to Hopkins and also be able to give us a lift.
Some time passed, and still no luck: most of the traffic sped down the highway and the only car turning into Hopkins was a private taxi, already occupied. And then the school bus came into view - it´s yellow paint made it immediately identifiable as a school bus and as the indicated towards the Hopkins turning, Jane stepped out into the middle of the road and waved her arms. Miraculously, it stopped, and next thing we knew, we were sat amongst a pile of uniformed local kids, screaming, chucking missiles and thumping each other.
We got off the bus in Hopkins close to some budget
accommodations, and trudged down the sandy road to find a room. The problem with the town is that it shaped like a piece of string and stretches along the coast for a few miles and so it´s a bit of a walk to get anywhere. Eventually though, we found a really nice guest house with complimentary bicycles (essential for getting anywhere in town) and settled in for a few days.
We soon got into the Hopkins way of life - cycling around the village (and running the endless catcalls of the local men) and hopping across the road to the beach a couple of times a day. Then on our last full day there, we decided we ought to be a bit energetic and planned a day to Cockscomb Basin, a wildlife reserve not far from Hopkins. On our way there, we noticed a rather ferocious bushfire on the side of the road, about a kilometre from our guesthouse. It was fairly contained, but looked like it might get out of control, as we were to find out later...
The day at Cockscomb was ok, but a bit disappointing after the abundant wildlife I had seen in other
countries on my travels. Despite tiptoeing around with binoculars, the day´s sightings amounted to little more than 3 bird species, and a lizard which didn´t even hang around for a photo. But we had a nice swim in a waterfall pool there, and then got back in our waiting taxi and returned to Hopkins.
And as we approached our guesthouse, we got a bit of a shock: it turned out that the bushfire we had seen that morning had got out of control and by lunchtime had consumed hectares of land and reached our guesthouse, on the outskirts of the village. Our guesthouse owner, Ingrid, had bravely tried to save her house herself (apparently the fire brigade didn´t think the fire was significant enough to attend) and she was lucky to get away with smoke damage, a coating of ash and a burnt out palapa roof in her garden. Unfortunately, other neighbours hadn´t been so lucky, and some buildings were reduced to a few blackened stumps in the ground.
The following day, we were on the road again, this time a short journey to the town of Dangriga from where we would take a lancha to the small
island of Tobacco Caye. I visited the island three years ago, and always wanted to return: it´s an incredibly tiny place at two hectares (that means you can walk around it in less than 5 minutes) and has just a few accommodations, all offering full board at affordable prices. I think a lot of people visiting there must wonder if they are going to get bored, but then soon find their waking hours are jam-packed with activities: lie in hammock, go for a swim, lunch, hammock again, go snorkelling, look at dog, hammock, drink, look at bird, swim, talk, look at fishermen, dinner, sunset, drink, sleep, etc etc.
And so this is how we spent the next three days - an endless routine of hammock swinging, swimming, trying to identify the fish we had seen and sitting at the bar watching the impossibly scenic sunsets. We did mix it up a bit by taking a couple of boat trips: the first one was an impromptu one in a slightly wobbly kayak with Joe, the guest house handyman. It went well apart from the bit where Joe´s dog, Captain, spotted his owner from the shore and immediately swam out to
Bushfire, near Hopkins
The start of the fire - several hours later it had reached the town and destroyed several buildingstry and get into our boat, wobbly enough without a large dog trying to get aboard. The second trip, a more official excursion, was a trip around the surrounding islands, looking for manatees and balloon frigate birds. No manatees materialised, but we saw plenty of the latter, and were grateful to have had a close look at them in their nests without getting shat on once (or guanoed, as I believe they say in polite ornithology circles).
Our time was soon up on Tobacco Caye, and off we went to our next destination, Caye Caulker. I thought it would be exciting to fly from Dangriga up to Belize City - the flight was very cheap and would give us an opportunity to see the coastline from the air, as well as sparing us three hours on a stuffy bus. Jane agreed with the plan in principle as she hated the stuffy buses more than I did, but the truth was she was absolutely terrified of flying.
The flight went quite well - we had the row of seats right at the back and I made a jolly commentary while we took off, bumping over a fairly rudimentary airstrip
Jaguar, Cockscomb
The only one we saw, unfortunately! and then soaring up and over palm trees. Once in the air, Jane kindly extracted her fingernails from the palm of my hand and then promptly dug them in again when the plane bumped a little while going through clouds. Very soon after, we came into land and as soon as the plane stopped, the door opened and Jane leapt off, relieved she had survived the ordeal and didn´t have to go through anything like that again.
But, alas, she did, for we were at Belize International Airport and we had to continue the flight to the domestic airport a few miles away. So up, up and away we went and fortunately we had landed again before she had time to scream or tear any more flesh off my hand.
Not long after landing, we were on a fast boat to Caye Caulker a popular island lying a few miles off the coast from Belize City. It´s small, but crammed with hotels, cabanas, shops, restaurants and golf carts. I had stayed here before on my previous visit to Belize and always regretted not staying in one of the little purple cabins on stilts, right on the beach and
in a quieter part of the island. And so of course, this is where we were going to stay this time, and I was delighted to see that the cabin we booked was a total bargain. There was a reason for this...
The cabins were quite picturesque, and set out in a row right on the beach. We clambered up the wooden steps with our bags and took a look inside at an interior that can only be described as quaint. The two beds were balanced on blocks of wood that looked like they might have been washed up on the beach, and each window was adorned with fabric depicting deer and swans (there seems to be something of an obssession with swans here as they turn up everywhere, mostly as architectural features on houses). The ensuite revealed a shower with a waste outlet consisting of a hole in the floor, and a toilet that rocket dangerously whenever you sat on it. But it was home, and we set about furnishing it with books, toiletries, accessories and my precious rum bottle (an excellent all-purpose medicine).
The days on Caulker passed into a blur and we spent most of
Bird, Cockscomb
Some kind of heron, I think our time on a pair of rusty bicycles, hired out from the cabana owner. They were of the pedal backward to brake variety, and that, combined with the sandy terrain and our affection for white wine, meant that for most of our stay we were always seconds from disaster. But we survived somehow, and every day the bikes took us to a cafe for breakfast, then onwards to the bamboo bar for a cold drink, then to our favourite jetty on the west side of the island, shopping, and once down past the airstrip where we found an osprey nesting on an electricity pylon, plus a herd of sandflies that devoured our legs when we weren´t looking.
Our only real excursion while we were on Caulker was a snorkelling trip. The best sites are normally visited on a full day trip, but as usual we were far too lazy and non-commital to contemplate anything more than a few hours away from the island. Apart from not seeing any sharks, the trip was pretty good and we saw various colourful fish, a group of squid and finally a large group of enormous stingrays in a feeding frenzy. They were in
water too shallow for us to maneouvre properly, and so with the fate of Steve Irwin firmly in the back of our minds, we got back on the boat and watched all the other tourists trying to dodge them.
Four days later, our time was up and we were ready to head back over the border to Guatemala. And as we sped along the sandy roads to the jetty in our slightly ridiculous stretch golf cart taxi, we were already missing the malfunctioning bicycles, the fish, the horizontal attitude of the locals and of course the precarious tilting toilet.
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Mary Bentall
non-member comment
No photographs?
I love the stories, but what has happened to the photos. There are only black, blank spaces? What a great pity.